from www.news.cnet.com – Porn lovers or those who, you know, just read the articles, might want to take notice: a device from Paraben can be plugged into a computer’s USB port and detect pornographic images on a hard drive.
Paraben

The Porn Detection Stick is an interesting–and for some, worrisome–device. A porn investigator can pick up this handy device for about $100, plug it into the USB drive of any Windows-based PC, and run the Porn Detection program.

The software searches the hard drive using “advanced image analyzing algorithms that categorize images as potentially harmful by identifying facial features, flesh tone colors, image backgrounds, body part shapes, and more” to detect all pornographic images on the hard drive. Worse of all for those of us, er, you, who delete those images from the hard drive: Paraben’s stick will find those too.

Now, before you start searching your friends’ computers, beware that it takes a little while to complete a search. Paraben says that a 500GB hard drive containing 70,000 images will take an hour and a half to be fully searched. In other words, make sure your subject is at work before you let the Porn Detection Stick do its job. The company claims the device has a 1 percent false-positive rate.

For those who are a little worried by the Porn Detection Stick, you might not need to be. Finding 99 percent of porn on your computer sounds like a stretch. Plus, the device doesn’t search for video, so any of those, uh, educational clips on your computer won’t be detected.

Paraben’s Porn Detection Stick is available for purchase online for $99.99.