I’d barely got my new series of “Internet Safety Sunday” up and running when I was approached by Brightfilter to see if I was willing to review their software.
Of course I said yes and made it abundantly clear that to do it justice I would need an unrestricted version and that it would be totally unbiased without fear of favour. The only pre-deal I agreed to is that I’d let the company see this review first so that they could “respond to it as necessary” – you can see their response at the end in red.
So…
Who are Brightfilter?
They are a Bath (UK) based company that is fairly new (since 2004) to the world of filtering but appear to have made quite an impact already. They provide internet security solutions that “protect children online both at school and at home”.
From information found on their website they only “provide solutions” that meet standards or guidelines published by groups such as: CIPA; IIA; ISPA and IWF. They are also now a McAfee Premier partner.
What do they offer?
The easy answer is to say see the web but in short they offer:
- Family surfing protection and
- Educational surfing protection
Though these two broad sweep categories are far from the complete picture. The first is via a windows application and the second is typically via an appliance such as the McAfee Web Gateway unit.
To be absolutely clear I’m testing and reviewing the windows software version of their product.
Installation.
Installation was a breeze. Simply download the trial or purchase the one year subscription (covers up to 3 PCs) which is a less than 7Mb file and double click the saved file to execute. After running through some obvious screens you are then asked to reboot to fully activate the software.
After a reboot the software throws up a system tray notification advising that you need to register and web access will be blocked until that is completed.
I’ll throw in a little warning here: if, like me, you setup your account first and if, like me, you use very strong passwords then I’d advise making sure you can access that password before the initial reboot. If you use lastpass to create / store your passwords then you will not be able to access it until after completing registration – and if you pre-registered then …. well let’s just say Catch22.
Once you have completed registration though access is very straightforward.
As a part of the install process two shortcuts are placed on your desktop – one for managing your setup and the other for logging in any of your user profiles.
Settings.
Like the installation, use is very clear and straightforward but with, at least to me, a couple of oddities - more of that later though. The first thing you see on logging in is your account admin panel.
From here you have various options:
It’s the user setup that throws up my second warning /oddity:
When you first register your account you go through a screen that allows you to name the machine, pick an admin name and then a password. For whatever reason (and I accept it could have been my own fault) this process overwrote my initial account password. It took a web chat with support to reveal that. More on this later.
Other than this it’s all fairly obvious and straightforward to setup & configure – but Brightfilter have even provided an FAQ and some PDF’s that answer basic setup & use questions.
In Use.
I do like the fact that they provide a “Status” page and a “Check URL Category” page. These help to eliminate the first what if’s of any problems you may have or to understand why a particular site is getting allowed or blocked.
Equally as nice, in my opinion, is the fact that they have many more categories than some of their major rivals – this I think is a key aspect of any filter product and the minimalist approach has long been a complaint of mine to other vendors.
Actual operation / use of the filter is very straightforward. You can either open up your browser or click on the desktop icon which brings up a login page – for even young children this aspect should be straightforward as they are presented with their ID badge which has their name and individualised picture (if you want). Simply click the appropriate badge and enter your password. This bit is pretty neat and allows you to set passwords to accounts with ‘more freedom’ thus stopping younger children from accessing inappropriate content. Equally, you can opt for certain accounts to not have a password.
The filter is a server side filter in that all your URL requests are redirected through the companies servers – this has both benefit and boon. A benefit is that it is remote from you and the vagaries of your house and its occupiers but the big downside would be that if access to the service was down then so would your surfing – maybe an override option would be a future option.
My guess though is that the service is robust and distributed enough that you shouldn’t see problems here.
Oddities.
I mentioned above some oddities. These are, to me at least, not the default way I’d expect the software to respond but it is very likely a working as designed situation by the developers.
So, in no particular order …
1. My password issue.
2. Clicking save on a sub-menu such as the ‘filter profile’ puts you back to the parent menu rather than allowing you to see what effect the changes have.
3. User accounts don’t tie up with machine accounts – I can see why this is but believe there should at least be an option to tie the windows user accounts into the software.
4. The time constraints sub menu can be a laborious process, especially if you have a larger family. I would expect to be able to drag my mouse over a time range and click once to change that setting – not click each item individually. However, this may also be a restriction on the web front end – not being a programmer I couldn’t tell you.
Support.
I had occasion to contact support (as mentioned above) and I opted to use the live web chat function. This appeared to work smoothly and support responded in a timely manner. As of this writing though they haven’t yet updated me on what or why the issue may be – see my second warning up the page.
Conclusion.
All in all the application appears to be very capable.
Live support is timely for UK based folks and other support can be had via their “status” and “check URL category” pages.
The proof will very much be in the testing and I’ll report back on that in a month or so when my children have had a time to play and see what happens to their surfing habits. Even though they are almost 8 and almost 10 they are (naturally) very computer savvy so will get the aspect of logging in very quickly and complaints to me are almost instant!
Whether Mum gets the hang of admin when I’m not there is another matter altogether.
Oh, and perhaps it’s not fair but I’ve tasked my 20yr old Comp Sci student son with trying to break it or get around it.
- What’s your opinion of server side software based filters?
- Do you have a favourite?
- Does Brightfilter compare, for example to BlueCoats K9 which is free?
“ Regarding the password issue, we have not had any reports of the software overwriting passwords before. It’s most likely that there was some confusion with changing the admin password for the Brightfilter account and the password for the admin filtering profile.
We are always pleased to receive suggestions and ideas for improvement from our customers, so welcome any comments like these. We can look at incorporating these features when it comes to creating a new version of Brightfilter Parental Control.
We would also like to add that although our support team is very busy, providing assistance to customers is a key priority. However looking into the technical details for why a certain issue has occurred may take a little longer, although you will receive a response as soon as possible, just as above.”
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