UK porn filter blocks League of Legends update | Hacker News Reader

UK porn filter blocks League of Legends update

joystiq.com

191 pointsJacksonGariety86 comments

Obligatory link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails, forum posts or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked."

Even Google has this problem with some common words. If you type "Nudel", which is German for noodle, into the Google search box, you won't get auto-complete entries presumably because it contains the word "nude". This happens even on the German Google version (?hl=de).

Interestingly, it seems that Bing does a better job of separating "Nudel" and "nude" as it does offer appropriate auto-complete entries. I'm not sure how widespread this problem is and how Google and Bing compare on other search terms, though, since I only randomly stumbled upon this issue while searching for recipes.

Strange, did they fix it in 12h? For me "Nudel" autocompletes.

Indeed, I checked before posting my previous comment to verify that autocomplete for "Nudel" was still broken but it's fixed now, at least on the English version. If you go to google.com/?hl=de to force the German version then it's still broken.

Another autocomplete curiosity I found: "Mädchen", German for "girl", is blocked on the German version of Google while it autocompletes on the English version (not sure if this was just changed along with "Nudel" or not) even though the English equivalent is blocked on neither Google language version.

And you can obtain hours of hilarity by putting "buttbuttination" and similar terms into your preferred search engine.

I really like "clbuttic". Not least because it's actually self-descriptive, "clbuttic" is a clbuttic profanity filter mistake.

My favourite was 'consbreastutional'. It even sounds like a formal thing.

PCPro and Wired suggest otherwise.

[0] http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386665/league-of-legend... [1] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/21/league-of-leg...

Sigh. I had to read half the page before I saw this. Can we get this to the top?

I love incompetent filtering like this, it irritates those who might not otherwise care. It would be nice to see it commonplace and socially acceptable to disable the filters purely because of how rubbish they are.

On the flipside, overfiltering that begets controversy like this tells the PTB what people care about. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, so sayeth the sociopath, and hey, any information on undesirables is gravy.

This reminds me of the early days of parental web control products like Net Nanny. I remember being frustrated that www.titanicmovie.com was blocked and asking my brother why. And then I learned what tits referred to :)

I'm actually from Scunthorpe. Being quite young and innocent, we never actually knew the particular offensive word contained within until we had to work out why the school computers were changing our town name to SXXXXhorpe.

when i was 13ish we had AOL and Homestead was blocked by the parental controls. i installed a keylogger to steal my dad's password and when he went to work i would sneak onto his account so i could make websites using Homestead.

And then Kate Winslet showed you a pair!

Relevant username.

Yeah, not so smart. A quick look at blekko's crawl data says that about 1/2 of the urls matching /sex/i are not objectionable, assuming you don't mind your kids seeing something labeled 'sexy'. A pretty crappy filter.

Here are 10 random urls that have /sex/i in them: 2 overblocks, 1 news article about sex offenders, 4 urls that mention "sexy", and 3 sex sites.

  https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/news/3322/essex-history-revealed-through-photographs
  http://trace.tv/en/urban/video/1345_top_sexy_boys_rihanna_s_special
  http://nutrius.tumblr.com/post/33689144704/sextafoil
  http://www.tribunetimes.com/article/20121016/NEWS/310160041/Treatment-being-sought-juvenile-sex-offenders
  http://sexypornocams.com/
  http://macys.tumblr.com/post/34356483165/spotted-and-sexy-a-leopard-eye-makes-for-the
  http://www.platinumsexpass.com/
  http://520sex.530video.info/
  http://bocadelrio.olx.com.mx/sexo-masculino-limpieza-para-restaurante-en-veracruz-iid-373475442
  http://www.waycoolgadgets.com/sexy-tron-costume/

I assume all things Essex are likewise unreachable.

(The implication of my comment being that the filtering mechanism is not limited to being that dumb; the stupidity in the particular (as opposed to the general) may be laid at the feet of incompetent management.

In the general, the incompetence -- and maliciousness -- has already been rightly laid at the feet of governent as well as its subornation to vested and entrenched private interests.)

Well, that's one way to encourage people to turn off an idiotic filter. Hopefully more game updates / media will add random "expertsexchange"-like URLs.

This is complete incompetence. I am opposed to filtering at all, but if they are going to do it there are much more effective ways to do it that aren't very complicated, and if they don't want to do it themselves there are companies that do this.

