*Do not remove the stick from your computer while the program is running.

General Questions:

How does it work?
Paraben's Porn Detection Stick can scan an entire hard drive or specific folders you chose for all images and videos. Using different algorithms that look at things such as flesh tones, shapes, facial recognition, and more, it determines if each image is likely to be pornographic in nature. If an image is suspected of being illicit, it copies and categorizes them into folders in the report called "Suspect" or "Highly Suspect".

Is it 100% accurate?
Nothing is 100% accurate when it comes to scanning for pornography. The Porn Detection Stick is designed to make your investigation quick and easy. A typical home system can contain anywhere from 10,000 images to hundreds of thousands of images. The Porn Detection Stick is designed to analyze all these images and tell you which ones are most likely to contain pornography. Typically, out of 50,000 images scanned, the Porn Detection Stick will determine that around 350 images may contain pornography on a clean system. Viewing these 350 "false positive" images is very easy compared to the 50,000 images on the system.

I can't update my stick, why?
If you're having problems updating your Porn Detection Stick, follow the instructions on the Porn Detection Stick Updater page.

There are a number of images in the "Suspect" and "Highly Suspect" folders but none of them are pornographic. Why?
Images that are determined to be suspect can easily be a false positive hit. This means there are elements in the image that triggered enough suspicion for it to be categorized as suspicious. You'll notice many of these pictures are of people who have a larger amount of skin showing (pictures of babies often get marked as suspicious) or contain a lot of flesh tone color (a picture of a cardboard box may be marked as a false positive) or even have round or elongated shapes (pictures of fruit often get marked as suspicious). Sometimes it's not obvious why an image is marked as a false positive.

The Porn Detection Stick can also miss some pornographic images. These misses are a small percentage of overall pornographic images. The thing to remember is that if someone is viewing pornography, there will generally be a large number of images marked as suspicious even if a few get past the scan.

My Virus Scan Picks the Porn Detection Stick up as a Virus. Why?
The Porn Detection Stick has an option to remember the computer and to run automatically the next time you plug the stick in eliminating the need to log in and launch the program. Anti-virus programs do not like this behavior. If you anti-virus picks up the PornDetectionStick.exe file as a virus or trojan, do not allow it to quarantine or delete this file. If it has already deleted this file from your stick, you will not be able to run the stick until you submit a support ticket.

What image formats does the Porn Detection Support?
The Porn Detection Stick finds much more than just *.jpg images. It scans the following types of images: PNG, TIFF, GIF, TGA, BMP, WBMP, and PCX. It also supports videos in the following formats: ASF, AVI, DV video, Flash (SWF), Flash 9 (AVM2), FLI/FLC/FLX animation, Flash Video (FLV), Matroska, MOV/QuickTime/MP4, MPEG-1 System, MPEG-PS (program stream), MPEG-TS (transport stream), MPEG-4, Ogg, raw H.264, raw MPEG, raw MPEG-1, raw MPEG-2, raw MPEG-4, RealMedia, WebM

How fast does it work?
That depends on a number of factors such as computer speed, the size of the drive/folders being scanned, and the size of the images. Scanning of an average computer with a 500 GB hard drive and over 70,000 images took just over an hour and a half in testing and resulted in only about 400 results in suspect or highly suspect that needed to be reviewed. Video scanning will slow these results down. The user can set how often to scan frames in videos which will affect the scanning time.

Do I need the password of the computer I'm scanning for pornography?
Yes, for the first scan. You will need to be logged into the system you are investigating the first time you use the Porn Detection Stick to scan for pornography. By clicking the "Remember This Computer" the first time you run a scan on a computer, you will be able to simply plug the stick into the computer in the future and it will automatically run a scan. If you plan on using the "Remember This Computer" option, you will need to be logged in as Admin.

Does the Porn Detection Stick prevent pornographic material from getting on my computer?
No. The Porn Detection Stick was designed as an investigative tool only. Porn filters and other preventative measures can always fail. The Porn Detection Stick simply analyzes all the images on a system so you can identify illicit images and remove them.

