On the weekend, I added a layer of security to our system, Dansguardian on the firewall. I was expecting a bunch of teachers to be at my door with pitch-forks by 9:30 on Monday but it was not until today near noon that I got feedback. The principal came in and told me a teacher had been searching for images appropriate for Remembrance Day. I checked it out as I left for lunch and indeed a page of search results on Bing was being blocked. Later when I had some slack time, I found the blockage in the Dansguardian’s log and verified that I got the same result with a different OS and a different browser. I re-tuned Dansguardian from young children, 50, to 80 and the page came through full of poppies and appropriate images. I scrolled down a bit and found the problem: nude pictures in amongst the flowers. I put the setting back to 50. The system is working but it is better to err on the safe side.

We do have a safer system now with virus-scanning on the Internet and kid-filtering but there may yet be frayed nerve-endings. A system like this cannot please everyone. I can also keep track of the logs to see what is being blocked to whitelist things. It will all work out in the end.