[circuit10]

Vodaphone blocks this site for being “18+ content”, I guess because of “hacking” or something? There’s no explanation or option to report a false positive and they want you to put in credit card details to confirm your age to unlock it

(I don’t need tips to get around this or anything, I can just connect to another network or use a VPN)

[bagder]

Vodafone... https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2022/05/02/considered-18/

[mardifoufs]

So it's been "on review" for more than a year now?! So the filter is basically unidirectional since they apparently don't care about false positives. I wonder who else uses that filter database provider

[usr1106]

Oh, and Microsoft includes that adult software in their operating system. Can someone report to Vodafone that all Windows PCs must be blocked because they run adult content. Except for those who have deleted curl.exe of course...

[lutrinus]

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31248250

[Freak_NL]

Two xx's. That's almost as bad as three, and surely heuristically naughty.

[mysterydip]

"heuristically naughty" may be my new favorite phrase.

[saalweachter]

I once (early 2000's, comparison shopping) used a heuristic that any video with a volume # greater than 7 was probably porn.

Doesn't work as well today, but there were surprisingly few false positives at the time.

[circuit10]

It could also be to do with the word “hack” because https://hackmii.com/ is blocked too

[version_five]

Good thing there is no shake shack in the UK.

[janstice]

And yet there is a town called Scunthorpe - I wonder if the inhabitants have trouble getting things delivered?

[vidarh]

Indeed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

[denton-scratch]

At one time, a lot of email spam filters would barf on that town's name.

[daveoc64]

https://www.shakeshack.co.uk/

[kypro]

Probably the xx in the domain.

In the UK where 20% of the internet is blocked – it's surprising you haven't experienced this before. Call your service provider and tell them you want access to adult material.

[vidarh]

> In the UK where 20% of the internet is blocked

This sounds like an extreme over-estimate. Some ISP's, mostly mobile ones, default to blocking "adult material" unless you tell them to turn that off. Some of the larger ISPs are under court order to block some specific other content (Pirate Bay in particular; my old ISP was one of them, my current ISP happily lets me access it, not that I've ever done so other than to see if it's blocked).

Most ISPs block at most a tiny set of sites and personally in 23 years of using UK ISPs I've never "organically" run into those blocks (as in, no site I actually had any interest in accessing has been blocked; I've only seen them when checking whether people were right that a specific site was blocked). And yes, that includes visiting sites with "adult material" without running into any blocks.

I do have a VPN, so it'd take me as long to bypass as it takes me to press one button in my browser address bar, but I only need that to evade IP region/country blocks - never needed it to get around UK filtering.

[Karellen]

> Probably the xx in the domain.

According to the `considered-18` post linked by a sibling comment:

> It shows that this filter is for this specific host name only [daniel.haxx.se], not for the entire haxx.se domain.

So, even more of a WTF.

[techwiz137]

Someone probably saw daniel, ha, xxx interpreted it "It's me Daniel, ha, this is my porn collection" and flagged it.

[rob74]

Try this one: https://www.xxxlutz.at/ (don't worry, it's an Austrian furniture chain).

[circuit10]

That’s not blocked

[circuit10]

Wait, but the site in the article isn’t either any more?

[circuit10]

> In the UK where 20% of the internet is blocked

That’s not true. I’ve experienced this once before that I can remember, on https://hackmii.com/ and it doesn’t happen on my home network except on actual scam sites which isn’t a government thing but an ISP feature that can probably be turned off. This is a Vodaphone thing, not a UK thing.

I don’t care that much about this specific site, I guess I just want to complain that they don’t have a way to report false positives which maybe isn’t the best reason to post a comment on an unrelated article but still

[aflag]

> Call your service provider and tell them you want access to adult material.

That must be one awkward call.

[regularfry]

They overblock, probably intentionally, so it's easy to find a "legit" reason to unblock. It was something really banal for me - I think they'd blocked a furniture site or something.

[viraptor]

Accessing adult material is a legit reason to unblock.

[regularfry]

Buying furniture is a very adult proposition.

[prmoustache]

Why? They already know a large number of people watch porn.

[aflag]

We pretend no one does, though.

[bin_bash]

he says in the article they only block "daniel.haxx.se", not other subdomains

[Quarrel]

My ISP in the UK does not block anything.

Even on those that do, 20% seems rather high??

[jojobas]

Obligatory oi/porn license.

[madeofpalk]

You can't just disable this 'feature' from Vodafone? I'm in the UK and my ISP doesn't do this.

I'm not sure why you would want your ISP interfering with your traffic like this. To me, it seems like a dealbreaker.

[Reason077]

> "You can't just disable this 'feature' from Vodafone? I'm in the UK and my ISP doesn't do this."

Yes, you can disable it quite easily. Usually by entering a credit card number in their app or website to prove you're 18, or alternatively by contacting their customer service chat.

But of course, only pervs who want to access porn would do that, right?

In my experience it's a good idea to disable it regardless, it as there are often a lot of "false positives", and the filtering can sometimes cause performance problems. (Unless you've got kids and really do want to block porn, but eventually they're gong to discover VPNs...)

[madeofpalk]

> But of course, only pervs who want to access porn would do that, right?

No? Why would you say this? I disabled this back with my old carrier and it was pretty painless - I don't recall there being any stigma attatched to turning off the filters. I've since moved carriers and I don't remember having to disable filters - maybe I did or maybe something about signing up turned it off?

