The app is an Internet browser. You can use it like you would Safari. It works somewhat like our other accountability services for the PC, the Mac, and Windows Mobile devices. It isn’t a filtered browser. It simply monitors everywhere you go online, scoring each Web address for mature content. It then sends a detailed report to the “Accountability Partner(s)” you choose, such as a friend, a spouse, a mentor, etc.

Accountability software like this has helped tens of thousands of people to avoid online temptations. Removing the secrecy of where we go online changes how we surf the Web.

For our existing Members, this new app is a free service. Just use your existing username and password to run it. To become a Member visit CovenantEyes.com and sign up.

Please, look at our user guide for more information about how to use this app most effectively.

1) Our time controls will now work properly for our Filter users (imagine that). If someone is limited to using the Internet for an hour and they use it for an hour, Covenant Eyes will cut them off.

2) When your computer goes into hibernate, it used to put a message in the “Unusual Activity” log of the Accountability Report. This has been fixed.

3) The “Can’t Connect to Filter Server” message should happen much less frequently.

Go to our Web page for download instructions.

If you have any questions about these updates, or any questions about our software in general, do not hesitate to call or email us.

This new version includes some nice extras, but the most exciting change is “title reporting.” In this new version, when you go to the detailed browsing log of your accountability report you’ll see a drop-down menu like this:

If you select “Only show pages with titles” you’ll see something like this in the logs:

Notice the titles in bold text.

What we’re doing is isolating all the Web addresses with a title and then telling you what that title is. This makes it much easier to tell which Web pages were actually clicked on, rather than seeing every single address for every part of every page. Generally speaking, if a URL has a title, it is a page the user actually visited by clicking on it. The titles will also give you a better idea about what is on that page.

There are some other nice features. There is now a “Troubleshooter”: when you go to the CE icon on your desktop you will be able to click the troubleshooter to determine the cause of network connection problems. We’ve also cleared up some clashes with iTunes which were causing some problems.

If you are interested in helping us test this version of CE, fill out the survey!

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PS: We remind you this is a beta TEST, meaning we are still finding and working out potential kinks in the software. If you become a beta tester you’ll be one of the people helping us work out those kinks.

PPS: For those of you still wanting to help beta test our iPhone app, we are MAXED OUT. We thank you for being interested in helping, but please, please stop sending requests to be a beta tester. Apple only allows us 100 people to do this testing and we hit that limit long ago. The information in this post has changed since publication. The Covenant Eyes iPhone app is now available.

Covenant Eyes is currently looking for beta-testers for our new accountability application for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Covenant Eyes has been forging ahead to create a way for users of these devices to have the same level of accountability that our PC and Mac users enjoy.

If you are a current Covenant Eyes software user, have some technological savvy, and would like to help us test this new application, please email us. We’ll send you a brief questionaire and get back to you if you are selected to help us with the beta test.

Now you can download Covenant Eyes to any phone or PDA that uses Windows Mobile Standard or Professional, version 6.0 or later.

This program is Windows Mobile certified, and it works about the same way Covenant Eyes works on a PC: it runs as a background process, monitors where you go online, and then stores and categorizes your browsing information in our servers. All of this information will be compiled into easy-to-read accountability reports that are sent to a friend or a group of friends you choose.

An added note: this program disables the Opera Mini and Skyfire browsers. These browsers use secure proxies that we cannot monitor. In order to ensure complete and airtight Internet accountability, Covenant Eyes effectively blocks Opera Mini and Skyfire on Windows Mobile devices.

Learn more about why Internet accountability helps to people to avoid temptations online.

Why are we doing this? In short, better accountability. Now, accountability partners can have an even better picture of how the Internet is being used by the people they are holding accountable.

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Closing Another Door to Porn

Web browsers are not the only way to use the Internet to access pornography. File sharing, for example, is a very popular way to gain access to adult material. Networks or Protocols such as BitTorrent, Limewire, Napster, and eDonkey2000 are popular for file sharing. It is estimated that 35% of all peer-to-peer downloads are related to pornographic material.

Online games and chat programs can also be conduits for pornographic and mature material. For example, participants using Second Life, an online virtual reality environment, can engage in cybersex with other participants. Instant messenger programs such as Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, Skype, and Windows Live Messenger can be conduits for adult conversations and cyber-sexual relationships.

These programs do not use a Web browser, so they will not be given numerical scores like other parts of the accountability report. The report will not contain text conversations or show whether the programs were used to access adult material. What “Program Tracking” will do is give the Accountability Partner(s) a more complete picture of all the ways a user is accessing the Internet.

