Brightfilter News

Free Software !

25th June 2009, Bath, United Kingdom. Brightfilter have today launched the CD version of the Brightfilter Parental Control software. This retail-ready version is available to all interested parties - Schools, Parent-Teacher Associations, Local Authorities, Charities and Commercial enterprises for re-sale and distribution.  Please contact us to receive a free hard-copy for evaluation.

Work for Brightfilter !

Brightfilter is recruiting. We are looking for a skilled individual to work as part of the technical team at Brightfilter; the successful applicant will help maintain and develop customer and internal web facing systems and the infrastructure they run on, supporting both customers and work colleagues.  Further information relating to the position can be found here. Interested? Then we would like to hear from you. Please send your CV to jobs@brightfilter.com

Brightfilter CEO supporting Children's hospice South West

Peter Hodgson, CEO of Brightfilter Limited is undertaking a 240 mile bike ride with up to 100 others to raise money for Children’s Hospice South West.

Children's Hospice South West accepts children and families from the South West, from South Gloucester, Bristol, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

All the children who use the Hospice have Life Limiting, or Life Threatening Conditions, which mean that they are not expected to live into adulthood. Some families may use the hospice for many years, from the time the child is first diagnosed, they may come for planned respite, or for emergency care, depending on their needs and the support that the family request.

The ride is called “Ride for Precious Lives” and takes place over three days of June 19th to 21st  2009

Sponsors can donate money to support the fabulous work of the hospice at

justgiving.com/peterhodgson007

30 Day Brightfilter Trial Released

4^th April 2009, Bath, United Kingdom. Today Brightfilter released their extended 30 day trial of the Brightfilter Parental Control software.

Designed with parents in mind, the software provides a base-line level of access to all users, no matter who uses the PC. Age-related and customisable levels of web access can also be configured to provide tailor-made filtering to each and every family member. Customers wishing to run a 30 day trial click here.

 

Channel 4 Sex Education Show

 

31st March 2009 Bath, United Kingdom. Following the re-screening of Channel 4’s Sex Education show on Monday 30^th March 2009, Brightfilter have brought forward their announcement to extend the trial of our Brightfilter Parental Control software to 30 days – thereby providing the parent/administrator an extended time within which they can tailor suitable web filtering to meet their children’s needs. Brightfilter are also pleased to announce that a Brightfilter Lite Edition is currently being developed to provide a suitable level of web-content filtering free of change.

We believe that the development of these products will cater for every households needs whilst not compromising security, protection and the freedom to surf the web safely. We are delighted that Channel 4 have again highlighted this issue of pornographic content on the web and we support this raising of awareness amongst parents.

 

To view channel 4’s program please click here and choose the “Parents” video (4mins28)

Brightfilter Launch Partner Programme for Parental Control Software

27^th March 2009, Bath, United Kingdom.

Today, Brightfilter Limited launched a partner programme to enable businesses to resell the Brightfilter Parental Control subscription service to their customer base. The Parental Control software can be sold and used anywhere in the world. Pre-launch registered partners have already joined from the UK, Europe and the Far-East.

Enlisted partners will have the benefit to not only enjoy o margin on selling the product, but will also see renewal revenue year-on-year through the central management and control of subscriptions sold. Further detail along with additional information for interested partners can be found here

Brightfilter launch the latest version of Brightfilter Parental Control 2009

26th March 2009, Bath, United Kingdom.

Today Brightfilter Limited released its latest version of the Brightfilter Parental Control solution for parents. This latest release includes a more intuitive administration interface as well as a number of improvements to the look and feel of the software.

The service itself is powered by the most accurate web-filtering database available in the market today which uses a number of technologies and artificial intelligence techniques to gather and rate potential Web sites including: link crawlers, security forensics, honeypot networks, sophisticated auto-rating tools and customer logs. Candidate sites are added to the database after being reviewed by multi-lingual Web Analysts who focus their full attention on ensuring the continued quality of the database. Data is also included from organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the Anti-phishing Working Group (APWG).

The latest software release can be downloaded from here

Brightfilter at BETT 2009

23rd January 2009, Bath, United Kingdom

Brightfilter had a great stand in the Grand Hall at BETT and as well as meeting with hundreds of existing and potential customers managed to give away many thousands of stress balls!

Visitors were particularly interested in the new BoundaryServer appliance that enables schools to have the only truly effective web filtering solution as a low cost managed service.

Many vendors claim to protect against anonymous proxies but BoundaryServer is the only solution powered by McAfee Secure Web to absolutely control access including anonymisers via HTTPS.