Spam filtering has been extremely successful with just taking keywords that are commonly found or not found in spam and updating the probability that it is or is not spam. A single word isn't enough to indicate that something is porn, especially a common one like "sex", especially if it was found in a string of characters rather than an individual word.

I like this. Companies should use filenames containing banned words in protest.

From the perspective of the filter is it working like intended. The word sex is in there, if any character can be used as a whitespace. They limit the such characters, but then you would use dirty words with underscores or punctuators, which would get through. Therefore such filter for words in useless and impossible to make accurate enough.

This is not the first time ISP deep package inspection cause trouble for League of Legends. A Swedish ISP identified league of legends game traffic as bittorrent and created an unplayable state for about 3 months.

Of course, world of warcraft has had no such issues. There are too many users and too much money, and so bugs get fixed on Saturday night if needed. Others have to just hope the bug gets fixed before the company losses too much money and too many customers.

I would like to see net neutrality laws could impose some liability for ISP who interfere with their customers traffic. It would self correct much of today problems, while still not outlaw filters, DPI and QoS as a technical solution.

I didn't hear about the Swedish ISP news, but League of Legends actually does have a bit torrent client installed with it (Pando Media Booster), and I believe League of Legends has much larger user base and similar if not larger profits than WoW.

I think that problem had more to do with Riot being based in North America.

There's no "UK Porn Filter". Please stop believing this.

We all know that there are various filters, different for each ISP, which exist because the government pressured them in to it. Generically and collectively we are all oh so terribly lazy and refer to them as a UK porn filter.

Please stop believing that we are stupid enough to take that short hand as literal.

I've read many posts from people who think that the government controls the filter and controls what is on the filter and that the filter is mandatory.

It's important to correct that misinterpretation.

Are you suggesting that the UK government does not have a certain list of banned sites that it sends to ISPs that prevent them from being viewed? That sounds like a UK porn filter to me. It also sounds like a filter that the government can use for other purposes, in much the same way it can pick up people for "terrorism" whose sole crime is engaging in political activity the government does not like.

>We all know that there are various filters, different for each ISP... Please stop believing that we are stupid enough to take that short hand as literal.

I didn't know this. Perhaps I'm stupid.

There is a "UK Porn Filter". You can, however, opt out, and existing customers may currently not yet be affected. There is a fear that people will blindly choose the default "opt in" because of taboo and other social pressures. Also, in some cases it's very difficult to opt out (for example, I cannot opt out of my mobile content filter because I don't own a credit card).

The filter on your mobile phone has existed for years (when I was a teenager in 2006 my Orange mobile phone had such a filter), it's a practice over a decade old. It has nothing to do with the supposed "UK Porn Filter" (which doesn't exist).

The 'UK Porn Filter' refers to the default content filtering by ISPs pushed by David Cameron and implemented by UK ISPs. Whether there's one huge filter affecting everyone in the UK (there isn't) or every ISP in the UK implements a filter of some kind based on arbitrary but consistent criteria, the term isn't wholly unreasonable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit...

Which mobile phone provider ?

I just went into the three shop and said "take the porn block off please"

My nearest provider (Vodafone) store is over an hours drive away. I've never particularly considered going there; but even if that is a possibility I'd still class it as "difficult to opt out".

I personally would also feel quite embarrassed going into a shop and having to effectively tell staff I want to look at porn. I don't think I would do it.

If you don't think You're freedom is worth two hour's effort then I rather despair. And you don't have to say "porn please" just "turn off the filter please", I just don't succumb to Cameron and his Daily Mail ilk suggesting it is something to be embarrassed about.

My only point was that these filters can be difficult to turn off. Please feel free to despair at the large number of average Joes who also won't put in the effort. That's quite the problem.

(fwiw, I rarely use my phone for web browsing anyway, and have a nice uncensored VPN connection for my home system)

The hoops some people have to jump through to turn off the filters on mobile Internet is disturbing. They shouldn't demand a passport and nothing else will do, or other odd systems of ID.

I'm ambivalent about the filters. I think they're stupid and pointless but so long as they're easy to turn off they're okay. They stop idiots calling for worse systems.

You're playing semantic games. There's a series of different filters at each UK ISP put in place by government request. Whether there's one brick wall around the entire country or a bunch of separate walls of different materials it's still a wall.

Slight wave of hand There is no porn Filter.

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

You can go about your business.

