Controlling the viewing of pornographic material on the Internet can be a chore.  What’s worse is the use of tricky or confusing URLs and other misleading descriptions that can mean opening or downloading inappropriate images accidentally. And in some cases unsuspecting users may be unaware that this material exists on their computers.

Paraben’s Porn Detection Stick (PDS) is a USB stick loaded with software designed to find and remove illicit images from your PC to protect your family, business or organization. The Porn Detection Stick works with any computer running Windows XP, Vista, or 7, and once launched will find any pornographic images, even deleted ones. The PDS uses a series of algorithms to analyze flesh tones, shapes and curvatures, face detection, body part separation, and more to alert you to images likely to contain pornographic material. You just plug the stick into a USB port on your computer, double-click PornDetectionStick.exe and view the search results.

Paraben says the average age a child is exposed to pornography online is 11 years old. Children may not be actively searching for this material but chances are they’ve run across it and pornography may be residing on your computer right now. Pornographic content on company computers exposes owners to legal risks as well as leading to disgruntled employees, warns Paraben.

Schools and churches can benefit from a PDN because despite Internet filters, pornographic content can contaminate organizations’ computers via flash drives or other media, downloaded from e-mail, or simply missed by a filter. The PDN can be used on any computer you own and because it’s a USB stick, it’s easy to carry with you and run it at your convenience.

Paraben says a search of a 500GB hard drive with more than 70,000 images takes only about 90 minutes, much quicker than searching manually. The Porn Detection Stick has a number of methods and algorithms to detect pornographic material. Using programs such as Image Cleanup, Skin Detection, Background Elimination, Edge Detection, Body Part Separation, Negative Curvature Rejection, Elimination, Face Detection, Body Part Layout Decision and Decision, the PDS claims to filter around 99 percent of non-pornographic images from a system leaving you with a fraction of the images on a computer to look at.

The company says it searched a computer with a 500GB hard drive using the Porn Detection Stick. Within 90 minutes the entire computer was searched and more than 72,000 images were analyzed producing only around 400 false positive results. That’s less than 0.006 percent.

Whether you think someone is viewing pornography on your computer or whether you think your machine was exposed to pornography unwillingly or by accident, Paraben says its PDS will help you quickly investigate your computer and determine if pornographic images are present.

The Porn Detection Stick is available for around $99 from Paraben and other online computer stores. (www.paraben-sticks.com)

Published on  March 8, 2010