University of Twente Student Theses
Parental control effectiveness : Evaluating filtering solutions of the leading Italian ISPs
Rizzato, Chiara (2025) Parental control effectiveness : Evaluating filtering solutions of the leading Italian ISPs.
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| Abstract: | The protection of minors’ online activities is a critical concern that requires attention. The more time they spend online, the greater the risk of being exposed to harmful content. In some cases, this issue was tackled at the institutional level, for instance, in Italy, the AGCOM resolution ’Protecting minors in cyberspace’ requires all ISPs to offer a basic, free-of-charge parental control mechanism that filters web content based on categories to their customers. Through the use of a curated blocklist, we seeked to address our research questions related to the technical aspects of the solutions implemented, their effectiveness, and their robustness against various bypassing techniques. Our results revealed two different implementation approaches: DNS-based and TLS-based filters. Moreover, we identified a notable amount of harmful websites remaining unblocked that ranges from 20,5% to 34,2%. Finally, the response of the filtering mechanisms to different bypassing techniques reflects the type of solution in place. In fact, when a DNS-based filter is in place, changing the DNS server is an effective method to bypass it. On the other hand, in the case of TLS-based filtering, by sending HTTP requests instead of HTTPS, allows users to circumvent the filtering block. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 54 computer science |
| Programme: | Internet Science and Technology MSc (60032) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/106468 |
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