Student cracks Government's $84m porn filter

A MELBOURNE schoolboy has cracked the Federal Government's new $84 million internet porn filter in minutes.

Tom Wood, 16, said it took him just over 30 minutes to bypass the Government's filter, released on Tuesday.

Tom, a year 10 student at a southeast Melbourne private school, showed the Herald Sun how to deactivate the filter in a handful of clicks.

Parents easily fooled

His technique ensures the software's toolbar icon is not deleted, leaving parents under the impression the filter is still working.

A former cyber bullying victim, Tom feared a computer-savvy child could work out the bypass and put it on the Internet for others to use.

Tom, who spoke to Communications Minister Helen Coonan about cyber safety during a forum in May, said the Federal Government should have developed a better Australian made filter.

"It's a horrible waste of money," he said.

"They could get a much better filter for a few million dollars made here rather than paying overseas companies for an ineffective one."

Cracks replacement filter

In response to the Herald Sun's inquiries, the Government added an Australian designed filter, Integard, to the website on Friday, which Tom cracked within 40 minutes.

Senator Coonan said the Government had anticipated children would try and find ways to get around the NetAlert filters, and suppliers were contracted to provided continuing updates.

"The vendor is investigating the matter as a priority," Senator Coonan said.

"Unfortunately, no single measure can protect children from online harm and ... traditional parenting skills have never been more important."

Family First Senator Steve Fielding, a long-time campaigner for cyber safety, said cracking the software showed the need for compulsory filtering by Internet providers.

"You need both. You need it at the ISP and at the PC level," Senator Fielding said.

"The Government has not listened to common sense and it leaves kids exposed."

The filters are designed to stop access to sites on a national blacklist, bar use of chat rooms, and can be tailored by parents to stop access to sites.

Filters 'don't address bigger issues'

Tom stressed the filters were missing the mark by a long way regardless of how easy they were to break.

"Filters aren't addressing the bigger issues anyway," he said.

"Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I'd fix.

"They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them."

The $189 million NetAlert scheme includes $84.4 million for the National Filter Scheme, plus funding for online policing, a help line, and education programs.

The Government will also offer the option of filtering by internet service providers.

Under its filter program, households can download the filter from netalert.gov.au or have it sent out on to them.

Original News From: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22304224-5005941,00.html