from Hacker News

Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls?

by alexcason on 12/22/13, 5:56 PM with 29 comments

• by robinhouston on 12/22/13, 6:38 PM

  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.

• by timw6n on 12/22/13, 6:34 PM

  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.

• by jerf on 12/22/13, 6:31 PM

  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.)

• by acd on 12/22/13, 7:38 PM

  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 :)

• by vfclists on 12/22/13, 7:10 PM

  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

• by sdfjkl on 12/23/13, 2:01 AM

  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.

• by Moocat87 on 12/22/13, 6:35 PM

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

• by CallbackJockey on 12/22/13, 6:48 PM

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

• by greglindahl on 12/22/13, 7:35 PM

  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!)