[doublerabbit]

I'm on EE PAYG. I have to go in to a store and show them my ID if I wish to remove content protection. I can't even visit webarchive pages with it enabled.

Painless based on provider, otherwise what described above is a pain.

[madeofpalk]

All I can tell you is the experience I had, which I don't remember to be a pain.

[stametseater]

> But of course, only pervs who want to access porn would do that, right?

Are people actually afraid of some stranger call-center worker silently judging them, but not even saying anything out-loud about it because the call is recorded and they'd be fired if they tried to actually shame you?

[pantalaimon]

Can you make a contract with an ISP in the UK when you are under 18?

[Reason077]

You presumably can't get a contract if you're under 18 because that would usually mean a credit check. But you can certainly get an account, on PAYG or pre-paid monthly direct debit that is not subject to contract. Some providers have "UK residents 18+ only" in their terms but others do not.

[concordDance]

All UK ISPs do. It's very annoying trying to access sci-hub

[vidarh]

No, they don't all do that. Those kind of blocks are mostly confined to a handful of the larger ISPs, and especially the mobile providers. I've yet to manage to find something my current ISP blocks, for example. Might well be they block something, but none of the "usual suspects" that I'm willing to test (e.g. Pirate Bay, Sci Hub)

[daveoc64]

All of the major ISPs and mobile networks do.

The UK government threatened to make it a legal requirement that all internet connections have filters for adult content on by default.

The major ISPs and mobile networks voluntarily put filtering in place by default to avoid the regulation.

The filters can usually be removed quite easily.

While there are some smaller ISPs that don't put filtering in place, they account for something like < 10% of the market.

[petecooper]

>All UK ISPs do.

Not all of them. I’m on Zen, no filters as far as I’m aware, sci-hub works fine. Libgen is fine. Torrent sites that the ‘main’ ISPs block come up just fine, too.

Edit: some of the ISPs that do seem to land on this URL (note http) –

http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk

whois shows BT (large ISP and telco) as the owner.

[rjsw]

Andrews and Arnold doesn't do any filtering.

[circuit10]

I can if I put in bank card details to confirm my age but it would be better if this didn’t happen in the first place unless there’s actually something 18+ on the site

[Waterluvian]

Wow. I’ve never seen this class of ISP censorship. Is this some sort of government mandated system or has Vodaphone taken it upon themselves to do this?

[daveoc64]

The UK government told ISPs to put the filtering in place voluntarily, or else the government would make a law requiring it.

All of the major ISPs and mobile networks now do it on a voluntary basis.

[Joker_vD]

It's pretty amazing that executive branch can enforce not just unimplemented but even undrafted laws.

[newswasboring]

> There’s no explanation or option to report a false positive and they want you to put in credit card details to confirm your age to unlock it

Are we even sure this is vodaphone? This sounds so much like a scam pop up ad.

[circuit10]

Yes, it’s definitely Vodaphone, they want you to go to their settings page to do it and it’s not a pop up

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>(I don’t need tips to get around this or anything, I can just connect to another network or use a VPN)

A better solution would be to tell Vodafone to switch off the censorship on your service.

[autoexec]

The best solution would be the remove whatever stupid law allowed for that kind of censorship in the first place. As a bonus, if the UK puts up a better fight against this stuff it'll make it harder for it spread. Any nation where people have a vote should be strongly rejecting that crap.

[Joker_vD]

Apparently, judging from the sibling comments, such law doesn't even exist: the UK government "advised" the ISPs to "voluntarily" adopt such censorship on their own, or else the government would actually bother to draft and pass such a law.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I'm happy for an ISP to be allowed to carry out as much censorship as it wants, provided it makes that known. They definitely shouldn't be forced to, though — in the general case — and I don't think anyone's demonstrated that they have been so in this case.

[autoexec]

> I'm happy for an ISP to be allowed to carry out as much censorship as it wants, provided it makes that known.

Knowing about it won't help you if every ISP option you have is doing the same thing.

Where I live, we have laws that prevent people from interfering with the mail. If I send a letter to someone, once it's accepted the mail carriers can't generally withhold it and make demands before they deliver it or open my letter and remove or change whatever words/pages they feel like before completing delivery.

I think the internet should be treated the same. Beyond some basic QOS ISPs should be dumb pipes and be mostly forbidden from messing with things you send/receive over the connection.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I think there's a reasonable need for an ISP to act as a censor, if that's what its customers require. Hopefully, enough people want a censorship-free experience that every provider becoming a censor is unlikely to happen.

If your mail service had a "make sure mail from known pornographers doesn't get delivered to my house" option, and you had kids at home, you might well opt for it.

[autoexec]

If someone wants to block certain sites there are client-based solutions that people can set up themselves and proxies they can use if they really want to depend on someone else to decide what they should be allowed to see. There's no need for it at the ISP level. At the very least it should be opt in, but something you have to ask to have removed.

[circuit10]

I think this is a reasonable thing for Vodaphone to do, they just need a way to report false positives

[circuit10]

The site seems to not be blocked any more, did someone contact them about it or something?

I would have edited this in to my original comment but it won’t let me any more

[benj111]

I always turn the filters off, prior to that I couldn't even visit the Ubuntu forums.