Can't I just search my computer for *.jpg and find all the images?
No. There are many file formats for images. Images can also be deleted or stored in Internet browser cache files. The Porn Detection Stick finds all of the most popular image formats, recovers deleted images, and parses out images from Internet cache files. Images and videos file names can be changed so they don't appear as .jpg files or video formats, however, the Porn Detection Stick isn't fooled by changing the file name. Besides, many machines contain tens of thousands of images. Manually viewing each of them is a daunting task.

There are multiple folders in when I open reports. Which one is my search results?
Each report is saved under a folder named with the time the search started (i.e. 2009-10-29 22-54-51 for a search that was started October 29, 2009 at 10:54:51 PM). You can keep as many reports on your stick as room will allow. Keep in mind that there is a limited amount of space on the Porn Detection Stick so clear your reports regularly.

What does "Remember This Computer" do?
The first time you insert the Porn Detection Stick into a new computer, you will need to manually navigate to the drive (most times, Windows will simply ask if you want to open the root folder of the thumb drive) and double-click on the Porn Detection Stick software to run it. If you click the "Remember This Computer" button, you will no longer have to manually launch the Porn Detection Stick software each time you want to scan this computer (even if there is a password on the system). The Porn Detection Stick thumb drive will be recognized by the system and allowed to automatically run the software and a scan will automatically start as well (it may take a minute on some systems for the software to open).

Is the Porn Detection Stick considered spyware?
No. Spyware is software that is either installed on a system unknowingly to the user or software that gathers and sends information over the Internet without the user's knowledge. The Porn Detection Stick is an investigation tool that simply detects the presence of pornography on a computer.

It says there are "Suspect" images. Does this mean there's porn on my computer?
Not necessarily. Suspect and Highly Suspect images are likely to be pornographic in nature, however, there are always going to be false positives. Even some standard Windows images have enough features to be marked as suspicious. Typically, less than 0.07% of images will be false positives when compared to the overall number of images on a system.

The Porn Detection Stick found a handful of pornographic images. Does this mean my kids have been surfing porn?
It is important to realize that even accidental exposure to pornographic images online can leave an image trail on a computer. If you discover only a few pornographic images, it's not likely the user has been viewing pornography. It is important to use this as a warning to talk with your kids and teach them where they should and should not go on the internet.

Can I scan other thumb drives and media cards?
Yes. Simply insert any type of media that will mount as a drive on the computer before running the Porn Detection Stick and select that drive letter before clicking start. This means you can search memory sticks from cameras, cell phones, or larger capacity portable storage devices.

How do I view the images suspected of being pornographic?
Once a scan is complete, click on the "Reports" button. This will open the reports viewer. Click on the report you wish to view. From here, you can highlight any thumbnail you want to view, delete images, or see the path where they are stored on the computer.

After a Scan, I get an error when trying to delete the images. Why?
The most likely reason is that you have removed the Porn Detection Stick from the original computer and are running it on a different machine. The Porn Detection Stick cannot delete images if it isn't connected to the computer associated with the report. Another reason may be that the image has already been deleted.

I see files in the "Suspect" and "Highly Suspect" folders that don't open. Why?
Because the Porn Detection Stick is designed by a digital forensic company specializing in digital investigations, images are searched by the file header rather than file extensions. Also, many image formats may need to be viewed in the program that created them (such as Photoshop images).

These files that can't be viewed are images of some type and are usually simply missing their file extension or have the wrong file extension. Most of the time, you can try changing the file extension to one of the following: *.jpg, *.gif, *.bmp, *.tiff, or *.png.

Can the Porn Detection Stick find pornographic content in videos?
Yes, the Porn Detection Stick now supports videos. If you have an old version, you can simply update the software on your stick and you'll be scanning for illicit images in videos in no time.

I accidentally deleted all the files on the Porn Detection Stick. What do I do now?
The PornDetectionStick.exe file is necessary for the Porn Detection Stick to work properly. The Run folder is a hidden folder that contains essential files as well. Do not delete these files. Do not format the Porn Detection Stick. If you accidentally delete the PornDetectionStick.exe file, contact support at http://support.paraben.com and we'll send you a replacement file that will work for your stick. If you accidentally format your drive or you delete the hidden folder called Run, you will need to send in the Porn Detection Stick to Paraben with return postage and we'll reassign the files and send it back to you.

Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7