Family Guardian- How It Works

Family Guardian, powered by S4F Technology, provides the most effective Internet protection available today.

We do this by eliminating all of the hassles. All filtering takes place on our servers. Every time you connect to the Internet, no matter how you connect to the Internet, Family Guardian directs your computer to retrieve information through our servers and their databases.

We protect you from inappropriate content of all kinds without, stifling the power and effectiveness of the Internet. (Protection Criteria). We employ a full-time staff whose sole responsibility is to seek out inappropriate sites and keep our database as current as possible. We use your input as well. Our users have the ability to submit sites for review as well. Though we strive to maintain the most current and up to date protection, your help is invaluable.

More technically, Family Guardian utilizes a small thin-client piece of software that forces all HTTP, HTTPS and FTP requests to check against the S4F Filtering Servers before fulfilling the request. The S4F Filtering Servers respond with an "allow" or "disallow" to determine whether or not the end-user can access the requested URL or IP address.

Family Guardian is built for high-speed access and is compatible with dial-up, cable, DSL, ISDN, satellite and most networks. It may be used in conjunction with most every ISP, including AOL, MSN, Net Zero and Earthlink.