The vastness of the internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can get information about any subject, any time of the day or night.

On the downside, it is largely unregulated and for every good website full of useful information, there is one which has unpleasant, unsavoury or plain obscene content. In order to prevent yourself or your family stumbling across these sites, there is software on offer that aims to restrict access to the less salubrious corners of the web.

One of the latest is Intego's Content Barrier 2004. Installing Content Barrier is simple but there is no instruction manual to provide extra help. All the Help files are on the CD-ROM, which isn't the friendliest way to offer assistance.

Content Barrier claims to do many things to keep you safe while using the internet. The most obvious is to limit access to certain websites and internet content. This can be done by telling the program which websites to restrict or by letting Content Barrier filter out websites with inappropriate titles or language on them. It can also be used to stop users accessing the internet at certain times of the day.

The standard, pre-configured filters aren't very focused so they stop users from looking at any websites at all. With careful tuning, however, we managed to filter out pornography, violence and other bad stuff, while leaving other unlisted subjects unrestricted. If you suspect that the filters are being defeated, you can check which sites have been used as all visits are logged.

Despite the initial success, it didn't take long for us to find a few loopholes. For instance, stopping surfers getting to google.com will limit searches but we were able to go to google.co.uk. Within seconds, we were able to access pornography - something that the product claimed we wouldn't be doing. Although it claims to monitor online conversations, chats using AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger went completely unchecked.

Although Content Barrier does offer some useful functionality, it is very limited and could easily be circumvented by an imaginative, computer savvy 10-year-old. All told, we were very disappointed by Content Barrier 2004 and even at £20, cannot really recommend it.

Contact: Intego +33 01 5507 2727
www.intego.com