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Time Management

People are spending more time online than ever before. Internet now rivals TV for entertainment. A survey six years ago showed that one-third of teens, ages 15 to 17, spend at least 6 hours a week online. Today teens are spending an average of 11.5 hours per week online, doing everything from instant messaging and visiting social networking sites to shopping and listening to music.

Online games, for example, can sap a lot of time. If a Covenant Eyes user wants to be held accountable for how much time is spent playing these games, this new feature will enable someone to do just that.

This feature on the reports will also be very valuable for parents. Let’s say little Timmy comes home from school one day with a note from his teacher that says Timmy didn’t do his homework. Wait a minute . . . didn’t he spend 6 hours on his computer the other night? Why didn’t he get his homework done? You go to check his Covenant Eyes report and discover that instead he was playing World of Warcraft all evening.

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How It Works

The “Program Tracking” module on the accountability report will show what type of program it is, the filename, a program description (if available), and the duration of time the program was used. Some programs may fit into multiple categories but will appear in the category that most closely matches up with their purpose. Covenant Eyes is striving to categorize all applications that access the Internet, but new ones are constantly being developed.

If you are looking at an accountability report and don’t recognize a specific program or filename, there are several websites that you can use. We recommend using ProcessLibrary.com or TaskList.org. Simply go to one of these sites and type in the application name or executable filename in the search box and click “Find,” “Go,” or “Search.”

Why is this a cool thing? Well, if you are an accountability partner for CE member, you are probably quite use to seeing web addresses like this:

http://plainfield.craigslist.org/cas/2115644061.html

Let’s say this is one of the high-scoring urls on your report. The report further tells you that the url was accessed on April 6 at 2:34am, and that the score on that url was 64 (a pretty high score). What if this url appeared on a report? How can you know why this page received such a high score? Sure, you could go to the page yourself, but what if it’s something you don’t want to see? Furthermore, how can you be sure your partner clicked on this url? It may have just been an image, a link, or a banner ad that was on an otherwise benign page.

On the new report you’ll see this instead:

lookin for a sexy black MAN
http://plainfield.craigslist.org/cas/2115644061.html

Now this is a little more revealing. This new feature tells you the title that appears in the web browser for this url. This title gives you a much better idea about what’s on that page. Furthermore, the fact that this url has a title tells you that your partner did in fact click on this url.

Be looking for title reporting on our newest version of Covenant Eyes software for the PC!

The good news is, we have now fixed this issue. If you’ve been experiencing this issue, and in your next report you still see it, let us know!

If you have any other feedback, we do love to hear it. Feel free to post it to the Covenant Eyes Get Satisfaction page.

This is a very important consideration at Covenant Eyes because, if we have a failure at some point in our systems, it may cause an ‘Internet Outage’ for our customers.

This past Saturday we had a failure that caused an outage for our filter users – less than an hour, which was caused by a failure in one of our power supplies. I won’t bore you with all the gory details, but some background is appropriate here. . . .

We have power supplies that are designed to carry us through short periods of power outages (we also have a huge generator to run all of our computers for days if needed). In addition to these power supplies, we have backup power supplies in case the primary supplies fail (we eliminate single points of failure wherever we can). So on Saturday evening, when the primary supply failed, the backup kicked in the way it was supposed to. Soon after the failover to the backup occurred, it overloaded because of the increased demand placed on it–and so it too failed. This caused our computers to stop running (which usually happens when you pull the power plug on your computer).

We have system monitoring tools in place that notified us immediately, and our tech team was on the spot within minutes to find out what caused the failure. We moved the power cords to a spare power supply and brought the servers up immediately. Because of the sudden nature in which the servers went down (due to lack of power), they took a while to come back up. During this slow startup period, our filter users were still unable to use the Internet.

Why am I telling you all of this? Several reasons, I guess.

First, so that you will know that we take outages very seriously here. We have built in redundancy as much as possible in all of our hardware systems. We have also designed our database and server software to be fault tolerant and to work correctly–even if some of our computers are down (which by the way happens very rarely).

Second, to let you know that when outages occur we learn from them. Monday morning we sat down as a team and went through the sequence of events to figure out how to prevent the same thing from ever occurring again. We are already working with our Dell representative to get some newer and more powerful power supplies as quickly as possible. We also have designed a way for the filter to function (properly) even when one of our database servers is down.

Finally, to let you know that we do not take your business for granted. The technology team continues to look for ways to improve our accountability and filter software, the web site and accountability reports, as well as our server systems and our network infrastructure.

The adult industry is constantly riding the wave of new technologies. Whenever technology can make pornography more accessible, affordable, or anonymous for consumers, the adult industry goes to great lengths to leverage that new technology. And what is the latest craze among pornographers?

