Web Police Porn Pedlars License Only $50 a Year!

The International Web Police now offer X-Rated Certification for web sites at only $50 per year. This scheme was formerly offered on their Scamwatch.Com site for only $25 a year. I am of the opinion that this has all the ingredients of another of their ill conceived get rich quick schemes.

It appears that the International Web Police will now be cruising pornographic sites apparently with the attention of assuring the visitor that it does carry "as claimed" content. This sounds like they verify that it is real pornography? although it does sound like the kind of activity any organization this bereft of morals might engage in. I only hope that they do not engage their child members in the activity of checking any of these sites they intend to certificate!

"Upon applying for a X-Rated Certificate, a team of Web Police Officers will be assigned to thoroughly inspect your site. It is not their purpose to judge your websites purpose or content, they only verify that you meet the requirements for this type of certification."

I'm sure they will *thoroughly* inspect it. Anybody think that this might be a get your pornography for free and make a quick $50 scam? Somehow it just seems like the kind of thing they might do though.

"Certification is a thorough and time consuming process. Depending on the many factors involved, this process may take from 1 day up to several weeks to complete, Please be patient. You will be notified immediately upon completion of the review of your site."

I'm sure it is! I imagine that it largely depends on how long it takes to view every movie and picture on the site in question. It would take a normal individual all of about 10 seconds to determine if a site contains pornography or not but now they need to verify that each piece of content really is pornography? Who are they trying to kid? I'm sure much time from many Web Police Officers would be dedicated to this new thorough checking process. It is absolutely hilarious that it might take a whole team of Web Police Officers upto several weeks to browse their way through a pornographic site and verify its content for $50.

Strangely enough they will probably not even see why I might choose to question or ridicule their motives or morals for a scheme such as this. I think anybody with a grain of decency and common sense might agree that their latest scheme will gain them little credibility anywhere.

You can read the full details HERE for yourself.

Many long established organizations such as ICRA http://www.icra.org provide certification or meta tags for adult sites FREE of charge and have long been established as the industry standard. Content filtering software such as NetNanny or other similar programs which can be found HERE recognises these tags and filters this type of X-Rated content.

If there is an opportunity to make a quick buck out of the unwary public or those that want to protect their safety you can almost bet that InterGOV will have an amateur scheme for it and their hands held out for money. I thought that ALL of their services were FREE? Their main page states:

"This is a not-for-profit organization that offers its services to you for free.
The costs of providing these services to YOU is paid for solely by your donations."

Their certification page states:

"X-Rated Website Certification requires a minimum donation of $50.00 per year."

So it's FREE but not FREE all at the same time? So in effect to obtain a FREE service you have to make a donation of at least $50, isn't that just the same as saying that it is NOT FREE and costs $50? Does this sound like a donate $50 and get a FREE bible anyone?

It never ceases to amaze me what stunts they will come up with next. They can enforce this certification how? It is just an image that anyone can copy and link locally on their own web site without having to pay them a single dime. Below is a demonstration of how easy it is to bypass the trivial security for their certificates. Anybody of average computer skills or above would be able to find the path to the image below.

Anyone can view a copy at http://web-police.org/public_safety/site_certification/certificates/Certificate%20Images/Rated-X_Cert_.png

Their source code is protected by a trivial java script which attempts to stop people right clicking to copy text or save images. All that is required is to highlight the text and to press Ctrl + c to copy the text to the clipboard and voila the trivial script is redundant. Alternatively clicking on View >> Source will open will display the source in notepad to find the image name and path, where you will also see the below trivial java script intended to protect their code from prying eyes.

<script language="JavaScript">

<!--

var message="WARNING !, All pages on this site are copyrighted (c).\nAll HTML code, images, text and contents of this web site are protected by International copyright laws and are the property of InterGOV International. Do not attempt to steal or copy them.!\nCopyright (C) 1986-2002 InterGOV International. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED";

// Don't edit below!

function click(e) {
if (document.all) {
if (event.button == 2) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
if (document.layers) {
if (e.which == 3) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}
if (document.layers) {
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
}
document.onmousedown=click;
// -->

</script>

<script language="JavaScript">

<!--
function mouseDown(e) {
if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion)>3) {
var clickType=1;
if (navigator.appName=="Netscape") clickType=e.which;
else clickType=event.button;
if (clickType!=1) {
alert("Copyright (c) 2000 InterGOV International \nAll HTML code and images contained within are the property of InterGOV International. Do not attempt to steal or copy them.");
}
}
return true;
}
if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion)>3) {
document.onmousedown = mouseDown;
if (navigator.appName=="Netscape")
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
}
//-->

</script>

Maybe these people have never heard of encrypted or compressed html if they really want to hide the contents of their MS Frontpage source code from people?

So in effect the security surrounding their so called certification is at best weak and at worst innefective at stopping anybody from hotlinking to their certificates or just saving a copy to their drive and uploading it to their web site. In my opinion if you simply made your own image, it would carry more credibility than anything backed up by the International Web Police.

Their is also apparently no secure server authentification for these certificates and as such they are absolutely worthless because anybody can help themselves to one. If these are linked locally they have absolutely no way of tracking who is using them or for how long. It would appear to me that they are trying re-invent the square wheel and it seeminly obvious that collecting money appears to be more important than the security aspect to verify exactly who is using these certificates.

Considering that all these individuals supposedly receive cutting edge training in the latest technologies and investigate high tech criminals, terrorists and whatever else, one would think that they would be able to achieve a simple server side secure authentification scheme? Apparently their incompetence has reached a new level.

I have contacted a few organizations about these certificates where the enquiry about how valid or useful these certificates might be were met with much derision or laughter. I would most certainly advise anybody that maintains or is starting an adult site to visit ICRA or one of the many adult webmasters resources before wasting $50 + on a worthless certificate that content filtering software might not even notice unless it had proper recognised tags.