How to determine what censorware is installed on your machine

You can usually tell what type of blocking software is installed on your machine because the name of the product appears when you encounter a "blocked site" message -- SurfWatch says "Blocked by SurfWatch", BESS says, "I'm sorry, BESS can't go there", etc. Some products hide themselves better than others, though. This page lists some of the ways you can tell what censorware is installed on your machine.

Client-side blocking software
CYBERsitter 97
Cyber Patrol
SurfWatch
Net Nanny
X-Stop
Server-level blocking software
BESS
I-Gear
SmartFilter
WebSENSE
SurfWatch Proxy
Cyber Patrol Proxy

CYBERsitter 97

When you try to access a blocked Web site, you don't get an actual message that says the site is blocked. If, for example, you try to load the URL http://www.peacefire.org, Netscape will say "Looking up host: www.peacefire.org" and will hang at that point forever until you hit the cancel button.

Pages are displayed with individual words edited out. CYBERsitter is the only product that removes words from pages before displaying them; other products will either show the words replaced with XXXX's or will block the page completely. So if you are running CYBERsitter, you will occasionally see phrases that don't make sense -- such as "Jesus M d Joseph". This is how "Jesus Mary and Joseph" appears when filtered through CYBERsitter, which cuts out the word "aryan" in the middle.

The following files will be present on your machine:

C:\WINDOWS\Cyb97.exe
C:\WINDOWS\CYREG.DAT
C:\WINDOWS\hlpc97.CNT
C:\WINDOWS\hlpc97.hlp
C:\WINDOWS\holder
C:\WINDOWS\initsys.exe
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\adwfil.dll
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\hiwfil.dll
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\iawfil.dll
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\lgwfil.dll
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\Stcp.dll
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\wfileu.drv
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\wsockc97.dll

The last file, wsockc97.dll, is the key to disabling CYBERsitter without the password.

Cyber Patrol

In versions 4.0 and later, when you attempt to access a blocked site, you will get a message that looks like this. In version 3.0, you get a dialog box that flashed on the screen instead, but it still mentions Cyber Patrol.
Usually, you should see an icon for "Cyber Patrol" on the Windows 95 taskbar. However, Cyber Patrol does have an option to hide the Cyber Patrol icon while it's enabled, so if you don't see the icon, that doesn't mean Cyber Patrol is not running.

The following files will be present on your machine:

C:\patrol\!cp.exe
C:\patrol\cp.exe
[plus a lot of other files in the c:\patrol directory]
C:\WINDOWS\!ic.exe
C:\WINDOWS\ctl3d.dll
C:\WINDOWS\ic.exe
C:\WINDOWS\icfire.exe
C:\WINDOWS\icp.log
C:\WINDOWS\sfttb.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system.386
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\!system.drv
C:\WINDOWS\ts.dll
C:\WINDOWS\ts16.dll
C:\WINDOWS\ts32.dll
C:\WINDOWS\unwise.dll
C:\WINDOWS\USAGE.LOG

If you know your Internet access is blocked by Cyber Patrol, but you can't find any of these files on your machine, try looking under Cyber Patrol Proxy.

SurfWatch

If you attempt to access a blocked site, you should see the message "Blocked by SurfWatch" flash on the screen.

The following files will be present on your machine:

C:\CO_RO_NT\128.swf
C:\CO_RO_NT\129.swf
[plus a lot of other files in the C:\CO_RO_NT directory]
C:\WINDOWS\128.SWF
C:\WINDOWS\129.SWF
[plus a lot of other files in your C:\WINDOWS directory
named "nnnn.swf" where nnnn is a 3 or 4 digit number]
C:\WINDOWS\ss16.dll
C:\WINDOWS\surfctl.exe
C:\WINDOWS\surfhook.dll
C:\WINDOWS\surfsock.dll
C:\WINDOWS\surfw.ini
C:\WINDOWS\swutil.dll
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\net.drv
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\surfvxd.vxd

If you know your Internet access is blocked by SurfWatch, but you can't find any of these files on your machine, try looking under SurfWatch Proxy.

Net Nanny

No information about Net Nanny yet.

A note about proxy servers

BESS, I-Gear, WebSENSE, Cyber Patrol Proxy, and SurfWatch Proxy are all proxy servers, which means they are installed on another machine on the network. It may not always be possible to determine what product is being used. Usually the only information that you have, is the message displayed when a page is blocked -- but that message can be changed by the proxy server administrator so that it no longer mentions the name of the product, and you have no way of telling what product is being used. If you're trying to find out the name of the product being used by your school for research purposes, this may not always be possible.

If you just want to find out how to get around the blocking, though, then it doesn't matter what kind of proxy server is being used, since the method for getting around all proxy servers is the same, and you can read it here. In that case, all you need to know is whether your computer is configured to use a proxy server at all -- to do this, read how to determine the proxy settings on your computer.

BESS, the Internet Retriever

When you attempt to access a blocked site, you should see the message "I'm sorry, BESS can't go there", next to a picture of a sad-looking dog -- supposedly the Chesapeake Bay retriever owned by the company president.
Your computer will usually be configured to use a proxy server with a name ending in n2h2.com or bess.net. Some schools in Massachusetts will be configured to use a proxy server name ending in mec.edu. See how to determine the proxy settings on your computer.

I-Gear

Before you can use the system, you see a login screen that looks like this.

SmartFilter

When you attempt to access a blocked site, you should see a message that looks like this.

WebSENSE

When you attempt to access a blocked site, you should see a message that looks like this.

Cyber Patrol Proxy

When you attempt to access a blocked site, you should see a message that mentions Cyber Patrol.

SurfWatch Proxy

When you attempt to access a blocked site, you should see a message that mentions SurfWatch.