I work for a state AG's office, and BoingBoing is, sadly, blocked by SmartFilter...

Why? "Nudity."

Other blocked sites? Anything with "blog" anywhere in the address is blocked as "personal pages."

Theonion.com... "Profanity"

Victoriassecret.com... "Provocative Attire."

Interesting site not blocked? erowid.org.

Go figure.

My webserver, which contains unexciting stuff such as my blog, photos, and acts as a store for roleplaying game records, was blocked by China some time ago. Interestingly, an alternate URL that goes to the same content wasn't.

Not exactly 'censorware', but 'censorcountry' or something.

I should just note that for those who don't live in repressive regimes...uh...I'm excluding the U.S. nominally from that category...you can use a simple VPN to get around this filtering. I use Witopia.net's service. AnchorFree has a free one. There's publicVPN, HotSpotVPN, and JiWire's VPN also. All of these are designed for bypassing and protecting the local link; they pop out on the Internet in a network operation center (mostly co-location facilities that are considered reasonably safe from sniffing), but the point is really to keep any unintentional details from slipping out at a hotspot or hotel network *and* to bypass local filtering.

To follow up on my earlier post, in response to Glenn...

I can't use VPN's, or any IM sites, including AIM, Gchat, Meebo, etc.

I also can't go to tor.org, which is blocked as an "anonymizer."

Stupid workaround: (i.e. stupid that it works) Google's Cache or archive.org.

I work for a run-of-the-mill corporation who just replaced their old filtering method (which was super-easy to bypass) with a SmartFilter stink-hole.

BoingBoing was blocked for a long time (I used a mirror site to get around it) until I begged, pleaded, and bribed the network admin to put BoingBoing on the whitelist.

Among the restricted sites:
any with "blog" in the URL
any labeled "social networking"
any and all streaming audio/video
any photo-sharing site (I used to be able to periodically change my work desktop background image using pictures from my flickr site...not any more)

I am a big Heroes (the TV show) fan, and I check the official site each week to read the new graphic novel and check out any side-plot goodies they offer up. One of the side-plots involved a fictional casino, of which NBC had created a URL. SmartFilter labels the site as "gambling". IT'S COMPLETELY FICTIONAL!

Our website, Exit133, is a blog style hyperlocal website about Tacoma, Washington that emphasizes the civic discussion. While we're treated as media and reporters (good or bad - depending on the day) by every level of government, we're blocked by Websense for being in the category "Message Boards and Clubs".

We do have a forum on the site now. So I could see the message board thing now. Yet, we were being blocked well before the forums went online. And our comments are far less acidic and disturbing than those on the local newspaper website.

The irony is that the city government we cover now uses Websense for their web filtering. At this point we haven't heard of city employees being blocked from viewing us - unlike the local companies that use the same product. Maybe they didn't check that particular box.

I don't have a story about being blocked but I do have a story about the beginnings of this. Back in the 90s as a consultant I met with a guy that wanted to create a safe place for kids to go on the internet. I was no expert on the matter, but I groked what he wanted and understood enough about the internet to tell him that yes the kiddies could go to his site and all his content would be clean and that sure he could, given his AOL style proprietary model, could control the sites visited via his software. Understanding that he would have to hire a staff of people whose only job it would be was to search for and block IP addresses of inappropriate sites. But all the kid would have to do would be open Netscape or IE and they could go anywhere they wanted. That was 10 or 15 years ago and of course we are much more sophistocated in how we deal with the intertubes now but at the time, I sat in his office, understood what he wanted to do, even emphathised with his views, but still. With out control of the domains there was nothing he could do to make money and see his dream. I told him I could not help him and left his office.
My point? You cannot censor a free and open network. You have to watch your kids. The whole point of the internet was guaranteed communication in the event of nuclear war. The message will get through.

DOI blocks LiveJournal, Twitter, MySpace, and comic pages. Reasons: online community, and stunningly: comics. They also block the usual porn and gambling and videos.

Personally I feel online activity, as long as it isn't bandwith binging or child porn, is an issue between the supervisor and the employee. Get yer job done, surf away.

Professionally it bugs me because I have legitimate work related reasons for going to LJ and MySpace. I thought Google's cached pages would work, but they don't.

