May 3, 2003
Mobile technology company launches «Content Guardian»
Irish mobile technology company Telcotec has launched a new product designed to protect 2.5G and 3G mobile phone users from unsolicited and pornographic content, according to their press release published in Electric News.
Telcotec's Content Guardian is a content filtering product that enables operators to filter pornographic images and block a limited amount of spam. Content Guardian, which is managed by the mobile operator, will be able to block unwanted or adult content according to the wishes of the mobile phone owner.
How does it work?
It works primarily by analysis of images, including skin tone, the proportion of flesh displayed in an image and a variety of other elements. An image with a high proportion of flesh may be identified as an image with probable adult content and therefore blocked. However, such filtering mechanisms based on analysis of images means that some harmless pictures may not get through.
"It's won't allow a picture of a newborn baby to get through," says Telcotec product director Fran Fanning. "But a picture of someone standing in a swimsuit could get through as long as the subject is not in a suggestive pose." Similarly, a picture of a face close up will not be unnecessarily blocked as the image analysis will also identify the composition of a photo.
Hardcore Child Porn Peddled by Camera Phones
Filtering systems which would stop indecent images being accepted or transmitted are of great interest to mobile operators, to avoid exposing pornographic images to children. Only last week, picture messaging phones with images of children being abused were found by the police in a raid in Central Scotland, in the course of an investigation into 7000 suspected paedophiles in the UK. cf previous posting in Picturephoning.
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