Learning about and managing the Guard feature

Financial Services

Sites that provide or advertise banking services (online or offline) or other types of financial information, such as loans and insurance. Does not include sites that offer market information, brokerage or trading services.

Auctions

Sites that support the offering and purchasing of goods between individuals. Does not include classified sites or advertisements.

Shopping

Sites that provide or advertise the means to obtain goods or services. Includes sites that list prices or have a clear way to order merchandise and also includes retail shopping outlets, classified advertisements, price comparisons, hot deals, bargains, etc. Does not include sites that can be classified in other categories (such as vehicles or weapons).

Cult, occult, spirituality and belief

Sites that promote and provide information on a wide range of non-traditional and/or non-religious spiritual, existential, experiential and philosophical belief systems. Includes sites related to atheism, agnosticism and mysticism; sites related to quasi-religious, philosophical or spiritual belief systems and practices that do not include formally established religious meetings, places of worship, organizational structure or dogma; and sites that endorse or offer information about affecting or influencing real events through supernatural or magical means. Also includes sites that discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events. This category does not include sites centered around traditional, organized religious belief, practice and observance (religion).

Abused Drugs

Sites that promote, offer, sell, supply, encourage or otherwise advocate the illegal use, cultivation, manufacture or distribution of drugs, pharmaceuticals, intoxicating plants or chemicals and their related paraphernalia.

Adult and Pornography

Sites that contain material of an adult nature that does not necessarily contain excessive violence, sexual content or nudity. These sites include very profane or vulgar content and sites that are not appropriate for children.

Military

Sites that promote or provide information on military branches or armed services.

Dead Sites

Sites that do not respond to http queries. Policy engines should usually treat these as uncategorized sites. 'http://g00gle.com http://whitehouse.info'

Brokerage / Trading

Sites that provide or advertise trading of securities and management of investment assets (online or offline). Also includes insurance sites, as well as sites that offer financial investment strategies, quotes and news.

Dating

Sites that promote interpersonal relationships.

Personal sites and Blogs

Sites that primarily offer access to personal pages and blogs. This classification includes but is not limited to content that shares a common domain such as web space made available by an ISP or some other hosting service. Personal home pages and blogs tend to be dynamic in nature and their content may vary from innocuous to extreme.

Job Search

Sites that provide assistance in finding employment and tools for locating prospective employers.

Gambling

Sites where someone can place a bet or participate in a betting pool or a lottery, or receive information, assistance, recommendations or training in such activities. Does not include sites that sell gambling-related products/machines or sites for offline casinos and hotels unless they meet one of the above requirements.

Peer to Peer

Sites that distribute software to facilitate the direct exchange of files between people. P2P includes software that enables file search and sharing across a network without dependence on a central server.

Marijuana

Sites that discuss, encourage, promote, offer, sell, supply or otherwise advocate the use, cultivation, manufacture or distribution of marijuana and its myriad aliases, whether for recreational or medicinal purposes. Includes sites with content regarding marijuana-related paraphernalia.

Hacking

Sites that distribute, promote or provide hacking tools and/or information which may help gain unauthorized access to computer systems and/or computerized communication systems. Hacking encompasses instructions on illegal or questionable tactics, such as creating viruses, distributing cracked or pirated software or other protected intellectual property.

Philosophy and Political Advocacy

Sites sponsored by or which provide information on political parties, special interest groups or any organization that promotes change or reform in public policy, public opinion, social practice or economic activities.

Weapons

Sites that sell, review or describe weapons such as guns, knives or martial arts devices, or provide information on their use, accessories or other modifications. Does not include information on BB guns, paintball guns, black powder rifles, target shooting or bows and arrows unless the site also meets one of the above requirements. Also does not include sites that promote collecting weapons, or groups that either support or oppose weapons use.

Pay to Surf

Sites that pay users in the form of cash or prizes for clicking on or reading specific links, email or web pages.

Swimsuits & Intimate Apparel

Sites that contain images or offer the sale of swimsuits, intimate apparel or other types of suggestive clothing. Does not include sites selling undergarments as a subsection of other products offered.

Questionable

This category typically encompasses websites that exhibit potentially inappropriate or suspicious characteristics. These may include sites with adult-oriented content that does not qualify as explicit pornography, platforms spreading unverified or misleading information, and those that host or link to potentially unwanted programs (PUPs). Additionally, it includes sites featuring clickbait, deceptive advertising or scam-like elements, as well as those engaged in legally ambiguous practices, such as distributing pirated software or content with questionable licencing status.

Violence, hate and Racism

Sites that depict extreme physical harm to people, animals or property, or that advocate or provide instructions on how to cause such harm. Also includes sites that advocate, depict hostility or aggression toward, or denigrate an individual or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, or other involuntary characteristics. Includes content that glorifies self-mutilation or suicide.

Cheating, piracy and Copyright concerns

Sites that support cheating and contain such materials, including free essays, exam copies and plagiarism, and sites that provide information or technology for cracking or pirating software or other protected intellectual property, and sites that distribute such media.

Gross / Extreme

Sites that are extreme in nature and are not suitable for general consumption. Includes sites that revel in and glorify gore, human or animal suffering, scatological or other aberrant behaviours, perversities or debaucheries. It includes visual or written depictions deemed to be of an unusually horrific nature. These are salacious sites bereft of historical context, educational value or artistic merit created solely to debase, dehumanize or shock. Examples would include necrophilia, cannibalism, scat and amputee fetish site.

Nudity

Sites containing nude or seminude depictions of the human body. These depictions are not necessarily sexual in intent or effect, but may include sites containing nude paintings or photo galleries of artistic nature. This category also includes nudist or naturist sites that contain pictures of nude individuals.

Illegal

Sites that typically involve content or activities that are criminal in nature or violate legal regulations. This includes platforms engaged in drug trafficking or the sale of controlled substances without proper authorization, as well as illegal gambling operations lacking the necessary licences. The category also encompasses sites hosting child exploitation material, promoting or distributing hacking tools, or serving as marketplaces for cybercrime. Additionally, it covers websites involved in weapons trafficking, those facilitating copyright infringement through unlawful distribution (such as torrent sites offering pirated content), and services operating on the dark web that are linked to illicit transactions.

Parked Domains

Parked domains are URLs that host limited content or click-through ads that may generate revenue for the hosting entities but generally do not contain useful content. Also includes under construction sites, folders and web server default home pages.

Alcohol and Tobacco

Sites that offer for sale, promote, glorify, review or in any way advocate the use or creation of alcoholic beverages and tobacco, including but not limited to beer, wine, hard liquors, cigarettes, pipes and cigars. It does not include sites that sell alcohol as a subset of other products such as restaurants or grocery stores.

Web Hosting

This category generally includes sites that serve as platforms for delivering or managing online content. It encompasses commercial web hosting providers such as Bluehost, GoDaddy and HostGator, as well as cloud service platforms like AWS S3 buckets, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage. It also includes content delivery networks (CDNs) that are used to distribute website data efficiently across the Internet, along with personal or business web pages hosted on either shared or dedicated servers.

Self-Harm

Sites that promote actions that are relating to harming oneself, such as suicide, anorexia and bulimia.

Social Networking

Sites that enable social networking for online communities of various topics, for friendship, dating or professional reasons.

Chat

Sites that enable web-based exchange of real-time messages through chat services or chat rooms.

Proxy Avoidance and Anonymizers

Sites that facilitate anonymous surfing.