Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls? | Hacker News Reader

Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls?

urlchecker.o2.co.uk

49 pointsalexcason29 comments

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

>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.

It blocks mainstream news too...

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.)

I was thinking exactly the same thing, I would love a clarification too please.

If you e.g. try "gmail.com", it's blocked. Same for nytimes.com, or stackoverflow.com. I think this has to be the point.

Now, of course, this doesn't prove the "majority" of the internet is blocked.

I haven't found one that isn't blocked yet. Even o2.co.uk is blocked as "Technology and Telecommunication" u12 service. "http://www.bbc.co.uk/" is blocked under two categories, so the poor u12s can't even watch Cbeebies online.

> 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

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

While I had the same thought, I did a few searches and haven't been able to find a site(trying everything from facebook and google to this site and disney) that doesn't have 'blocked' in the 'Parental Control' row in at least one of the boxes that appears. It's to the point that I think I must be interpreting the results incorrectly.

Try McDonalds.com

Enter an URL and the tool will list a variety of block details, including "Open Access", "Default Safety" and "Parental Control (opt in u12 service)". Sometimes a categorization also appears with different access settings.

Many benign sites show as blocked by the "Parental Control (opt in u12 service)" service. Try these: http://www.gov.uk http://www.guardian.com http://www.amazon.com http://www.orange.co.uk http://www.youtube.com http://www.blogspot.com http://www.bing.com http://www.apple.com

A few sites seem to be allowed, such as http://www.google.com and http://www.o2.co.uk and http://www.amazon.co.uk

I'm not 100% clear on whether I'm reading the reports correctly, or whether the opt-in filtering is the same as the forced-choice filter that Cameron has pushed on ISPs. I'm assuming the forced-choice filter is something much less restrictive as I can't imagine anyone applying this filter to themselves by choice.

Curious that they allow Google -- my experiences with primary aged children lead me to the conclusion that the easiest way for them to get at stuff they don't want to see is a (possibly seemingly innocuous) Google images search. It's not like O2 can sniff my SSL connection to block specific searches either.

I resolve my issues with proper supervision. I hope no-one assumes that the u12 blocking means that "The Internet", even in such a reduced form, is safe (whatever that might mean).

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 :)

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

"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.

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.

These restrictions are only done with the customers informed consent. The only blocks without consent is for child porn and other specific court mandated content - such as pirate bay

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.

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

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

Well at least http://www.conservatives.com/ is blocked too.

So is http://foxnews.com. Good riddance.

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!)

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.

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