TalkTalk (British ISP) rolls out porn filter

Re:TalkTalk (British ISP) rolls out porn filter by casca on Sunday May 13, 2012 @06:16PM (#3968535)

These is completely a political move. The history of this is that for many years, the UK ISPs told the Government that implementing filters was too difficult and expensive. Last year TalkTalk broke ranks and launched their HuaweiSymantec-based filtering product for all their customers for free. Since then, they've been very cozy with the 2 main MPs who've been pushing this, Claire Perry and Lynne Featherstone. These MPs wanted "Active Choice" whereby everyone should decide on sign-up whether they wanted automatic porn filters.

At some point, they decided that most people do not change often enough so would not be forced to make this Active Choice. TalkTalk again leap to the rescue by making all current customers do it.

So this is completely a political move to keep ahead of the other ISPs and on the best side of the Government and media.

For those who are a little interested in how good the TalkTalk filter is - it's terrible. They only block HTTP so bypassing is as easy as adding an "s" into your URL bar. Also, they don't block any VPNs or other proxies.

To make it even more useless, it doesn't even block a lot of the HTTP versions of some major porn sites. Reddit NSFW section is one example.

TL;DR: Talktalk are riding a political wave. Their product sucks.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:TalkTalk (British ISP) rolls out porn filter by SagelyGuru on Sunday May 13, 2012 @06:46PM (#3968626)

Yes, and such moves just keep coming because all governments dearly wish to establish firm internet censorship under their own control. (I would love to be proven wrong on this, of course)

The discussions about 'the choice being with the user' and the effectiveness of filtering out sex (insert anything else here that you might be led by the media to morally abhor) are red herrings. These 'moral outrages' are not the real targets but the means to justify putting in place mechanisms to attack the real targets, such as the likes of the Wikileaks.

This is why their poor effectiveness does not matter and the choice is initially suggested to belong to the user. It won't last.

[ Parent | on HN ]