"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails, forum posts or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked."
Even Google has this problem with some common words. If you type "Nudel", which is German for noodle, into the Google search box, you won't get auto-complete entries presumably because it contains the word "nude". This happens even on the German Google version (?hl=de).
Interestingly, it seems that Bing does a better job of separating "Nudel" and "nude" as it does offer appropriate auto-complete entries. I'm not sure how widespread this problem is and how Google and Bing compare on other search terms, though, since I only randomly stumbled upon this issue while searching for recipes.
I love incompetent filtering like this, it irritates those who might not otherwise care. It would be nice to see it commonplace and socially acceptable to disable the filters purely because of how rubbish they are.
On the flipside, overfiltering that begets controversy like this tells the PTB what people care about. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, so sayeth the sociopath, and hey, any information on undesirables is gravy.
This reminds me of the early days of parental web control products like Net Nanny. I remember being frustrated that www.titanicmovie.com was blocked and asking my brother why. And then I learned what tits referred to :)
I'm actually from Scunthorpe. Being quite young and innocent, we never actually knew the particular offensive word contained within until we had to work out why the school computers were changing our town name to SXXXXhorpe.
when i was 13ish we had AOL and Homestead was blocked by the parental controls. i installed a keylogger to steal my dad's password and when he went to work i would sneak onto his account so i could make websites using Homestead.
Yeah, not so smart. A quick look at blekko's crawl data says that about 1/2 of the urls matching /sex/i are not objectionable, assuming you don't mind your kids seeing something labeled 'sexy'. A pretty crappy filter.
Here are 10 random urls that have /sex/i in them: 2 overblocks, 1 news article about sex offenders, 4 urls that mention "sexy", and 3 sex sites.
I assume all things Essex are likewise unreachable.
(The implication of my comment being that the filtering mechanism is not limited to being that dumb; the stupidity in the particular (as opposed to the general) may be laid at the feet of incompetent management.
In the general, the incompetence -- and maliciousness -- has already been rightly laid at the feet of governent as well as its subornation to vested and entrenched private interests.)
Well, that's one way to encourage people to turn off an idiotic filter. Hopefully more game updates / media will add random "expertsexchange"-like URLs.
This is complete incompetence. I am opposed to filtering at all, but if they are going to do it there are much more effective ways to do it that aren't very complicated, and if they don't want to do it themselves there are companies that do this.
Spam filtering has been extremely successful with just taking keywords that are commonly found or not found in spam and updating the probability that it is or is not spam. A single word isn't enough to indicate that something is porn, especially a common one like "sex", especially if it was found in a string of characters rather than an individual word.
From the perspective of the filter is it working like intended. The word sex is in there, if any character can be used as a whitespace. They limit the such characters, but then you would use dirty words with underscores or punctuators, which would get through. Therefore such filter for words in useless and impossible to make accurate enough.
This is not the first time ISP deep package inspection cause trouble for League of Legends. A Swedish ISP identified league of legends game traffic as bittorrent and created an unplayable state for about 3 months.
Of course, world of warcraft has had no such issues. There are too many users and too much money, and so bugs get fixed on Saturday night if needed. Others have to just hope the bug gets fixed before the company losses too much money and too many customers.
I would like to see net neutrality laws could impose some liability for ISP who interfere with their customers traffic. It would self correct much of today problems, while still not outlaw filters, DPI and QoS as a technical solution.
I didn't hear about the Swedish ISP news, but League of Legends actually does have a bit torrent client installed with it (Pando Media Booster), and I believe League of Legends has much larger user base and similar if not larger profits than WoW.
I think that problem had more to do with Riot being based in North America.
We all know that there are various filters, different for each ISP, which exist because the government pressured them in to it. Generically and collectively we are all oh so terribly lazy and refer to them as a UK porn filter.
Please stop believing that we are stupid enough to take that short hand as literal.
There is a "UK Porn Filter". You can, however, opt out, and existing customers may currently not yet be affected. There is a fear that people will blindly choose the default "opt in" because of taboo and other social pressures. Also, in some cases it's very difficult to opt out (for example, I cannot opt out of my mobile content filter because I don't own a credit card).
You're playing semantic games. There's a series of different filters at each UK ISP put in place by government request. Whether there's one brick wall around the entire country or a bunch of separate walls of different materials it's still a wall.
Computer game playing is inherently pornographic!!
Haven't folks cottoned on to the relationship between the term 'joystick' and the location of the male sex organ, as well as the attendant and persistently vigorous manipulations of said levers?
Both the PC industries, ie the Political Correctness and Personal Computer industries need to come up with a less offensive term, before the whole terminology degenerates into farce.
The sites listed in the URL you mention are blocked by CleanFeed, the censorship mechanism developed to block child porn and repurposed by the courts for commercial protection. CleanFeed can't be disabled with a phone call to your ISP.
