
TorrentFreak Is Blocked as a Pirate Site and Hacking Resource - DiabloD3
https://torrentfreak.com/torrentfreak-is-blocked-as-a-pirate-site-and-hacking-resource-180825/
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chii
Blocking sites should be illegal, unless the ISP in question has the list in
the contract so that you can review it before buying the service.

~~~
oopsman88
Court-ordered things are legal.

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crtasm
In this case it was not a court order, as explained in the article.

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pR0Ps
I'm unfortunately familiar with similar systems. What has probably happened is
that a crowdsourced process has (incorrectly) categorized the website as 2
things: "Criminal skills/Hacking", and "News". The hotel has subscribed to
this categorization service and configured their settings to block any pages
in the "Criminal skills/Hacking" section because it sounds scary.

Same goes for the "Piracy and Copyright infringement".

There's no conspiracy here, just the normal incompetence. Calling the number
listed on the page will probably allow you to petition to reclassify the site
properly, making less likely to be blocked.

Of course, filtering in general sucks, but it's not like this is an ISP, it's
a hotel.

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kyledrake
What are these categorization services called? I want to read more about them.
Do they do things like block sites known to contain or support hate speech
too?

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meowface
They're called HTTP proxies or web gateways. Blue Coat (now owned by
Symantec), a big proxy vendor, has a list of site categories here:
[https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/category-
descriptions](https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/category-descriptions)

Administrators can choose to allow, block, or warn (user must confirm they
want to view the page) for each category. The proxy vendor doesn't choose what
is or isn't blocked; they leave it to the customer to decide what they want to
block.

Hate speech is usually a category for proxy appliances/services, yes. Blue
Coat categorizes it as "Violence/Hate/Racism".

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DanBC
The company doing the blocking has a helpful notice asking you to call them if
you think the block is a mistake.

Has anyone called the Virgin WiFi telephone number listed on the notice to
tell them that this block is a mistake?

+44 (0)330 6601028

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dghughes
Even better, post the link on Twitter or LinkedIn directed at Richard Branson.
He strikes me as a reasonable guy and he's always on social media so I'd say
he will see it and respond.

Otherwise you'll be stuck at "your call is important to us..." forever.

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dewey
Isn’t that probably just some string matching on torrent instead of targeted
blocking?

~~~
oelmekki
That was my first thought as well, but the blocking reason reads : "This URL
has been categorized under : Criminal Skills / Hacking news".

This sounds targeted : I guess a torrent domain name wildcard would have read
something like "pirate downloading".

EDIT : btw, if "hacking news" is a reason enough for blocking a website, I
fear for the security skills of future generations of developers.

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setzer22
Not to mention this very site

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shpx
This website which called itself and which still calls itself Hacker News is
in no way about hacking, nor hackers, nor news (apologies to Voltaire). Just
look at yesterday's front page stories
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-08-25](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-08-25).

The word hacker is meant in the somewhat esoteric "someone that likes
discovering clever tricks" sense. I doubt that's the definition Verizon is
using.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)

[https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-evolution-of-hacker-
ne...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-evolution-of-hacker-news/)

~~~
jobigoud
We all know that, but the ones doing the blocking based on name might not.

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untangle
If you'd like to know how this comes about, point your fav search tool at "web
content filter" (WCF).

A WCF can be implemented anywhere along the chain from web site (content) to
browser. Most commonly, it is a part of a DNS service or a firewall/router.

Think of a WCF as a gun pointed at unwanted web content (porn, hate, gambling,
etc.). Like a gun, the WCF needs bullets and a shooter.

The most commonly used "bullets" for the WCF are publicly-available blacklists
of sites, categorized by content type. Most commonly, these lists are
community-driven and then triaged by admins. So it's easy for a site like
TorrentFreak to make it onto one or more of these lists. It takes work to then
get off the list, but it's doable.

Lastly, the "shooter" in this analogy is any entity -- ISP, wifi vendor,
hotel, etc. -- that thinks it's a good policy to filter the web. You can see
where a hotel may filter to reduce bandwidth consumption and/or reduce
complaints from parents.

Historically, WCFs have been deployed on corporate LANs, in schools, and in
homes. But we are seeing increasing deployment in public-facing networks --
even at the national level. And this smacks of censorship.

I hope that I didn't stretch my weapon analogy too far and good luck to TF in
getting off the lists. (The Wikipedia entry for "breast" has the same
challenge.)

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andrepd
The message is, anyone who advocates for different ideas or pushes for an
alternative is blocked and censored. What free speech.

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toyg
It's currently working fine on my Virgin residential line and my Virgin mobile
phone.

I guess the hotel opted-in (or never opted-out, which I had to) the
government-mandated "pornwall" that all UK ISPs are supposed to "voluntarily"
implement.

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Grollicus
Why would a government-mandated "pornwall" block torrentfreak?

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DanBC
It wouldn't, it doesn't. This is a company buying in web-filtering from
another company. There's no legislation forcing them to do this.

~~~
toyg
There is a _threat_ of legislation. The government has made clear that, should
the industry not voluntarily implement pornwalls (with default opted-in), they
would have easily legislated (nobody wants to end up in The Sun as "the MP for
porn"). This accelerated after the Tories got in, but it was already lingering
before. All major ISPs now have a default pornwall.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, but this type of link is not being caught up in the pornwall.

This blocking is a perfectly normal corporate block.

There are many products that will do this type of blocking; they've existed
for a long time (long before government pornwalls were suggested); and they
all suck because they all block too much stuff.

Shitty corporate blocking is a problem, but it has nothing to do with
government blocks.

~~~
toyg
The block is branded Virgin Wifi, look at the pic in TFA. So at minimum it's
an ISP-level block; I'm not aware of Virgin selling multiple blocks, so it's
reasonable to assume it's the same as the pornwall.

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gok
Hmmm maybe because it is? This is like High Times taking offense that they’re
treated like a drugs magazine.

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Dylan16807
The word 'magazine' is the difference. It would be ridiculous to treat the
High Times as if they were actual drugs, right?

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taf2
I wonder if they are blocking by known ips or just dns?

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bcaa7f3a8bbc
Create a Tor v3 hidden service as a backup then.

~~~
dewey
I think the 0.5% of technical users willing to browse with Tor will also be
able to use a VPN.

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mirimir
Damn. Bloody idiots.

And well, that's why we have VPN services.

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klez
Please, keep it civil.

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some_account
Who is surprised?

We are going in the direction of idiocrazy (great movie) as a society and
people are caring less and less about anyone else. So that makes it easy to
spy on people or block sites, specially since Google is still seen as a
positive force in tech. :/