(It also bugs me personally because I'm so addicted to LJ et al.)

Only work around I know is a proxy, which I'm sure the DOI would not like either.

Sure. As a senior at Dryden High School in upstate New York, my web surfing was frequently inhibited by Websense and its oppressive filtering policies (e.g., no blogs, forums, or https:// URLs) in the name of the Children's Internet Protection Act.

Whenever I encountered a blocked site that I thought shouldn't have been, I would shoot off an e-mail to the network administrator, Patti MacCheyne. One day I was prohibited from visiting krazydad.com, the blog of the creator of the Coverpops featured previously on Boing Boing, due to his downloadable kaleidoscope screensavers. I shot off an e-mail requesting access, but got back a reply saying that only teachers' requests would be considered.

This new policy was asinine and (I argued) illegal -- CIPA only mandates the filtering of things like pornography, and furthermore states that access to legitimate sites must be granted. I blogged about this on my homepage, reproducing the e-mail I was sent and citing several court cases (e.g. ALA v. US) and EFF reports.

The network administrator found the post and had disciplinary action brought against me for publishing her e-mail (ignorant of the fact that, as a public employee, her e-mails are public domain). After the EFF declined to intervene, I was able to successfully argue my way out of discipline by citing numerous lawsuits that were decided in the student's favor. The fact that I had to make a case at all was disturbing -- "it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," indeed!

That said, my website was banned under the category of "Illegal or Questionable" -- according to Websense, reserved for "sites that provide instruction in or promote nonviolent crime or unethical or dishonest behavior or the avoidance of prosecution therefor." (I argued this was slanderous and offered a better categorization of "Exercise of Free Speech").

As far as I know, my blog is still blocked from within the school district. Today, Websense incorrectly categorizes my whole site as a message board. According to my Apache logs, they denied my request for re-categorization without ever visiting. That's efficiency.

I run a very large Sailor Moon (anime) website. http://soul-hunter.com/sailormoon

I am not sure what censorware is blocking it, but for a couple of years now I've been receiving reports from visitors that my site is blocked at schools and libraries as "porn." My site is OBVIOUSLY not porn...

it is to at least one 39 year old Japanese man.

For a minute, I thought that you meant yourself.

could be

I was thinking of the age, not the wig.

now that's just unkind. I could have a glorious mane of my very own. I DO have the warm heart of a little boy. Would you like to see it sometime?

Shouldn't that be in the corpsemeat thread or the Abu Ghraib thread?

depends on what's left after my snack

I would like to address the part about the Boing Boing being blocked at the library.

1. That stinks.

2. I wonder if you have the option at your library of requesting that the filtering be turned off? I am aware that some libraries will filter all computers, but can have the option of unfiltering a specific computer if a patron asks them to.

Hope this helps.

Royce
Librarian

Boing Boing isn't blocked at work (UK local council's network), but the Defeat Censorware page is, under the category "remote proxies". This is a vague category- anything to do with torrents etc. is blocked under this category. Urban dictionary is blocked under the category "violence", which is weird but I think UD sucks, so it doesn't bother me. Political site Lenin's Tomb used to be blocked under this category, but isn't any more.

My anti-censorware section gets blacklisted all the time http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
E.g. by SmartFilter

I don't even bother making an issue of it these days.

Just looking through some old links, The following URLs would probably trip any filter.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/27/nanotech-lab-porn.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/14/new-pornographers-my.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/01/sex-gadget-expose-on.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/08/howto-contract-a-sex.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/16/sex-workers-tales-in.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/30/boing-boing-tv-gay-f.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/20/mod-stripper-auditio.html

and sadly, even this one
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/08/compubeaver-its-a-co.html

Whether they are work-related or not, I can see how boingboing would get easily censored by automatic filters, especially when there is "How to contract a sex worker" posts. Sometimes I have dreamed about how cool it would be if there were numerical identifiers for URLs appearing in my newsreader as to preserve the privacy in what shows up on the company logs.

