3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it • Hacker News Board

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#71

Post by DanBC2 » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 3:53 PM UTC

thedrbrian wrote: post #39

jrabone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. They will collect your personal information, and make it available to their parent (Telefonica, via O2) and one of the other subsidiaries set up specifically to do this, and then re-sell it to the highest bidder. See http://www.fastcompany.com/3002010/telefonica-sell-customer-... for example. If you then subsequently leave them for another network, you will get more SMS spam than you can possibly imagine. http…

Interesting. Thankfully I signed up with one of my disposable gmail accounts. Another problem with giffgaff/O2 is that they compress and artefact every video or large picture one tries to send over their network. They claim its to save you money/bandwidth/data , which is funny as I'm on an unlimited account.

All the mobile providers crunch images. T Mobile attempt it for all images. It's frustrating when HN page load is delayed because their stupid proxies are struggling to serve the tiny voting button gifs.

I mentioned before the weirdly broken system they use for this too - 1.2.3.9; 1.2.3.11; etc are all annoying IPs to use.

I too am on an "unlimited" account. Unlimited being the normal definition of "has limits" - they'll insert interstitial warnings about fair use limits and they'll stop flash working.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#72

Post by ZoFreX » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:11 PM UTC

rahoulb wrote: post #10

Peroni wrote: post #7

3UK user here. Came up against this block for what I assumed was a relatively normal site. I phoned the company and had to jump through hoops to prove my age after being asked So, just to confirm Mr Buckley, you wish to access adult content on your phone? . Eagerly anticipating the end of my contract next month.

Good luck with that. The only time I've screamed with rage down the phone at some poor customer service rep (who was just following the script given to her) was trying to end a 3 contract. They are bastards.

Watch your bank account after you cancel, too. They have a nasty habit of "forgetting" to stop charging you (happened to a friend of mine who didn't realise until he got back from his deployment in Afganistan)

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#73

Post by DanBC2 » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #62

DanBC2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know these filters are optional, right? Comparing these to the filters for images of child sexual abuse is bizarre - they're operated in very different ways.

Are filters for images of child sexual abuse written into law? It is a industry standard in Europe, but I never heard that UK actually made a law to force ISPs to use it. as for the linked content-code, it is true that its is not a industry regulation but a rather a industry practice code written by large ISP themselves.

I don't know if it's a law, but it's done differently to the normal filters.

The Internet Watch Foundation provides a list of sites that are involved in images of child sexual abuse. While they're an industry group, they are a bit more serious about their mission than other filter providers.

(http://www.iwf.org.uk/about-iwf)

I guess they were formed to avoid the need for legally mandated filters.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#74

Post by bruceboughton » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:22 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #63

amirmc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tethering is permitted on £10 goodybag and will work on all smartphones with an inbuilt tethering feature, except for the iPhone." [1]. Not sure what the deal is with iPhone (I'm on their £12 option). All the other plans expressly say "Tethering is not permitted ..." [1] http://giffgaff.com/goodybags/10pound-goodybag

I believe they cannot allow tethering with the iPhone since the iPhone its self doesn't allow tethering unless Apple unlocks it. So they might need to pay Apple some £££ to get the ability to simply unlock tethering for GiffGaff's users. I suspect that an jail-broken iPhone could tether on GiffGaff just fine.

Why would Apple want to restrict tethering? It is the carriers that want to restrict it in order to continue charging differently for different bits on the wire.

Apple obviously provide the infrastructure for enabling/disabling tethering but I cannot see how it is in their interest to discourage it, except to keep the carriers happy.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#75

Post by DanBC2 » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #3

They have no place censoring the web at all, let alone censoring things that aren't even pornographic.

It's an optional filter. People can ask to have it turned off. It's a voluntary filter that the companies chose to implement before government forced filtering on them.

It's baffling to me to see this described as censorship. The content is still there. People can still get the content, they just need to say that they want to get the content. Sometimes they need to prove their age. (In the UK we have some legally mandated minimum ages; when a cinema says '15' it means you're not allowed in if you're under 15.)

As I've said, there's a problem with the filter being opt-out rather than opt-in; and there's a problem with the filter being too broad and blocking things that it shouldn't.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#76

Post by ubercow13 » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

themanr wrote: post #28

Does anyone know the censorship policies for all UK network operators? My contract is up.

All have filters on by default and all will allow you to disable them

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#77

Post by billpg » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:53 PM UTC

Dear operators.

I would like it very much if you'd block any malware sites. I don't even mind if there's a reasonable number of false positives caught in the mix when a new exploit is found and I might not have updated my software yet.

Apart from that, please don't block anything. I am an adult and the sole user of the account.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#78

Post by amirmc » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 7:04 PM UTC

jrabone wrote: post #66

amirmc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about O2 so it's not specific to GiffGaff, it happens to O2 customers who also pay much more for service than on GiffGaff. Hence it doesn't really address the "too good to be true" comment about GiffGaff in the GP.

It's actually about Telefonica SA and everything they own, downwards. They're all considered harmful in my book.

Sure, and I was pointing out that this isn't relevant to GiffGaff's lower pricing. You were responding to a comment about GiffGaff being too good to be true but it's not 'cheap service in exchange for data-harvesting' as your previous comment could be read.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#79

Post by PJones » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 11:45 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #63

amirmc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tethering is permitted on £10 goodybag and will work on all smartphones with an inbuilt tethering feature, except for the iPhone." [1]. Not sure what the deal is with iPhone (I'm on their £12 option). All the other plans expressly say "Tethering is not permitted ..." [1] http://giffgaff.com/goodybags/10pound-goodybag

I believe they cannot allow tethering with the iPhone since the iPhone its self doesn't allow tethering unless Apple unlocks it. So they might need to pay Apple some £££ to get the ability to simply unlock tethering for GiffGaff's users. I suspect that an jail-broken iPhone could tether on GiffGaff just fine.

It's the carrier that disables tethering based on the network profile. An unlocked iPhone can tether just fine out of the box, until you put a SIM card in that doesn't allow it.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#80

Post by PJones » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 11:46 PM UTC

DanBC2 wrote: post #71

thedrbrian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Thankfully I signed up with one of my disposable gmail accounts. Another problem with giffgaff/O2 is that they compress and artefact every video or large picture one tries to send over their network. They claim its to save you money/bandwidth/data , which is funny as I'm on an unlimited account.

All the mobile providers crunch images. T Mobile attempt it for all images. It's frustrating when HN page load is delayed because their stupid proxies are struggling to serve the tiny voting button gifs. I mentioned before the weirdly broken system they use for this too - 1.2.3.9; 1.2.3.11; etc are all annoying IPs to use. I too am on an "unlimited" account. Unlimited being the normal definition of "has limits" - the…

Interestingly, O2 seem to compress CSS as well. Had a client with a problem on a mobile site I just could not reproduce. Turns out it only happened when connected to O2s data network.