Press release July 10, 2002

AOL Survey on the Necessity of a Central Protection
Children alone without protection in the internet

Parents believe that they have to protect their children against internet offers not suitable for their age. However, many do without filters and safety features because they are too complicated in their installation and maintenance. This is the result of a survey carried out by the provider AOL that was made together with the research institute Emnid.

83 percent of the parents said that they are responsible for protecting their children against the dangers of the internet. Only 27 percent installed passwords or PIN codes, only 26 percent have filter programs on their home computer or block certain areas. 45 percent of those questioned do not know any technical safety measures at all. "Unfortunately, safer surfing is not regarded as a matter of course", comments Nicola Söhlke, managing director of AOL Germany.

These findings once again substantiate the huge potential of central protection technologies directly at the provider's. According to the survey even 8 year olds have regular access to PCs and the internet. The setup and maintenance of safety programs is just too much for many parents, or they are lacking the technical background.

But morally damaging content is not the only problem coming from the internet. Viruses, unwanted dialers and other data rubbish is threatening the unknowing internet user. If he wants to protect himself, he has to install at least 5 different protection programs. On the other hand one protection program directly at the provider's would be enough.

"Hopefully the providers finally recognize the huge potential of renting an added value in form of a central protection program to the user", comments René Holzer, CEO of Nutzwerk and inventor of the real-time data filter SaferSurf, on the survey. SaferSurf reliably removes ad banners, viruses, dialers and advertisements directly from the data stream. SaferSurf checks all incoming data in real-time and only passes on "clean" bits and bytes. eMails that were filtered out are saved in the Trash and can be restored if necessary. SaferSurf supports all POP3 and IMAP mailboxes. Web pages that contain a virus are not displayed; instead SaferSurf shows a warning.