NEW YORK (AP) — With seven-year-old Adam at her side, Sherra Schwartau typed “Boston Terriers” into an online search engine. Instead of information Adam could use for a school report on dogs, they got a porn site.“As mom is scrambling trying to close the screen, he goes, ‘What was that?”’ Schwartau said.

Score another for the pornographers, who have gotten even smarter since the incident three years ago about tricking Internet users into visiting their sites.

Rather than looking to government or technology for help, however, Schwartau turned to protecting her children with methods often overlooked: education and supervision.

After the “Boston Terriers” incident, whose results could not be duplicated today using several major search engines, the former PTA president in Seminole, Fla., sat down with Adam and her daughter, Ashley, to discuss the prevalence of adult content online.

She also began to watch their online use more closely.

Relying on new laws and software filters to keep porn away from kids simply won’t work, says Schwartau. She figures she is better off teaching her kids what to do should a nude image pop up: Close it, then talk about it.

Free-speech advocates have challenged all three federal laws aimed at restricting access to minors. One of the cases was heard by the Supreme Court recently. Another is scheduled for trial in Philadelphia in March. The third has already been struck down as unconstitutional.

Filtering software packages, meanwhile, have gotten smarter but are still flawed. They let some porn sites slip through, while blocking legitimate ones. Newer technology that scans images for certain shapes and flesh tones also blocks some photos of babies and pumpkins.

As the debate continues over the effectiveness of laws and technologies, some parents and child-protection advocates are calling for public awareness campaigns like those devoted to drugs and forest fires.

Last fall, a federal commission on Internet child protection recommended a massive campaign involving governments, libraries, community centers and schools. It called for grants to produce materials on Internet safety.

“There has been a lot of public education and awareness, but it hasn’t been at the level it needs to be to penetrate the consciousness of Americans,” said Donna Rice Hughes, a member of the federal commission. “One company, one group, one nonprofit can’t do it all.”

Hughes also had these tips for parents:

[bul]Establish rules for Internet use outside the home, such as a friend’s house or a library.

[bul]Place the family computer in an open area, such as a living room.

[bul]Ask kids regularly about their online friends and activities.

Fewer than two percent of Web sites have pornographic content, according to a 1999 study in the journal Nature. Many Internet users don’t run into unwanted porn in their day-to-day surfing, but the potential for an accidental encounter is just a misclick or two away.

The Internet filtering company N2H2 Inc. now has about 300,000 commercial porn sites in its databases, and constantly adds new ones. Spokesman David Burt said many of the new sites are in eastern Europe and Russia.

For years, porn sites have found ways to fool search engines — just as they did with Schwartau. They add hidden tags to Web pages so they might pop up in searches for, say, Britney Spears. They also take advantage of typos and wrong suffixes like using “.com” instead of “.gov.” More recently, they have gone after expired domain names: sites for churches, cities, kids and even an old Senate campaign for Attorney General John Ashcroft. Porn sites figure they can get more traffic — and better ad rates — when someone’s trying to reach a local church or school.

Users of some e-mail services like Microsoft’s Hotmail are also regularly bombarded with unsolicited teasers.

Outraged parents and family groups have turned to Congress for help. But critics say the laws are flawed because they also block adults from viewing content legal under the First Amendment.

In addition, laws regarding pornography generally depend on local community standards difficult to apply to a global medium.

Such laws will pressure Web sites to “dumb down speech to most puritanical community standards,” said Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship.

She also has problems with software filters, which would be required for many schools and libraries under the law being challenged in Philadelphia. Using such filters, their critics have found sites on art, human rights and House Majority Leader Dick Armey to be inaccessible at various times.

Other proposed methods — like creating a separate domain name suffix for kids or adult sites, or setting up a voluntary ratings system similar to that for movies and TV — have not received wide support.

Chris Hunter, an Internet content analyst at the University of Pennsylvania, believes the best approach is to have parents monitor their children and teach them good research skills.

Education helps adults as well, says Kim Young, executive director for the Center for Online Addiction.

“When you take a computer training class, it should not just be about using the computer,” she said. “It should be about how to use it responsibly.”

But education isn’t easy.

Utah’s porn czar, Paula Houston, said many parents would rather leave it to government to protect them.

“There’s a great deal of fear,” she said. Houston believes many people simply lack the technical know-how to deal sensibly with online porn.

Others believe education alone is not enough as long as online pornographers keep trying to lure unwitting children and adults.

“The combination of citizen awareness, parental involvement, legislation and technology is really key,” said Miriam Moore, legal policy analyst with the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group. “I don’t think there’s a 100 percent solution. It’s a group effort.”

[bul]On the Net: Online tips: http://www.familyclick.com/internetsafety

Free Expression Policy Project report: http://www.ncac.org/issues/internetfilters.html

Federal commission on child online protection: http://www.copacommission.org