Are you a new customer? The filter is on by default for new customers only at the moment. It'll be rolling out to existing clients later on (few months) where you decide to opt in or opt out (however they plan on asking).
I totally get all the snarky comments and dislike for the porn filter but as a father of a 11-year-old girl who surfs the web I am 100% behind the idea of regulating material that is not suitable for kids. The current filter may or may not work but the idea is sound and I'd like to think that the politicians who are putting the filter into place are doing so for the right reasons, i.e. to protect innocent eyes.
She's probably not as innocent as you'd like to believe, and she's probably tougher than you give her credit for. She also has a basic human right to access information.
Please try to see that restricting information when someone is young deforms their worldview for the rest of their life. We as parents hope that the deformation is a positive one, but this isn't necessarily so. We're biased into thinking we've made positive choices for our children regardless of any evidence to the contrary. The bias is hardwired, and unless we take conscious steps to evaluate whether our behavior makes sense then it's easy to get swept up in a "think of the children" argument.
I've got a daughters aged 7 and 5. They've had unfettered connectivity all their lives. I'm far more concerned about them finding crap material that "suitable" for kids, such as most of Netflix's kids category. I'm much more worried that they're drawn into watching crappy cartoons or playing dumb Flash games. Companies invading their privacy is far more a threat than some random porn site injecting an ad somewhere.
My 5-yr-old says she's looking forward to playing Go online with her own account. I'm not in the slightest bit worried that she's at risk by being in the chatrooms on KGS. Both girls like Reddit (/r/roomporn and /r/aww and stuff like that).
My kids don't need the government protecting their innocent eyes. They need intelligence on how to understand what they're doing, and the drive to inquire and be open about things bothering them.
It's like parents that worry about their kids going somewhere because of "pedophiles", yet have no problems driving them many miles each day, which is absolutely a higher risk to their safety. These parents are not acting rationally, they are not improving safety, they just feel like they're doing something.
What's the real threat model that I'm trying to prevent as a parent? Kids viewing porn? Really? As my kids age, if they decide they want to start watching porn, I hope we're able to speak intelligently about it. Sexual maturity can be difficult for people, and porn is only one small aspect of the whole thing.
So what's the real threat? People attacking them? But retarded URL filters won't help. And teaching them general savvy and critical thinking will help more against that threat, and in life in general.
I'm not sure what threat a stupid filter is supposed to address. In 3 decades, I haven't accidentally run into any life-scaring materials on the Internet (or BBSes), and if I actively wanted to find something, I'd find it regardless of restrictions.
The only filters I've wished for is to remove "dumb" content, but that's just my failing as a parent to get my children engaged with more intelligent stuff.
If you don't want your children to watch porn you are supposed to subscribe to a service which keeps lists of websites which offer or are believed to offer porn and block them in your router, without your ISP or the government's involvement. These services have existed for a long time, but it looks like the governments want to get involved for surveillance purposes.
It is your router which is supposed to be doing that, not your ISP. What you are essentially doing is giving the government and the ISP an excuse to monitor the your interests and communications and those of your family, which they would in any case, only in this instance you have given them your explicit permission.
> I totally get all the snarky comments and dislike for the porn filter but as a father of a 11-year-old girl who surfs the web I am 100% behind the idea of regulating material that is not suitable for kids.
Does the filter protect children from "cyberbullying"?
I can understand why you feel that way - but how about taking responsibility and regulating your daughter's use of the internet? It doesn't seem that difficult to me. Monitor her browsing on the home computer (an 11 year old doesn't need their own private PC); if she has a smartphone disable the browser and app store (same applies on a tablet) and take advantage of the parental controls. This is probably also going to be a lot more reliable than trusting our incompetent government to do a good job.
You should be regulating that material and there are many ways of doing it from limiting access to the computer to when you are physically present to all kinds of software solutions. There is no reason for the government to be involved nor should they be determining what is blocked. You should be doing that.
[+] [-] bguthrie|12 years ago|reply
"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails, forum posts or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked."
[+] [-] Livven|12 years ago|reply
Interestingly, it seems that Bing does a better job of separating "Nudel" and "nude" as it does offer appropriate auto-complete entries. I'm not sure how widespread this problem is and how Google and Bing compare on other search terms, though, since I only randomly stumbled upon this issue while searching for recipes.
[+] [-] mikeash|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuhrer1996|12 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386665/league-of-legend... [1] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/21/league-of-leg...
[+] [-] andybak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctorfoo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphilip|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robgough|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catshirt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] degenerate|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greglindahl|12 years ago|reply
Here are 10 random urls that have /sex/i in them: 2 overblocks, 1 news article about sex offenders, 4 urls that mention "sexy", and 3 sex sites.