To request your free evaluation of BoundaryServer please click here.

Brightfilter host Harmful Content on the Internet review @ ISPA AGM

ISPA held its annual Parliamentary Advisory Forum in Portcullis House on Monday 4th February on the pertinent issue of harmful content on the Internet. The event was hosted by Derek Wyatt MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms), and was well attended by Parliamentarians, Government officials, law enforcement representatives and leading figures from industry.

Peter Hodgson, founder and CEO Of Brightfilter, who spoke about the lack of controls and regulation on the Internet, in stark contrast to all other forms of media. Mr Hodgson argued that whilst child abuse images are illegal, he also believed that codes of practice could be introduced to combat forms of harmful online content. He did, however, state that he felt that the controlling a child's access to harmful content was the role of the parent and not the ISPs. He concluded by saying that solutions did exist to combat harmful online content, including parental responsibility and controls, but that ISPs also have a part to play.

 

The keynote address was delivered by Dr Tanya Byron, who is leading an independent inquiry into harmful content on the Internet and in video games. In her presentation, Dr Byron praised industry for engaging with the Review and revealed that more children and young people responded than all other respondents combined. She further identified some of the problems highlighted by the evidence that the Review team received, such as the lack of awareness amongst parents of online issues and a knowledge gap between parents and children in this area. Dr Byron explained that one method of addressing this was by engaging parents in a 'bottom-up' approach. She also suggested that clearer industry standards, empowering children and supporting parents were possible ways of improving the situation. Dr Byron's review will be published at the end of March.

Brightfilter shorlisted for IWF ISPA Award 2008

Nominations for this year's IWF ISPA Award are for any person, initiative, development, group or organisation which has most significantly contributed to combating illegal content on the internet during 2007.

 

The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA UK) has been organising the UK Internet Industry Awards since 1999 to herald the best of the Internet industry and to celebrate innovation and best practice. One of the Special ISPA Awards is the Internet Watch Foundation Award.

 

Brightfilter have been nominated for our commitment to consumer e-safety by offering ISPs, free of charge, the opportunity to deploy the Brightfilter filtering solution to protect their customers from accidentally stumbling across indecent images of children.

ISPs offerred latest filtering software with Internet Watch Foundation protection included

As internet access continues to escalate, parents face a series of concerns about their children’s necessary access to the internet from home - for research, school projects and general leisure use. Whilst most schools employ network level filtering to protect pupils from unsuitable material online, many home PCs are not covered to the same extent, and do not deliver the same quality or control. This can be an additional problem in an era where children are frequently more computer literate - and familiar with the web - than their parents.

 

With this in mind, Bath-based web filtering company Brightfilter has launched a partnership project with all the UK’s major ISPs, offering them an opportunity to introduce parents to one of the most sophisticated, new generation filtering products on the market. Through the scheme, ISPs can offer free trials of the solution to their subscribers and choose whether to charge for the service or “bundle” it in with other service offerings.

 

According to Brightfilter Founder and CEO, Peter Hodgson,

"A recent survey by the London School of Economics found that while 57% of children have come into contact with pornography online, only 16% of parents are aware of this. Children are protected at school, but they may be lulled into a false sense of security when they get home. We want to educate parents to the fact that a real solution exists to tackle this problem. In addition, the Brightfilter solution blocks access to identified phishing and spyware sites which typically attempt to steal personal data, even credit card and bank details to commit serious fraud."

 

Although a few internet service providers do offer some protection in their more expensive monthly packages, these solutions typically require a bespoke browser, can be complicated to set up, and require specific email addresses for each family member for the filtering to work. Brightfilter’s creators believe their product is different. As Hodgson says,

"You can set up Brightfilter in a couple of minutes, it works with all browsers and ISPs and requires no technical know-how. Film censor classifications, U, PG, 12a, 15 and 18, are the default profiles so each child can be protected appropriately in seconds. Parents can choose unrestricted access for themselves, even on the same PC that the children use, and all users are protected from identified spyware and phishing sites."

 

Brightfilter’s database employs the URL blacklist maintained by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to ensure that illegal pornographic content involving children is never accessible - even inadvertently by adult surfers. Says Hodgson, "We already supply 10,000 schools in the UK with their network-level filtering solutions, and we believe ISPs are ideally placed to spread awareness to parents of the need and availability of high quality home filtering products such as Brightfilter."

Victoria Barry Red Carpet Marketing Ltd. 0870 3500242 victoria AT red-carpet.co.uk