It's going to be interesting to see how netnanny does this
effectively on iOS. Short of hooking into Safari using unpublished APIs, this is going to be a neat trick to make sure it catches everything. unless it's released as a Cydia/jailbreak app, but the irony of
that would be hilarious.
Edit: I see now in the
blog post that the developers pretty much admit this:
At the risk of getting flamed: the history of netnanny-like software has shown again and again that they don't work. They frequently err on the side of "caution" and filter legitimate content (say you want to research "breast cancer" for instance), and then they don't always catch the *real* bad stuff. it's always an arms race.
If you're implementing this for a child or someone else you find untrustworthy, they will find ways to get around it. I mean, even if Netnanny
really locked down the device, what kid with an iPhone hasn't already jailbroken it? At the very least, they know how and can use that knowledge when it becomes "necessary." Even a simple DFU restore on some other computer with iTunes will make short work of this.
The only way to make it foolproof is to make it inherent in the OS and mandatory on every device, and I'm sorry, but there are plenty of responsible adults who don't want someone else telling them what to view in their web browsers, even if they
never look at porn on their iPhones. It's a slippery slope from that to controls and restrictions on other "unsavory" content.
Having netnanny is a poor subsitute for having a "real" nanny... or better yet,
real parenting. Talking to kids about what they shouldn't see and why, and setting ground rules, and enforcing those rules through
actual interaction is probably more effective than giving them just another software puzzle to solve and get around.
And if you absolutely can't trust them... then
maybe they're not old enough or responsible enough to have a smartphone yet.
By the way: if you were to ask me to design something more effective than this, I'd go with a filtered VPN. Set up a VPN proxy with a web-filter, and set up the iPhone to connect through that. That way, all net content is getting filtered, regardless of the app or browser in use.
Of course, once the user figured out what's going on, they could go into the settings and disconnect the VPN. Doesn't look like Apple lets you lock that down. So that wouldn't be perfect, either.