Move along.

last line of the article "Only new customers affected"

so, at the moment there is no filter for old customers, but that will change.

All the ISPs say only new customers are affected.

I have had Virgin for over 6 months now and it suddenly enabled itself. Same goes for my parents who have been with Sky for a number of years now and their filter enabled itself and my mother couldn't even load her work email.

Elaborate, maybe?

The government "asked" (read: pressured) some of the biggest ISPs to provide parental filtering controls to all customers, set at a broadband account level. For new customers these filters are enabled by default, but any customer can turn them off through their broadband account control panel (see here: http://i.imgur.com/dWxORfJ.png). There are quite a few smaller ISPs who have refused to implement these filters. There is no filtering at a country level and anyone can opt out with one click.

The difference between now and 1 year ago is that instead of being opt-in the parental filters ISPs provide are now opt-out (for new customers).

"one click" "new customers" these claims have been called into doubt in this thread already.

I can only speak for myself but my experience has been exactly as I claimed. I have two broadband connections in my home, one from BT and one from Virgin Media. The BT connection has no filtering enabled (the screenshot in my post is from my BT account) and it only took one click to confirm I didn't want filtering, my Virgin Media connection is not filtered and I haven't had to touch any settings for that.

Perhaps an individual ISP has improperly implemented their system?

If there was no filtering on BT, why did you have to click to confirm anything? What would happen if you did not confirm?

I wanted to see how the system worked so that I would be able to comment on it from a position of experience and be able to provide screenshots for when it was being discussed.

If you're posting to Hacker News, we can probably assume you're above the average level of computer usage. Maybe for you it seems like "one click," but for grandma and her new laptop, would it be?

> Perhaps an individual ISP has improperly implemented their system?

This is most likely the case. My larger point being, let's not even defend or apologize for this system.

I wonder if you could sue them for false advertising for claiming to be able to differentiate between sex education and pornography.

Well if there is a UK filter for porn I can assure you I appear to be on the right side of it. ;)

Computer game playing is inherently pornographic!!

Haven't folks cottoned on to the relationship between the term 'joystick' and the location of the male sex organ, as well as the attendant and persistently vigorous manipulations of said levers?

Both the PC industries, ie the Political Correctness and Personal Computer industries need to come up with a less offensive term, before the whole terminology degenerates into farce.

This seems like bollocks because I'm on one of the "big four" ISPs and I can quite happily request anything I like other than a few sites listed here:

http://help.sky.com/security/privacy/our-approach-to-protect...

All of these can be trivially accessed by proxy sites.

Your filter is not enabled.

The sites listed in the URL you mention are blocked by CleanFeed, the censorship mechanism developed to block child porn and repurposed by the courts for commercial protection. CleanFeed can't be disabled with a phone call to your ISP.

Well I haven't disabled any filters, haven't been asked about filters and I'm a new customer as of last week.

Are you a new customer? The filter is on by default for new customers only at the moment. It'll be rolling out to existing clients later on (few months) where you decide to opt in or opt out (however they plan on asking).

Yes last week.

You don't have the porn filter enabled. This guy does.

just one more reason to play DoTA 2 instead

Well, now we do have a problem.

I totally get all the snarky comments and dislike for the porn filter but as a father of a 11-year-old girl who surfs the web I am 100% behind the idea of regulating material that is not suitable for kids. The current filter may or may not work but the idea is sound and I'd like to think that the politicians who are putting the filter into place are doing so for the right reasons, i.e. to protect innocent eyes.

She's probably not as innocent as you'd like to believe, and she's probably tougher than you give her credit for. She also has a basic human right to access information.

Please try to see that restricting information when someone is young deforms their worldview for the rest of their life. We as parents hope that the deformation is a positive one, but this isn't necessarily so. We're biased into thinking we've made positive choices for our children regardless of any evidence to the contrary. The bias is hardwired, and unless we take conscious steps to evaluate whether our behavior makes sense then it's easy to get swept up in a "think of the children" argument.

Totally agree with you but I'm sure you'd agree that watching porn is not something that a 11-year-old should be doing? She is more or less free to browse what she wants, she reads Wikipedia articles, reads the news etc etc but I can't see how viewing porn would be good for her worldview?

If she is actively seeking it out, there really are no technical solutions that you can use to stop her (short of taking all electronics from her). She'll find a way around any filter. If that is the sort of situation that you're in, sitting down with her and having a talk is really the only workable solution.

