
Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls? - alexcason
http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk
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robinhouston
The O2 Parental controls feature is designed to limit access to a whitelist of
“sites that have been classifed as suitable and interesting for children under
12”. It must be explicitly enabled for each device by the account holder.

There has been a surge of Twitter outrage about it this weekend, though many
of the outraged appear to misunderstand what the feature is designed to do.

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octo_t
there is literally zero reason to block sites such as the NSPCC and Childline.
Zero. Parents being fundamentally _able_ to block these sites is wrong.

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perlpimp
yeah it is somewhat similar to having all outgoing calls being blocked even
911 unless enabled by the parent.

I mean who is even allowed to block outgoing 911 on their cellphone? it works
even without a sim card!

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acallaghan
It'd be like blocking a special number, say 1111 (which is the UK landline
Childline number), which kids could use to only get advice on bullying,
stress, self-harm and abuse.

It's extremely sad that parents can be given the option to block these sites
from potentially at-risk kids with abusive parents.

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timw6n
It looks like the middle "Default Safety" row is the normal mode however, and
that doesn't seem particularly onerously restrictive. It seems to only be
blocking actually NSFW sites, plus selected pages on Reddit, Tumblr etc.

The bottom row appears to be an (properly) opt-in service for much younger
kids that must be whitelisting only a few destinations, which is not the same
thing at all as the filters that Cameron et al are pushing for.

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indlebe
>The bottom row appears to be an (properly) opt-in service for much younger
kids

Having grown up in a southern baptist family I think you're being idealistic
here. I could easily see this filter being imposed on me by my previous
parent/guardian until I moved out of the house, thus vastly restricting my
knowledge of the world. Any alternative news site is blocked, so it's
basically the mainstream conservative fun-filter.

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desas
It blocks mainstream news too...

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jerf
As I write this, the title is "Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental
Controls". How does the link in question justify that title? It links to a
lookup tool.

(Straight question; if there's an answer to that I'm just not seeing, great!
I'd love to hear it.)

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mhurron
> How does the link in question justify that title?

Spot check some sites.

slashdot.org Parental Control (opt in u12 service) Blocked

news.ycombinator.com Parental Control (opt in u12 service) Blocked

news.yahoo.com Parental Control (opt in u12 service) Blocked

~~~
jerf
I'd _expect_ a "parental filter" to work on a whitelisting principle, which
will inevitably look like this. Anything else is snake oil.

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acd
If its a dns based control, one can dnswalk/iterate over the censored dns ipv4
space for example 1.1.1.1, then lookup the same ip in a public dns server such
as opendns or google dns. By comparing the dns results from the censored and
public dns you get the list of what censorship authority was trying to block.
You can then publish the list of the address on for example Pastebin :)

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vfclists
It is the result of the government allowing providers to fudge what the
concept of what the 'Internet' is. All your service provider does is to allow
a process running on your computer to make contact with another computer over
the TCP/IP protocol. If they interfere with that they are technically in
breach of contract.

The use of the word 'Internet' should be strictly defined. If by 'Internet'
they mean going through restricted gateways in accord with their criteria,
that is fine, but if they mean allowing processes to connect as described
above they are in breach. The public needs to understand that.

There was a case some time ago when BT wanted to cut of the phone lines to
prostitutes who had their ads plastered in phone booths and the courts stopped
them from doing this.

Restrictions should be done with customers informed consent or at least they
should be notified when the subscribe to the service

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yohanbachk
"if they interfere with that they are technically in breach of contract."

Which clause of the O2 service contract are they in breach of? You said
'technically', so you must think they really are in breach rather than just
morally in breach.

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vfclists
It depends on what the 'Internet' means to customers. The man in the street
considers being able to get Email, Facebook and Google as being connected to
the Internet, and doesn't understand that the provider doesn't even have the
right to obstruct or interfere with their connectivity for any reason, whilst
a tech guy considers it to be the ability to connect to a port on an IP
address.

They are morally in breach if you are inclined to see it that way, based on
promoting a restricted concept of what an Internet is.

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sdfjkl
Hm, Github is blocked, Python.org too. Microsoft.com is permitted though.
Wikipedia is permitted, including pages about coprophilia, tentacle erotica
(illustrations) and decapitation (photographs).

Sorry parents, censorship is still no alternative to actual parenting and may
just get in the way of your kid becoming the next amazing Python hacker.

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est
China once blocked "freebsd.org" because there's a "free" keyword in it.

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Moocat87
It may be a whitelist filter. Inevitably, isn't that the result of every
whitelist-based filter?

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CallbackJockey
Well at least [http://www.conservatives.com/](http://www.conservatives.com/)
is blocked too.

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morgante
So is [http://foxnews.com](http://foxnews.com). Good riddance.

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greglindahl
Huh. blekko's search engine has more blocking than google's, so I pushed the
"If you think this website needs a different policy, click here" button to
give them feedback... and the response is:

> Your reclassification request has been received. Please come back soon to
> check the reclassification results.

No way to specify what I think ought to be changed. Thanks, O2, for giving
everyone a great way to report problems!

(edit: Bing is more blocked than google!)

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Yver
Don't worry, your reclassification request has been duly archived to /dev/null
for later review.

They are probably going to receive tens of thousands of requests so I wouldn't
expect them to be read by a human. If that's the case they'll just prioritize
by frequency of report. Obviously it's all conjecture on my part.