The iPhone.

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Mobile Porn

“Pocket porn” is becoming more and more common in North America. Now with mobile and hand-held devices, pornography can be viewed nearly anywhere. Three years ago, when Sony came out with Playstation Portable, the adult market began offering pornographic downloads for it. That same year a leading porn production house signed a deal with Brickhouse Mobile, with the hopes of bringing their film clips to cell phone users.

Until recently pocket porn wasn’t much more than still images and chat services, but now the video ingenuity of the iPhone allows short video clips to be viewed. The new iPhone3G has been out for two months, and there is no doubt it is an impressive piece of technology: nice, big screen, user-friendly, and its miniaturized version of Safari software streamlines the Internet surfing process. Adult content producers at the last Adult Video News (AVN) convention said the iPhone is the “perfect vehicle” for bringing mobile porn to America. Devan Cypher, representative for Sin City Entertainment, says, “It’s by far the porn-friendliest phone.”

The adult industry has begun heavily investing in mobile porn specifically for the iPhone. Farley Cahen, vice president of AVN Media Network, reports that there are “a few hundred iPhone porn sites now in use.”

How big is mobile porn going to get? According to Juniper Research, the international market for mobile adult content reached $1.7 billion in 2007. By 2009 they expect that figure to reach $2.1 billion, and $4.6 billion by 2012.

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What is Covenant Eyes doing?

Many Covenant Eyes Members are looking to purchase an iPhone, but they would like the same level of accountability and/or filtering that they enjoy on their home computers.

The Covenant Eyes staff has been considering an iPhone accountability system (based on our Mac accountability software) for several months now. In theory, creating something for the iPhone would be simple on our end, but in order to do it Apple would need to give us support to use their interface and access the background processes of the iPhone. Currently Apple does not provide these interfaces. So, that leaves us trying to come up with an alternate means of accountability for iPhone users. This month we are beginning to pursue these alternatives, but nothing is definitive yet.

We are, however, currently testing a Cell Phone/PDA version of our accountability software that uses Windows Mobile 6 software. About nine months ago, Covenant Eyes asked its Members what they wanted most: this ranked at the top of the list. Covenant Eyes for Windows Mobile is now available.

So, if you are planning on buying a PDA or cell phone, you may want to consider a Windows Mobile 6 device. Several new devices from Samsung, HTC, AT&T, T-Mobile and others are now available and handy video introductions are available (click here and here to see what’s available).

(If you are a Covenant Eyes Member, and if you have any technical expertise and want to provide us with feedback, please help us with our Windows Mobile BETA test in October. If you are interested please send email to wmbeta@covenanteyes.com.)

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Praise For and Concern about the iPhone

Just a couple weeks ago I was out on a pontoon boat with some of my family watching them try to catch fish. They didn’t have much luck until one of them pulled out their iPhone and used the GPS feature. Seeing where other fishing boats had been, they “marked” locations on the lake on the GPS and returned to those spots later on. Yes, we used an iPhone to catch fish.

New technology can be revolutionary. Just when you think we’ve reached a pinnacle of advancement, you haven’t seen anything yet! Products like the iPhone will likely set a new standard of computing. Steve Hewitt, Editor‐in‐Chief of Christian Computing Magazine, writes:

I think I purchased my first cell phone back in 1995. Over the years they have become smaller, improved connections, developed better networks with clearer signals and added features such as text messaging, cameras, and MP3 players. But now the wireless cell phone companies will be taking a back seat. They will become like the Dells and HPs and Macs. It will be the software and applications running on the machines that will matter, taking advantage of the new hardware features such as the multi‐touch screen, GPS, etc. and now that two leading “computer” companies like Apple and Google are in the business, look out.

This being said, with great power comes great responsibility (thank you, Spiderman). Many want the perks of the iPhone without the accountability of how it is used.

If you still plan on purchasing an iPhone but don’t want to have unmonitored Internet access, you may want to remove the Internet icon from the screen. You can remove the icon from the phone under the “parental controls” section in the options tab. The Internet will then be guarded by a four digit password. If you already have an accountability partner, ask him/her to hold that password for you. You will still be able to use the other features on the phone such as iTunes, email, weather, etc.

It isn’t fool-proof, but then what is?

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Got a Question?

Breaking Free will be tackling a frequently asked question about Covenant Eyes and our software every Friday. If you have any questions for Covenant Eyes, please email me at luke.gilkerson@covenanteyes.com, or post a reply to any of these blog posts. I’ll prioritize and try to answer the questions as they come in.