If the concern is accidentally viewing porn... well, I have a few thoughts on that:

1) How often does that actually happen? My office does not have content filters on the internet, yet I have never accidentally viewed porn at work. I can't actually remember the last time I accidentally viewed porn at work. I strongly suspect that 95% of the "accident" cases are excuses that people make when they get caught.

2) If the concern is popups and she won't stop going to shady sites that have porn popups, use adblock. Problem solved. Also, tell her not to go to those sites, before you get the UK equivalent of a DMCA notice from your ISP...

3) Accidentally viewing a few naked people in popups is probably not going to damage her worldview. Would it be good for it? No. But I don't think it will cause any damage either.

It's the same logic as with DRM: it won't prevent anybody from doing what they want, but it will stop a significant part of them.

Right now websites have no way not to deliver inappropriate contents. The best they can do is to ask "are you 18+?" (see for instance Reddit), which a 3 years old could bypass.

A basic protection against accidental view and/or kids a bit too curious could be as simple as:

A) Have the adult sites to insert a HTTP header marking them as such. They have no reason from doing it, plus not delivering porn to kids is a legal requirement in most countries (or I guess so). This is a flexible solution for sites with mixed contents such as Reddit, because the mark is per-page.

B) Have browsers not to show these sites if the 'adult content' is not ticked in the user profile.

C) Make a tutorial that explains how to create restricted user profiles on their computers (so they can prevent their kids from using browsers that don't support this policy).

Alternatively, but it would impact too much websites I guess, is to use a "safe for kids" header and have browsers to only show such sites etc.

>watching porn is not something that a 11-year-old should be doing

Why?

Note I'm truly not trying to start a fight here, but I do try to stay open-minded and question assumptions. To me, this:

>I can't see how viewing porn would be good for her worldview

is not only not terribly convincing, it's also not a reason to censor something.

For example, Wikipedia can't convey the atrocities which are being committed in Syria as we speak. Videos can. Such a video may be the spark to convince her to pursue a path of providing humanitarian aid to war-torn countries. But such a motive won't come about if her information inflow is restricted to morally neutral content.

It's admittedly unlikely, but on the other hand, it's just one example. Everyone should be free to parent how they see fit, but it's probably important to spend time meditating on the full implications of taking actions that align with our own preconceived moral systems. Such actions often have unforeseen consequences, and it's so easy to convince ourselves that the good outweighs the bad when we really have no way of knowing.

It is kind of interesting that Wikipedia articles on war crimes and atrocities seem to typically be rather tame, while I am hard-pressed to find an article about a disease does not have photographs that make me want to vomit in my mouth.

I think children's worldview is largely determined by how their parents teach them (usually indirectly) how to internalize information they absorb and encounters they have.

What would your 11-year-old do if she saw porn? How would she think about it? How would it affect her worldview? Would it really be negative?

How would you have reacted at that age? Would it have changed your worldview in a negative way? What kinds of information does she not have access to that she should? When should she be sexually educated?

Just some things to think about.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of an eleven year old girl getting access to "bukkake bitch anal gape slut".

Can you understand how that is different from "access to information"?

This post makes you sound deranged. Unless you're just talking about pointless filtering of wikipedia articles?

This topic is uncomfortable. When I suggest that maybe 11-year-old girls should have access to pornography, I feel like a fucking creep. But you know what? That doesn't make me wrong.

Often, it's the most obvious and deep-set assumptions that need to be challenged most. Above all, I'd appreciate it if you'd spend less time calling other people deranged, and more time civilly arguing your case.

Many countries have age restrictions for accessing items - alcohol, pornography, tobacco, right to vote, ability to consent to sex.

Do you agree that those restrictions aim to serve a useful purpose? (We can ignore flaws in implementation here because we're just talking about the principle of restriction). You might agree or disagree on some of the restrictions but do you even agree with the general practice of restricting some things from children?

>Many countries have age restrictions for accessing items - alcohol, pornography, tobacco, right to vote, ability to consent to sex.

I'm aware of that. That fact alone (that some restrictions are widely-adopted) doesn't justify them.

>...do you even agree with the general practice of restricting some things from children?

First, I think that "children" needs a more rigid definition. And of course my response varies depending on the particular restriction (as you've already acknowledged). But it's not terribly difficult for me to imagine some situation involving some child which I would find undesirable in some way.

