This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The regrettably-named Porn Detection Stick could be the greatest enemy of a husband who secretly likes to peek at pictures of naked girls under the glow of his monitor.

Or maybe it could become his greatest friend. I'll explain that later.

First, let's back up for this explanation: The $99 Porn Detection Stick is a USB flash drive sold by Orem computer forensics company Paraben Corp. Its sophisticated software seeks out pornographic pictures on your computer.

The porn detection stick uses "advanced image-analyzing algorithms that categorize images as potentially harmful by identifying facial features, flesh tone colors, image backgrounds, body part shapes, and more," according to officials of the company, whose main focus is providing products and services to help users recover lost computer data.

First of all, "identifying facial features" is not what a porn detector should do. It needs to look below the face. But can such technology really scan pictures and determine the difference between a pimple and a nipple?

I decided to take one of these sticks out for a drive and see if it does what's advertised.

First of all, using the stick is easy. You just insert it into an open USB slot on the computer in question. You then double click the executable file, which launches the program.

The settings menu allows you to choose what to scan, and there's a slider to adjust the scan sensitivity. The more carefully it scans, the longer the device takes to conduct its search. Otherwise, there's a "Start" button. Just press it to let the scanning begin.

Three of the stick's biggest setbacks are that it's for Windows only (apparently Mac users are too sophisticated to look at porn), it takes a long time to perform a scan, and it doesn't search for videos. Triple-X movie fans can rest easy.

With the default settings, Paraben says it will take about 1 1/2 hours to conduct a search on a typical computer. On my speedy quad-core PC, I set the stick to search for through the computer's archives as well as all unused drive space, and it took so long I decided to leave it on overnight. So any suspicious wife better plan on doing this while her husband is away at work.

Before testing, I deleted the cached files in my browser to make sure I started with a fresh slate. Then I visited a few sites like Playboy.com and Penthouse.com, which, of course, was strictly for research purposes. I also copied some of the photos to save in a folder just to see if it would catch those (again, this was for research). Then I started the program and let it sit overnight.

The porn stick flags all questionable picture files (it defines them as either "suspect" or "highly suspect" files) and copies them into a folder on the stick.

And sure enough, it caught all if not most of the pictures cached from those sites. And it did flag those files that I saved to another folder (again, for research).

But it also caught a lot of other non-pornographic pictures too, including snapshots of my pre-teen kids (which is insulting), my wife (which SHE found insulting) and my dog (don't go there).

On another computer at work, the stick also flagged pictures of school board officials, high school basketball players and a mug of Woody Allen, which is kind of creepy.

OK, it works — for the most part. It certainly works well enough to send up a red flag to curious wives (or husbands) who want to know if their spouses are cheating on them in the virtual world.

But here's where it also can help someone like that: As it flags pornographic pictures, it makes copies of them on the stick. So the Porn Detection Stick also makes a wonderful Porn Accumulation Stick — all of your porn in one handy USB drive.

And it also can permanently delete all porn pictures from your computer, including ones you thought were deleted from the computer but actually still reside on the unallocated portion of the hard drive. So a savvy porn aficionado could actually use the stick to effectively cover his tracks. In other words, a Porn Detection Stick could be used to combat a Porn Detection Stick.

Is it worth buying Paraben's product? That depends on how much trust is in your relationship and how much you want to destroy that trust.

Thoughts about the Porn Detection Device? Questions, suggestions about other nakedly interesting tech-related topics? Email vince@sltrib.com. —

The naked truth

Name • Porn Detection Stick

What it is • A USB flash drive that contains sophisticated software that seeks out pornographic picture on your computer.

Price • $99

Made by • Orem computer forensics company Paraben Corp.