[+] [-] pasbesoin|12 years ago|reply
(The implication of my comment being that the filtering mechanism is not limited to being that dumb; the stupidity in the particular (as opposed to the general) may be laid at the feet of incompetent management.
In the general, the incompetence -- and maliciousness -- has already been rightly laid at the feet of governent as well as its subornation to vested and entrenched private interests.)
[+] [-] Groxx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Houshalter|12 years ago|reply
Spam filtering has been extremely successful with just taking keywords that are commonly found or not found in spam and updating the probability that it is or is not spam. A single word isn't enough to indicate that something is porn, especially a common one like "sex", especially if it was found in a string of characters rather than an individual word.
[+] [-] driverdan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deletes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
Of course, world of warcraft has had no such issues. There are too many users and too much money, and so bugs get fixed on Saturday night if needed. Others have to just hope the bug gets fixed before the company losses too much money and too many customers.
I would like to see net neutrality laws could impose some liability for ISP who interfere with their customers traffic. It would self correct much of today problems, while still not outlaw filters, DPI and QoS as a technical solution.
[+] [-] f00_|12 years ago|reply
I think that problem had more to do with Riot being based in North America.
[+] [-] hahainternet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alan_cx|12 years ago|reply
Please stop believing that we are stupid enough to take that short hand as literal.
[+] [-] doctorfoo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wernercd|12 years ago|reply
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
You can go about your business.
Move along.
[+] [-] dijit|12 years ago|reply
so, at the moment there is no filter for old customers, but that will change.
[+] [-] JacksonGariety|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Toenex|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vfclists|12 years ago|reply
Haven't folks cottoned on to the relationship between the term 'joystick' and the location of the male sex organ, as well as the attendant and persistently vigorous manipulations of said levers?
Both the PC industries, ie the Political Correctness and Personal Computer industries need to come up with a less offensive term, before the whole terminology degenerates into farce.
[+] [-] NAFV_P|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] csmithuk|12 years ago|reply
http://help.sky.com/security/privacy/our-approach-to-protect...
All of these can be trivially accessed by proxy sites.
[+] [-] barrkel|12 years ago|reply
The sites listed in the URL you mention are blocked by CleanFeed, the censorship mechanism developed to block child porn and repurposed by the courts for commercial protection. CleanFeed can't be disabled with a phone call to your ISP.
[+] [-] feelstupid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctorfoo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wnevets|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imdsm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhubarbcustard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurus2|12 years ago|reply
Please try to see that restricting information when someone is young deforms their worldview for the rest of their life. We as parents hope that the deformation is a positive one, but this isn't necessarily so. We're biased into thinking we've made positive choices for our children regardless of any evidence to the contrary. The bias is hardwired, and unless we take conscious steps to evaluate whether our behavior makes sense then it's easy to get swept up in a "think of the children" argument.
[+] [-] MichaelGG|12 years ago|reply
My 5-yr-old says she's looking forward to playing Go online with her own account. I'm not in the slightest bit worried that she's at risk by being in the chatrooms on KGS. Both girls like Reddit (/r/roomporn and /r/aww and stuff like that).
My kids don't need the government protecting their innocent eyes. They need intelligence on how to understand what they're doing, and the drive to inquire and be open about things bothering them.
It's like parents that worry about their kids going somewhere because of "pedophiles", yet have no problems driving them many miles each day, which is absolutely a higher risk to their safety. These parents are not acting rationally, they are not improving safety, they just feel like they're doing something.
What's the real threat model that I'm trying to prevent as a parent? Kids viewing porn? Really? As my kids age, if they decide they want to start watching porn, I hope we're able to speak intelligently about it. Sexual maturity can be difficult for people, and porn is only one small aspect of the whole thing.
So what's the real threat? People attacking them? But retarded URL filters won't help. And teaching them general savvy and critical thinking will help more against that threat, and in life in general.
I'm not sure what threat a stupid filter is supposed to address. In 3 decades, I haven't accidentally run into any life-scaring materials on the Internet (or BBSes), and if I actively wanted to find something, I'd find it regardless of restrictions.
The only filters I've wished for is to remove "dumb" content, but that's just my failing as a parent to get my children engaged with more intelligent stuff.
[+] [-] scott_karana|12 years ago|reply
Why impose your choice as the default on an entire nation?
[+] [-] a-priori|12 years ago|reply
What I don't get is delegating this to the government rather than using something that's under your control.
[+] [-] vfclists|12 years ago|reply
It is your router which is supposed to be doing that, not your ISP. What you are essentially doing is giving the government and the ISP an excuse to monitor the your interests and communications and those of your family, which they would in any case, only in this instance you have given them your explicit permission.
[+] [-] SixSigma|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NAFV_P|12 years ago|reply
Does the filter protect children from "cyberbullying"?
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wvenable|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JackpotDen|12 years ago|reply