About website categories

By selecting Inappropriate Website Control, you can configure 14 website categories, controlling the internet content that users can access through a web browser. For more information, see Inappropriate Website Control.

The website categories described below are filtered. The default action for each category is indicated in brackets. Each category can be configured as Block, Warn, or Allow. Selecting Allow gives users access to all sites within that category. To change the action, see Select a website category action.

  • Adult Sexually Explicit (Block): This category includes sites for adult products including sex toys, CD-ROMs, and videos; child pornography and pedophilia (including the IWF list); adult services including video-conferencing, escort services, and strip clubs; erotic stories and textual descriptions of sexual acts; explicit cartoons and animation; online groups, including newsgroups and forums that are sexually explicit in nature; sexually-oriented or erotic sites with full or partial nudity; depictions or images of sexual acts, including with animals or inanimate objects used in a sexual manner; sexually exploitive or sexually violent text or graphics; bondage, fetishes, genital piercing; naturist sites that feature nudity; and erotic or fetish photography that depicts nudity.
    Note We do not include sites regarding sexual health, breast cancer, or sexually transmitted diseases (except those with graphic examples).
  • Alcohol and Tobacco (Warn): This category includes sites that promote or distribute alcohol or tobacco products for free or for a charge.
  • Anonymizer Proxies (Block): This category includes sites for remote proxies or anonymous surfing, search engine caches that circumvent filtering, and web-based translation sites that circumvent filtering.
  • Criminal Activity (Block): This category includes sites for advocating, instructing, or giving advice on performing illegal acts; tips on evading law enforcement; and lock-picking and burglary techniques.
  • Gambling (Warn): This category includes sites of online gambling or lottery websites that invite the use of real or virtual money; information or advice for placing wagers, participating in lotteries, gambling, or running numbers; virtual casinos and offshore gambling ventures; sports picks and betting pools; and virtual sports and fantasy leagues that offer large rewards or request significant wagers.
  • Hacking (Block): This category includes sites for the promotion, instruction, or advice on the questionable or illegal use of equipment and software for purpose of hacking passwords, creating viruses, gaining access to other computers and computerized communication systems; sites that provide instruction or work-arounds for filtering software; cracked software and information sites; warez; pirated software and multimedia download sites; and computer crime sites.
  • Illegal Drugs (Block): This category includes sites for recipes, instructions or kits for manufacturing or growing illicit substances for purposes other than industrial usage; glamorizing, encouraging, or instructing on the use of or masking the use of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, or other substances that are illegal to minors; information on "legal highs", including glue sniffing, misuse of prescription drugs, or abuse of other legal substances; distributing illegal drugs free or for a charge; and displaying, selling, or detailing the use of drug paraphernalia.
  • Intolerance and Hate (Block): This category includes sites that advocate or incite degradation or attack of specified populations or institutions based on associations such as religion, race, nationality, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation; sites that promote a political or social agenda that is supremacist in nature and exclusionary of others based on their race, religion, nationality, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation; holocaust revisionist or denial sites and other revisionist sites that encourage hate; coercion or recruitment for membership in a gang1 or cult 2; militancy and extremist sites; and flagrantly insensitive or offensive material, including those with a lack of recognition or respect for opposing opinions and beliefs.
    Note We do not include news, historical, or press incidents that may include the above criteria (except in graphic examples).

    1A gang is defined as a group whose primary activities are the commission of felonious criminal acts, which has a common name or identifying sign or symbol, and whose members individually or collectively engage in criminal activity in the name of the group.

    2 A cult is defined as a group whose followers have been deceptively and manipulatively recruited and retained through undue influence such that followers' personalities and behavior are altered; a group in which leadership is all-powerful, ideology is totalistic, and the will of the individual is subordinate to the group; and a group that sets itself outside of society.

  • Phishing and Fraud (Block): This category includes sites involved in phishing and telephone scams, service theft advice sites, and plagiarism and cheating sites, including the sale of research papers.
  • Spam URLs (Block): This category includes URLs found in spam, particularly on these topics: computing, finance and stocks, entertainment, games, health and medicine, humor and novelties, personal and dating, products and services, shopping, and travel.
  • Spyware (Block): This category includes sites that provide or promote information gathering or tracking that is unknown to, or done without the explicit consent of, the end user or the organization, including sites that carry malicious executables or viruses, third party monitoring, and other unsolicited commercial software, spyware, and malware "phone home" destinations.
  • Tasteless and Offensive (Warn): This category includes sites that feature offensive or violent language, including through jokes, comics, or satire, and excessive use of profanity or obscene gesticulation.
  • Violence (Warn): This category includes sites portraying, describing or advocating physical assault against humans, animals, or institutions; depicting torture, mutilation, gore, or horrific death; advocating, encouraging, or depicting self-endangerment, or suicide, including through eating disorders or addictions; instructions, recipes, or kits for making bombs or other harmful or destructive devices; sites promoting terrorism; and excessively violent sports or games, including videos and online games.
    Note We do not block news, historical, or press incidents that may include the above criteria, except those that include graphic examples.
  • Weapons (Warn): This category includes sites with online purchasing or ordering information, including lists of prices and dealer locations; any page or site predominantly containing, or providing links to, content related to the sale of guns, weapons, ammunition or poisonous substances; displaying or detailing the use of guns, weapons, ammunition or poisonous substances; and clubs which offer training on machine guns, automatics, other assault weapons, and sniper training.
    Note Weapons are defined as something (as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat, or destroy.