Methods related to network access redirection and control and devices and systems utilizing such methods

In illustrative embodiments, methods in accordance with the present invention utilize a thin kernel module operating in the kernel space of an operating system to redirect all TCP flows to user space for application analysis and processing. Redirected data is presented to the user space application as a data stream, allowing the processing of information contained within the data stream from the user space on a mobile device. This allows the user space application to inspect and take action on incoming data before allowing the data to continue to pass through the device. This enables parental controls, firewalls, real-time anti-virus scanning, tethering/hot-spot, bandwidth optimization, and similar programs to effectively operate across different mobile devices as user downloadable/actuatable applications.