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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TECHNOLOGY
WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2004
Software keeps tabs on tempted Christians
By Jay Senter
jsenter@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Mark Brown sees students struggle with Internet pornography every year.
Many live in fraternity houses, where the use of pornography is so widespread that it is impossible to avoid.
Others are simply lonely, isolated in their dorm rooms with nothing to prevent them from succumbing to the temptation.
Since the Internet became widely available in the late 1990s, Brown, director of the University of Kansas branch of Campus Crusade for Christ, has counselled college students who struggle to reconcile the temptations of Internet pornography with their desire to lead a Christian lifestyle.
But finding an effective remedy frequently proved a difficult task.
When he first began counselling students with the problem, Brown would advise them to install filtering software on their computers.
Often it didn't work. The students would find ways to circumvent filters and feed their addiction.
Photo Illustration by Courtney Kuhlen
In extreme cases, he would recommend that students get rid of their computers altogether. For some, the temptations of the Internet were just too strong.
"In some ways a filter just invites a competitive spirit." Brown said.
But Brown thinks he has found an effective answer to the problem of Internet pornography addiction in software called Covenant Eyes - a payfor-use program that would strike many Internet users as unacceptably invasive.
Covenant Eyes, is not a filter. In fact, its creators believe that keeping access to the Internet unrestricted is essential to addressing the temptation of Internet porn. Instead, the program provides "Internet accountability" by allowing an outside party to monitor a person's Internet habits.
Once installed on a computer, Covenant Eyes, which gets its name from a verse in the book of Job, keeps a record of every Web page the user visits.
The program then checks each Web address against a database of pornographic sites, and scans the sites' text for "flag" words.
Using the information from those scans, Covenant Eyes assigns an "appropriateness" score to each site visited, and generates a total usage report for the subscriber.
That report is then made available on a
monthly or bi-monthly basis to the subscribers' "accountability partners," the one or two people subscribers choose to monitor their Internet usage.
Covenant Eyes vice-president Lynn McClurg said the program worked by taking away a key contributor to cyber-sex addiction: secrecy. The Covenant Eyes theory is that the Internet user won't be tempted to visit pornographic sites if they
know their Web activity is being monitored.
But McClurg conceded that the program was not perfect.
"You can go to legitimate medical research sites on breast cancer or other things, and they will receive a score." McClurg said.
SEE SOFTWARE ON PAGE 30