Powered by technology used for years by law enforcement agencies around the world, the Porn Detection Stick uses a complex series of algorithms to analyze flesh tones, shapes and curvatures, face detection, body part separation, and more to alert you to images likely to contain pornographic material. Insert the Porn Detection Stick into any Windows computer's USB port and find current, hidden and deleted pornographic images & videos.
How To Use
Traditionally, there have been two different approaches to detecting pornographic content. The first approach is to simply determine if an image has too much flesh tones in it. The second approach is to comprise a database of file hashes (a digital signature) of known pornographic images. The first approach often results in too many false positive matches and leaves a number of pornographic images undetected because only one aspect of the images is used to determine if it is pornographic. The second approach is unrealistic in being able to create a comprehensive database due to the sheer number of pornographic images on the web. Even if they could catalogue all the images form the more than 420 million web pages that contain pornography according to Internet Filter Review, there's always new images being created. Besides this, anyone sharing personal pornographic images not available on commercial sites through e-mail, blogs, forums, or other online communities are not likely to be found by such methods.
The Porn Detection Stick has implemented a number of methods and algorithms to analyze each image to determine if it may be pornographic in nature. Image Cleanup - within virtual memory, the software cleans up the image for optimum analysis. Skin Detection - this identifies skin tones and texture within the image. Background Elimination - this eliminates background objects from foreground objects so background objects don't skew the results. Edge Detection - identifies the edges of objects. Body Part Separation - separates body parts into separate masses. Negative Curvature Rejection - eliminates objects with negative curves. Elimination - eliminates other objects. Face Detection - identifies faces within the image. Body Part Layout Decision - maps body part distribution and image layout. Decision - classifies image based on data.
Using this series of methods, the Porn Detection Stick is able to filter over 99% of non-pornographic images from a system leaving you with a fraction of the images on a computer to look at. A computer with a 500 GB hard drive was searched using the Porn Detection Stick. Within an hour and a half, the entire computer was searched and over 72,000 images were analysed producing only around 400 false positive results. That's less than 0.006%.
Whether you think someone is viewing pornography on your computer or whether you think your machine was exposed to pornography unwillingly or by accident, the Porn Detection Stick will help you quickly investigate your computer and help you determine if pornographic images are present.
Employers: Besides wasted time and resources, pornographic content on your company computers exposes you to legal risks as well as disgruntled employees.
Schools & Churches: Despite Internet filters, pornographic content can easily contaminate your organization's computers. Whether copied from flash drives or other media, downloaded from e-mail, or simply missed by your filter, unwanted illicit images should be found and eradicated.
Nothing is 100% accurate when it comes to scanning for pornography. The Porn Detection Stick is designed to make your investigation quick and easy. A typical home system can contain anywhere from 10,000 images to hundreds of thousands of images. The Porn Detection Stick is designed to analyze all these images and tell you which ones are most likely to contain pornography. Typically, out of 50,000 images scanned, the Porn Detection Stick will determine that around 350 images may contain pornography on a clean system. Viewing these 350 "false positive" images is very easy compared to the 50,000 images on the system.
There are a number of images in the "Suspect" and "Highly Suspect" folders but none of them are pornographic. Why?
Images that are determined to be suspect can easily be a false positive hit. This means there are elements in the image that triggered enough suspicion for it to be categorized as suspicious. You'll notice many of these pictures are of people who have a larger amount of skin showing (pictures of babies often get marked as suspicious) or contain a lot of flesh tones (a picture of a cardboard box may be marked as a false positive) or even have round or elongated shapes. Sometimes it's not obvious why an image is marked as a false positive.
The Porn Detection Stick can also miss some pornographic images. These misses are a small percentage of overall pornographic images. The thing to remember is that if someone is viewing pornography, there will generally be a large number of images marked as suspicious even if a few get past the scan.
That depends on a number of factors such as computer speed, the size of the drive/folders being scanned, and the size of the images. Scanning of an average computer with a 500 GB hard drive and over 70,000 images took just over an hour and a half in testing and resulted in only about 400 false positive results.
Yes, for the first scan. You will need to be logged into the system you are investigating the first time you use the Porn Detection Stick to scan for pornography. By clicking the "Remember This Computer" the first time you run a scan on a computer, you will be able to simply plug the stick into the computer in the future and it will automatically run a scan. If you plan on using the "Remember This Computer" option, you will need to be logged in as Admin.
No. The Porn Detection Stick was designed as an investigative tool only. Porn filters and other preventative measures can always fail. The Porn Detection Stick simply analyzes all the images on a system so you can identify illicit images and remove them.
This file is a report of all suspected images that includes the image location so you can delete any images you find offensive.
There are multiple folders in when I open reports. Which one is my search results?
Each report is saved under a folder named with the time the search started (i.e. 2009-10-29 22-54-51 for a search that was started October 29, 2009 at 10:54:51 PM). You can keep as many reports on your stick as room will allow. Keep in mind that there is a limited amount of space on the Porn Detection Stick so clear your reports regularly.
The first time you insert the Porn Detection Stick into a new computer, you will need to manually navigate to the drive (most times, Windows will simply ask if you want to open the root folder of the thumb drive) and double-click on the Porn Detection Stick software to run it. If you click the "Remember This Computer" button, you will no longer have to manually launch the Porn Detection Stick software each time you want to scan this computer (even if there is a password on the system). The Porn Detection Stick thumb drive will be recognized by the system and allowed to automatically run the software and a scan will automatically start as well (it may take a minute on some systems for the software to open).
No. Spyware is software that is either installed on a system unknowingly to the user or software that gathers and sends information over the Internet without the user's knowledge. The Porn Detection Stick is an investigation tool that simply detects the presence of pornography on a computer.
Not necessarily. Suspect and Highly Suspect images are likely to be pornographic in nature, however, there are always going to be false positives. Even some standard Windows images have enough features to be marked as suspicious. Typically, less than 0.007% of images will be false positives.
It is important to realize that even accidental exposure to pornographic images online can leave an image trail on a computer. If you discover only a few dozen pornographic images, it's not likely the user has been viewing pornography.
Yes. Simply insert any type of media that will mount as a drive on the computer before running the Porn Detection Stick and select that drive letter before clicking start. This means you can search memory sticks from cameras, cell phones, or larger capacity portable storage devices.
Once a scan is complete, click on the "Reports" button and open the report you wish to view. Open the "Suspect" or "Highly Suspect" folders and you'll see the images. If the images are not shown as thumbnails, you can change the view by clicking the "View" menu option and selecting "Thumbnails".
Because the Porn Detection Stick is designed by a digital forensic company specializing in digital investigations, images are searched by the file header rather than file extensions. This is geek speak for saying people can't hide their pornography by simply changing the file type.
These files that can't be viewed are images of some type and are usually simply missing their file extension or have the wrong file extension. Most of the time, you can try changing the file extension to one of the following: *.jpg, *.gif, *.bmp, *.tiff, *.png.
The PornDetectionStick.exe file is necessary for the Porn Detection Stick to work properly. The Run folder is a hidden folder that contains essential files as well. Do not delete these files. Do not format the Porn Detection Stick. If you accidently delete the PornDetectionStick.exe file, contact support at http://support.paraben.com and we'll send you a replacement file that will work for your stick. If you accidently format your drive or you delete the hidden folder called Run, you will need to send in the Porn Detection Stick to Paraben with return postage and we'll reassign the files and send it back to you.