A structural and content‐based analysis for Web filtering

With the proliferation of objectionable materials (e.g. pornography, violence, drugs, etc.) available on the WWW, there is an urgent need for effective countermeasures to protect children and other unsuspecting users from exposure to such materials. Using pornographic Web pages as a case study, this paper presents a thorough analysis of the distinguishing features of such Web pages. The objective of the study is to gain knowledge on the structure and characteristics of typical pornographic Web pages so that effective Web filtering techniques can be developed to filter them automatically. In this paper, we first survey the existing techniques for Web content filtering. A study on the characteristics of pornographic Web pages is then presented. The implementation of a Web content filtering system that combines the use of an artificial neural network and the knowledge gained in the analysis of pornographic Web pages is also given.