Most of the information on the Net is perfectly innocent, though some material is not suitable for everyone.  To access such material you usually have to actively decide to go looking for it. Still, parents have legitimate concerns about online safety, particularly in regard to young children.

Some parents decide to supervise access to the Internet, as they would control access to certain magazines or TV programs. Microsoft^® Internet Explorer comes equipped with technology that can help you do this. The Content Advisor feature allows supervising adults to set access to Web sites based on industry-standard ratings of the site's content. The system automatically screens out inappropriate material, allowing access to the site only via a password set by the parent or supervisor. See Screening out inappropriate material with Content Advisor to learn how.

Content Advisor rates pages for language, nudity, sex, and violence. In each of these categories, a supervisor can separately set the criteria for viewing pages on a sliding scale. The default ratings are based upon a voluntary, self-disclosure rating system developed by the Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet (RSACi), an independent, nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

Because Web site owners must voluntarily submit their pages for rating, many pages may be unrated. You can set Content Advisor to automatically deny access to unrated pages.