UNITED KINGDOM—U.K. computer magazine PC Pro has published an article titled "Exposed: the shocking flaws in TalkTalk's porn filter." Unfortunately, the only thing shocking about PC Pro's exposé is that they are shocked. The ISPs HomeSafe filter has been promoted by Conservative MP Claire Perry, who is the main supporter of across-the-board mandatory "opt-out" filtering for all ISPs.
First up is their complaint about search engines like Google and Bing. "Even with the filter set to the highest safety level, we were easily able to access pornographic images and video using nothing more sophisticated than popular search engines," wrote Nicole Kobie for PC Pro. "With Google's parental controls flipped off, we accessed pages of pornographic images using Google's Image Search. Although the sites hosting the images were blocked, we were still able to click on the thumbnail images in search results to see enlarged photos—which ironically appear over the warning that the page has been blocked.
"Bing's Image Search, she continued, "faced the same problem—as did its video search, which not only offers several seconds of preview in thumbnail mode, but also pulls in videos directly from the originating site, allowing porn videos to be viewed even if the site itself is on TalkTalk's blacklist."
The opt-in HomeSafe system, however, creates a blacklist of sites that contain problematic content by scanning not only all sites visited by customers who opted-in, but all sites visited by all its customers. It only makes sense that it would not add to the blacklist sites that also contain built-in parental filters, such as search engines. Indeed, that PC Pro seems to expect that the filter would include a search engine of the magnitude of Google is pretty strange, and probably a bit disingenuous on their part, though equally problematically, it also may indicate the extent to which they do not understand how the filter works.
But the article notes other more legitimate issues that make the TalkTalk filter not 100 percent effective, as if anyone thought it would or could be foolproof. One such perceived flaw is the ability of users to access blocked sites using proxies. PC Pro should know full well, however, that the British ISPs have themselves been at the mercy of proxies when it comes to blocking pirate sites like Pirate Bay, which they have been directed by the courts to do. That a filter would be able to do what the ISPs cannot is patently absurd.
Complaining about being able to use Google Talk to generate proxy URls in a different language is also pointing a finger at the wrong culprit. Google, and not the ISP, is certainly at fault in that particular regard.
More legitimate is the complaint about inconsistencies with the filter, but again, these tools are designed to improve with time. TalkTalk as much as confirmed that by releasing an initial statement reminding PC Pro that "if a customer finds a site that they think should be blocked they can alert us so we can take action."
Later, TalkTalk released a more comprehensive statement, which is posted here in its entirety:
"No security solution, whether online or in the real world, is ever 100 percent fail safe and unfortunately there will always be a way of bypassing these systems, be it a parental control service (including those that are installed on individual computers) or a lock on our front door. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't use them—they make a significant contribution to protecting ourselves and our families.
“HomeSafe helps parents manage the content that comes into their home, alongside other tools, such as safe search solutions offered by the likes of Google. There is no silver bullet when it comes to protecting children online, which we have always been the first to point out, but it is important that parents have access to tools which can help them.
“Furthermore, most young children do not seek out pornography and violence online but, as many parents know, they may stumble across it inadvertently. Determined seekers of online porn are one thing; an eight year old doing his or her homework online is another. We are continually working to evolve and improve HomeSafe and have a mechanism for parents to feedback to us. But, for the 430,000 customers who are already using HomeSafe today, it is a simple and effective way of helping to protect their children online.”
It should also be noted that this is not the first time complaints have been lodged about the TalkTalk filte, which in May of last year was called on the carpet by an IT expert who questioned the efficacy of the HomeSafe system.
One could easily suspect that these critiques of a system that could never be 100 percent are meant to provide sustenance to the idea that government must do what industry cannot or will not do.