And because I can easily see your vague, unfocused question leading a bit more off-topic than I'd prefer to stray, I think I'll leave it at that.

Having the possibility to access something doesn't mean someone will go find it or come across it. The flip side of this is that the filter, by being imperfect, will probably block something non-pornographic that may be relevant to her as 11 is getting close to the age where solid, factual information about sex and development are helpful.

> Can you understand how that is different from "access to information"?

There is no difference. Access to undesire-able or icky information is no different from access to desire-able information when it comes to filter software, what is blocked is blocked.

I've got a daughters aged 7 and 5. They've had unfettered connectivity all their lives. I'm far more concerned about them finding crap material that "suitable" for kids, such as most of Netflix's kids category. I'm much more worried that they're drawn into watching crappy cartoons or playing dumb Flash games. Companies invading their privacy is far more a threat than some random porn site injecting an ad somewhere.

My 5-yr-old says she's looking forward to playing Go online with her own account. I'm not in the slightest bit worried that she's at risk by being in the chatrooms on KGS. Both girls like Reddit (/r/roomporn and /r/aww and stuff like that).

My kids don't need the government protecting their innocent eyes. They need intelligence on how to understand what they're doing, and the drive to inquire and be open about things bothering them.

It's like parents that worry about their kids going somewhere because of "pedophiles", yet have no problems driving them many miles each day, which is absolutely a higher risk to their safety. These parents are not acting rationally, they are not improving safety, they just feel like they're doing something.

What's the real threat model that I'm trying to prevent as a parent? Kids viewing porn? Really? As my kids age, if they decide they want to start watching porn, I hope we're able to speak intelligently about it. Sexual maturity can be difficult for people, and porn is only one small aspect of the whole thing.

So what's the real threat? People attacking them? But retarded URL filters won't help. And teaching them general savvy and critical thinking will help more against that threat, and in life in general.

I'm not sure what threat a stupid filter is supposed to address. In 3 decades, I haven't accidentally run into any life-scaring materials on the Internet (or BBSes), and if I actively wanted to find something, I'd find it regardless of restrictions.

The only filters I've wished for is to remove "dumb" content, but that's just my failing as a parent to get my children engaged with more intelligent stuff.

Okay, so install a filter yourself. Alternatively, opt IN to a filter.

Why impose your choice as the default on an entire nation?

I get that concern, and it's your prerogative as the parent to limit what your daughter can access on the Internet.

What I don't get is delegating this to the government rather than using something that's under your control.

If you don't want your children to watch porn you are supposed to subscribe to a service which keeps lists of websites which offer or are believed to offer porn and block them in your router, without your ISP or the government's involvement. These services have existed for a long time, but it looks like the governments want to get involved for surveillance purposes.

It is your router which is supposed to be doing that, not your ISP. What you are essentially doing is giving the government and the ISP an excuse to monitor the your interests and communications and those of your family, which they would in any case, only in this instance you have given them your explicit permission.

Shouldn't you be paying for a cleanfeed connection for your home broadband then instead of having the govt. back hand it onto everyone?

> I totally get all the snarky comments and dislike for the porn filter but as a father of a 11-year-old girl who surfs the web I am 100% behind the idea of regulating material that is not suitable for kids.

Does the filter protect children from "cyberbullying"?

It protects them from learning about sex. That will work wonders for teen pregnancy rates.

Back in my day the best place to learn about sex was the school canteen.

I can understand why you feel that way - but how about taking responsibility and regulating your daughter's use of the internet? It doesn't seem that difficult to me. Monitor her browsing on the home computer (an 11 year old doesn't need their own private PC); if she has a smartphone disable the browser and app store (same applies on a tablet) and take advantage of the parental controls. This is probably also going to be a lot more reliable than trusting our incompetent government to do a good job.

You should be regulating that material and there are many ways of doing it from limiting access to the computer to when you are physically present to all kinds of software solutions. There is no reason for the government to be involved nor should they be determining what is blocked. You should be doing that.

> There is no reason for the government to be involved

They aren't.

> nor should they be determining what is blocked

They aren't.

> You should be doing that

He is.

The government has pushed the ISPs to offer a software filter for free to all customers. When signing up you get the choice to either have or not have it. BT for example have two buttons, one for "yes please, free filter thanks" and one for "nope, I'll handle this". It can also be turned off at any time by the account holder.

Then buy a netfilter. They're about £20.

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