
A tale of new censors - llambda
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tale-new-censors-vodafone-uk-t-mobile-uk-o2-uk-and-t-mobile-usa
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mike-cardwell
At the beginning of January, I wrote an article about T-Mobile UK spoofing RST
packets to disrupt SSL connections on mail submission and other ports, and how
to bypass it:

[https://grepular.com/Punching_through_The_Great_Firewall_of_...](https://grepular.com/Punching_through_The_Great_Firewall_of_TMobile)

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jimworm
paulgraham.com is also blocked by Vodafone's filter.

Prepaid (pay-as-you-go in UK terms) users that look over 18 can show up at a
Vodafone store and remove the filter.

I did it without giving away my identity by registering online with a fake
name and confirming the name at the store. Your mileage might vary.

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bwarp
This is standard practice for mobile networks in the UK and it should be. As
the OP says, it's removable on request. You don't have to give them any
details other than prove you are over 18. Turning up in the store is usually
good enough.

Without this, if you are in the UK an 8 year old can quite simply just buy a
pay as you go mobile phone with cash from a supermarket, top it up using cash
and use it to browse porn etc.

With respect to the providers, O2's ADSL/POTS broadband offerings have no
censorship in place at all.

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oinksoft
> Without this, if you are in the UK an 8 year old can quite simply just buy a
> pay as you go mobile phone with cash from a supermarket, top it up using
> cash and use it to browse porn etc.

I don't see a problem with that.

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bwarp
Well you can activate your 8 year old's phone and explain that to the social
worker after a few weeks...

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burgerbrain
Do you honestly believe that giving an kid unfiltered internet is likely to
land you in trouble with social services? That is so far out of touch with
reality...

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bwarp
My sister is a social worker. It does. Regularly. More than you could imagine.
People don't know what acceptable sexual boundaries are when they learn about
sex from porn resulting in all sorts of messed up individuals.

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burgerbrain
I find it hard to believe it is the unfiltered internet connection that gets
them in trouble, rather than the particularly bad parenting that accompanied
it in those _particular_ circumstances.

An unfiltered internet connection itself is nothing for the government to be
concerned about.

(You also likely have some pretty heavy selection bias tainting your
perception of the prevalence of things like this.)

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anamax
> find it hard to believe it is the unfiltered internet connection that gets
> them in trouble, rather than the particularly bad parenting that accompanied
> it in those particular circumstances.

How about a third possibility, that social services will screw with people's
lives based on their whim.

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burgerbrain
I'm not sure the (real) problems with social services are on topic here.

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there
i'm a supporter of tor, but i'm not sure why they're making this out to be so
alarming. t-mobile clearly presents its filtering as a family-safe content
filter, and tor is software that makes it easy to bypass content filtering.
this is only setup by default on pre-paid accounts because anyone can purchase
a pre-paid SIM without being over 18. i would expect the same kind of
filtering at a library or school, and any other internet service that one can
purchase like cable or dsl service typically requires that someone over 18 be
present during installation. i can just imagine the silly backlash over a
parent complaining to the media because their child was able to look at porn
by putting a pre-paid SIM in their android phone.

i recently purchased a pre-paid SIM from t-mobile US and was kind of surprised
they didn't ask for any identification when purchasing (more so because i
would have thought the government would have mandated some kind of tracking of
phone numbers for going after drug dealers or something). once i logged into
t-mobile's website, the form to disable this content filtering was easy to
find and required giving proof of being over 18 (which they say is not stored
or associated with the account after verification).

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drewcrawford
Requiring you to be over 18 to use "the real Internet" also requires you to
present a government ID. Which means, effectively, anonymous or pseudonymous
use of the Internet is dead. This may be a problem if you'd like to criticize
your government.

Independently of whether or not you think that is a good idea in theory, it is
unworkable in practice. There will always be coffee shops and open access
points and neighbors to mooch off of for the kids to get ahold of porn. Your
media backlash is now merely shifted from Vodaphone to the local mom & pop.

TL;DR - an Internet license is no substitute for proper parenting.

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bwarp
You don't have to have a "government ID" or present ID. That's a fallacy. You
just have to provide reasonable evidence that you are a not a minor.

Pubic hair is usually enough.

It's a choice the providers made to protect their arses from lawsuits, not the
government.

There are a lot of paranoid people here.

Edit: to explain the "pubic hair" comment is sarcasm relating to how lax the
verification process is. Judging by the time of day, lots of humor-challenged
Americans have woken up.

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mike-cardwell
I for one regularly use my pubic hair as proof of age.

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surfingdino
T-Mobile blocks urbandictionary.com in the UK. When you want to access that
site you need to give your credit card details, but only UK-issued cards work.

<http://texy.pl/2011/01/24/internetowi-psuje-cz-2-t-mobile/>

