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Considered "18+"

daniel.haxx.se

61–70 of 156 posts

Re: Considered "18+"

#61

Can’t think what the “ha” would stand for in their analysis, but the se and xx can be indicators of adultness when you have a naive algo for dealing with bot spam domains for adult-content-as-spam: Some even started using multiple X's (i.e. XX, XXX, etc.) to give the impression that their film contained more graphic sexual content than the simple X rating. In some cases, the X ratings were applied by reviewers or fil…

I don't think that has anything to do with it, because of this:

> It shows that this filter is for this specific host name only, not for the entire haxx.se domain.

Re: Considered "18+"

#62
post #17

Many years ago, I used to work for Vodafone - and had some responsibility for their filtering stuff. One of the main problems was that, at the time, it was all managed by Blue Coat. As they were a US company, many of the "violations" that they picked up just weren't considered problematic for a UK / EU audience. Similarly, they would use blanked keyword blocking. So sex education resources would frequently get blocke…

Is this filtering an extra feature like parental controls or corporate filtering? Or was this just blanket filtering applied to all Vodafone customers?

Re: Considered "18+"

#63
post #23

Sigh Automatic classification of material as "adult" has always sucked. I remember watching a news report where schools filters had classified webpages referencing the current Super Bowl (Super Bowl XXX) as adult content due to XXX typically being associated with adult material. The opposite happens too - see Elsagate. The newest version of Elsagate material, which I've only seen one person talking about, is weird/in…

The thing that gets me with the elsagate material is that it is weird. More weird than offensive. Is this just machine written content that has gone a bit nuts?

Re: Considered "18+"

#64
post #17

Many years ago, I used to work for Vodafone - and had some responsibility for their filtering stuff. One of the main problems was that, at the time, it was all managed by Blue Coat. As they were a US company, many of the "violations" that they picked up just weren't considered problematic for a UK / EU audience. Similarly, they would use blanked keyword blocking. So sex education resources would frequently get blocke…

Is this filtering an extra feature like parental controls or corporate filtering? Or was this just blanket filtering applied to all Vodafone customers?

In the UK the filtering is on by default. The customer can opt out of the filtering by contacting the ISP and requesting to opt out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...

Re: Considered "18+"

#65
post #13

A number of my personal sites end up blocked by corporate firewalls. It’s slightly infuriating. Even my own company. I got in a literal fight with IT needing to justify the why in why I needed access to my own website. Like I can live without it, but it’s nothing but my blog where I rant about tech. The why should be why is it blocked to begin with. The default state should not be blocked .

Default approach of a firewall. When it doubt, block it. But IT has really outdone itself and grew to something that could be the largest threat to an open internet. The same could happen to mail, where you can only use "certified provider" or you will just be filtered out. Spam and phishing are a problem, sure, but recent IT strategies are highly questionable in this regard.

Considering the landscape of spam, phishing, and malicious actors poking around what's your alternative solution to how firewall rules (and category lists generated and maintained by companies like Palo Alto) are currently applied? The IT side of things has limited tools (and budget) with which to control and secure the internal environment.

IMO there's also a failure of government here to both ensure an open internet and to come down on people abusing the system. A related example might be the phone spam calls everyone in the US gets - it's an administrative, legal, and regulatory problem, not a technical one.

My context may be a bit skewed though since I'm a sysadmin turned cybersecurity and I've seen the large numbers of people clicking on the absolute stupidest things. Given the "average" computer use that IT has to deal with I'm much more sympathetic to their plight.

Re: Considered "18+"

#66

1. intercept traffic to IP 2. present custom "valid" certificate 3. ??? 4. profit! ... isn't this something that certificate transparency should help solve?

> isn't this something that certificate transparency should help solve?

No. CT is meant to help find illegitimate server certificate issuance by participating CAs, but it cannot help the user-agent get past illegitimate server certs.

Besides, the whole point here is to make the user-agent fail to load the page, therefore the network operator's firewall's CA would not participate in CT (nor be a CAB member), and the network operator does not just not mind that the illegitimate server certificate is noticed, they want it noticed.

Re: Considered "18+"

#67
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, they would use blanked keyword blocking. So sex education resources would frequently get blocked. I had a colleague whose surname, Sextro, was part of his email address. He occasionally had messages blocked by blanket filters like that.

Praying for all the people who use the shortened form of Richard

The ultimate litmus test for such filtering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Van_Dyke

And a favorite tech blog/news website that is often blocked:

https://torrentfreak.com/

Re: Considered "18+"

#68
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Praying for all the people who use the shortened form of Richard

The ultimate litmus test for such filtering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Van_Dyke And a favorite tech blog/news website that is often blocked: https://torrentfreak.com/

or literally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

Re: Considered "18+"

#69
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough, vodafone filtering is less restrictive in other ways. For instance, they never blocked The Pirate Bay, but I just switched ISP from vodafone and my new ISP (Sky) blocks the site via some TLS tricks. It's odd because while adult content blocks are purely a per-ISP choice (they offer it as a service/choice to customers), I had thought that TPB was blocked because of court orders. So how come one ISP block…

> "I had thought that TPB was blocked because of court orders. > So how come one ISP blocks it, and other doesn't?" The court order[1] had 6 defined defendants: - BRITISH SKY BROADCASTING LIMITED - BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS PLC - EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE LIMITED - TALKTALK TELECOM GROUP PLC - TELEFÓNICA UK LIMITED - VIRGIN MEDIA LIMITED The court order only affected the listed ISPs (at that time, 94% share of the consu…

No obligation? The DA could sue immediately in the public interest, or if not it could be the original plaintiff, and then the remaining ISPs would have the opportunity to defend their cause themselves.

Re: Considered "18+"

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultimate litmus test for such filtering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Van_Dyke And a favorite tech blog/news website that is often blocked: https://torrentfreak.com/

or literally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

or.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_My_Dad_Says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$h*!_My_Dad_Says

The later (TV-Show) is actually based on the former (twitter feed) but couldn't retain the name in the US. It would probably have been perfectly fine as is in the UK.

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