ICRA ADDS THE HUMAN TOUCH TO INCREASE INTERNET SAFETY Launches world’s first review service to check accuracy of website labelling

Today the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) stepped up its campaign to help make the Internet a safer place for children and families, with the launch of ICRAchecked, the world’s first independent validation service for websites that self-label with ICRA.

This unique service, which is underpinned by Solarsoft’s advanced Surf™ content management system, provides a professional, human check which examines the accuracy of a website’s ICRA label against the content present on the site on a given review date. In addition, it offers webmasters the first of a range of new services that include Label Assist, where ICRA reviews the site, then creates and hosts the label. This minimises the work required by the webmaster and also means that the site is automatically included in the ICRAchecked database.

The ICRAchecked database will be made available to search engines that request it, giving them access to a verified list of labelled websites for the very first time. This will allow them to offer end-users extra information in their search results, by indicating whether a site is correctly labelled, adding another layer of trust for those using the Internet.

This is beneficial to both Internet users, as it means that they can make a better informed choice about which sites they look at, and to website owners, because it has the potential to make their sites more visible in search results.

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Stephen Balkam, CEO at ICRA said: “We have the world’s number one self-labelling system, with more than 200,000 sites already labelled with ICRA, but we wanted to take that a stage further. We still believe that the best people to label content are the ones who created it but, as the amount of content uploaded to the Internet increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to know what sites contain, even if they’re labelled. As a result, users are increasingly looking for assurances that sites are what they say they are before they access them – that’s what ICRAchecked gives them.”

Dave Miles, Business Development VP at Solarsoft said: “Self-labelling is critical, but we realise that labels are not always an accurate reflection of the content. That’s why we’ve worked closely with the ICRA team and provide our proven content management system to underpin ICRA Pad™, the bespoke multi-engine platform that allows ICRA to provide this new range of professional services.”

For more information about ICRAchecked, please go to http://checked.icra.org.

About Solarsoft
Solarsoft is a leading provider of technologies and solutions designed to make the Internet a safer place. Surf™ is the first of a completely new generation of personal browsers which in conjunction with a wider range of patented content management products, are set to redefine the way people use the Internet. For more information go to www.surfonthenet.com.

About the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA)
ICRA is an international, non-profit membership organization with offices in the United States and the United Kingdom, along with representatives in both Germany and Spain. ICRA's members include AOL, AT&T, British Telecom, CompTIA, GSM Association, Solarsoft, Microsoft and Verizon. More than 100,000 Web sites worldwide have already self-labelled, including such brand names as MSN, AOL, Yahoo, T-Online and Hustler, representing millions of Web pages. For more information go to www.icra.org.