14 DAY TRIAL // The Japanese giant SoftBank Mobile has announced the soon to be here implementation of their Yahoo Kids content filter option, as a result of the increasing concern that clients under 18 of age may access adult related content. As the announcement states, the "Web use limitation" is a function designed to limit the access to specific URLs that are selected from the net star Ltd.'s list classification standard.
There are many categories included in this and they are: unlawfulness, adult (logical choices), meeting (why has this been added?), gambling, grotesqueness (again logical) and the occult. While there are some, as I noted, that are musts for the addition they are to be going through, the "occult" and "meeting" categories may rise some questions because of the wideness of the terms.
The agreement between the company and the users will be revised as of the next days, and paying attention to this option is compulsory; if there's no specification whether the parental authority signing the contract opts for Yahoo Kids or against, the application will not be received. "For existing under 18 customers an sms campaign will begin in February to determine access options and the company appears to have tied permission rights for new content site subscriptions to the updated completion by parents of the so-called 'Web use limitation' contract", Marcus Evans notes for Wireless Watch Japan.
The adding of this option is of course welcomed and it is long been awaited, at that. Because it is inforced by SoftBank, it is pretty likely to be an item to catch on with most of the mobile carriers (SoftBank has acquired Vodafone Japan on the 17th of March, 2006, and changed its mobile brand name and its mobile phone domain name to SoftBank Mobile on the 1st of October of the same year.)