[attrition] Surf No Evil: The Fight Against Big Brother

[lyger]

http://attrition.org/security/rant/z/filter2.html

Submicron writes:

As previously discussed, there are a number of inherent flaws in the 
practice of web content classification and how the fruits of that 
classification are then sold in the form of content filtering products. 
The impact of these flaws, however, are not limited to the consumers of 
content filtering products. Mis-classification of web content affects 
websites themselves, often as harshly as it affects users of content 
filtering who need access to the resources provided by mis-classified 
sites. Before discussing the impact of mis-classification on legitimate 
websites and users of content filtering, it is important to understand the 
process by which a website is classified (or mis-classified) by the 
content classification industry.

[.]

Jericho writes:

To better illustrate this problem, consider the following web sites and 
their URLs. Each one is a legitimate business that has absolutely nothing 
to do with indecent material, but runs the risk of being filtered due to 
'inappropriate content' simply because of the site's name. Some filtering 
products act on the assumption that if a 'bad' word is in the URL or site 
name, it must be part of the content they are offering.

[.]

Lyger writes:

... which leads us to a time in the not-so-distant past (as you will read 
below) where attrition.org was again directly affected by the content 
filtering industry. Shortly after the release of an email to the "General 
Attrition Mayhem Mail List", we received a curious email stating the 
following:

From: A.A. (xxxxxxxx at xxxxxxxx.com)
To: lyger (lyger at attrition.org)
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:01:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Bloody Bobbing Bollocks, You've Been Blocked!

lyger-

Wow... just wow.  Imagine my happiness when I arrived at work after a few 
days off and saw a bunch of new dataloss entries and a new going postal. 
"Good times," I thought to myself," as I typed attrition.org into my 
address bar only to be greeted by this:

You have attempted to access a site that is not consistent with 
[Company]'s Internet Usage Policy.

[...]