Porn-Detecting Stick Sniffs Out Computer Smut

A new device marketed as a porn detection stick claims to be able to identify pornographic images on a computer hard drive. Paraben's latest gadget searches “through all the images on your computer, scan(s) them for pornographic content, and create(s) a report of suspected pornographic images.”

The company website describes the USB gadget: “The Porn Detection Stick uses advanced image analyzing algorithms that categorize images as potentially harmful by identifying facial features, flesh tone colors, image back grounds, body part shapes, and more.”

Paraben describes the portable device as fast and reliable and estimates that a 500 GB hard drive that stores 70 000 images takes about one and half hours to scan. The search also recognizes deleted images so a quick dump to the recycling bin will not escape this stick's hunt for sexy photos.

The good news for those who enjoy erotic (or educational) videos is that the $99.00 thumb drive does not identify video and users who get “caught” with inappropriate images can always blame it on the device’s 1 percent false positive rates.

Comments

What BS

by David Kimball (not verified) on March 4th, 2010 at 6:04am.

I am a computer programmer and I know that this is BS. They are touting this because they know there will be a big market for all the parents concerned about their kids. The market is there, but the product isn't. But they want to be the first with the product so they're touting it as workable. I would love to see it operating because until then, I won't believe it.