If Boing Boing didn't post the stuff that is in questionable good taste from time to time, it might not get filtered. Hey, if a books can be published because an editor likes it, then filter 'ware can block sites that it doesn't like: "I'm sorry, but your site has been deamed unworthy by our Mindset-8 Arbiter filter 'ware. This ware is an emergent AI and has the ability to be arbitrarily. Just like a human.

have to litter the web with little bots crawling around trailing a ribbon of forbidden words that they append willy nilly,send everywhere and generally multiply. Filters can't work if cverything is "filterable" Just popularlize the new hello as "Hi(porn)! Put it in all your commuications. Did I tell you about the Thai fellow named Porn-sack?

I get the following error from work after they installed a filter called Network Composer:

Blocked Website
Your access to the website http://www.boingboing.net/ was blocked for the following reason:
Blocked Category: Gambling


Click here to run the Spyware removal tool.
Network Protected by Network Composer™

I wanted to post about some fun issues I've run into with SurfControl at my office. Blogs randomly get blocked by SurfControl for being "pornographic." For example, my best friend's blog was blocked for having pornography. However, his blog tends to center around video games and whatever anime he's watching at the time. I've scoured his blog and found no trace of anything resembling a naked lady.

SurfControl also randomly blocks certain portions of craigslist, depending on how it feels that day.

I submitted a story about using BoingBoing at the Denver Airport on Monday while I was at the Denver Airport(!).

It wasn't too hard to find out how if you looked around enough, but thanks to the hard work of someone against censorware, it was simple!

Of course, my story was rejected as usual.

Anyhow, I had found an enterprising person who created a set of proxies to help people get their BoingBoing on...
http://boingboing.hexten.net

I was even able to submit the story using this proxy!

I also noticed that you could read the RSS feed without pictures using a feedreader there.

DEN also blocks common mobile proxies like www.skweezer.net

TTFN

I'm with a college organization, Something Else, (www.somethingelsetv.com), and we have been blocked in over 7 airports and several workplaces all over. Which is silly, because our content is just sketch comedy.

Wow, what perfect timing. Here's what I found from a friend's workplace when I referred her to something from my own website, 485i.com (which hosts, among other things, my resume, social network list, freelance web dev + photographer work samples and my staging server):

Internet access to the requested website has been denied based on your user profile and organization's Internet Usage Policy.
Category: Web Logs/Personal Pages
Blocked URL: http://485i.com/

To submit this blocked site for review, click here. For assistance, contact your Administrator.
8e6 R3000 Enterprise Filter provided by 8e6 Technologies. Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.

Now, after contacting 8e6 they've reclassified my site as a "business" site. But I'm not sure this change was pushed down to active routers/firewalls. Also, I work at a company with a strict firewall as well, and any legitimate request for a correction or a re-listing is usually met with contempt and scorn. Similarly, my friend said this about the same process of submitting sites for review: "They yell at me when I ask them to unblock sites." This is how the corporate world functions, and I fear that one day we'll all be trapped daily without meaningful media access because corporate management wants total productivity (and total protection from legal liability) at all times.

Our independent Skype Journal is blocked by China's great firewall. Not sure why.

We did cover a bit of censorware for Skype at several points. But we have more posts wishing folks a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year.

http://SkypeJournal.com

my site had some nudity on it when i first started blogging, but nothing by any means graphic or pornographic. so i got blocked from everything. then years went by and there was no nudity on my site and i still was blocked from everything. when i tried to apply to adsense google had me listed as an adult site and i couldn't use it. i am a photographer and now all my photos won't show up on google images if you have even a moderate safe search. it is pretty unfair. i tried to contact google to no ends...

since then, i have started doing a lot of nudes in public bathrooms, so my site has gotten a lot more R rated, so it makes sense for me to be banned from work computers and libraries, but still... the google thing really annoys the heck of me because my site is far from a porn site.

http://www.itsoverninethousand.com was censored by the ottawa public libraries for a few weeks where it redirected to the libraries homepage.

I opened up a new site, http://www.vidber.com, and shortly after, it too was blocked in the same manner. This was out-of-the-norm of the ottawa libraries, as they usually have a "blocked" page instead.

VidBer was hosted on a seperate server, with different whois information. This has since been resolved, but as i market mainly ontario and west for vidber, it was a hassle to get fixed.

Porn & nudity?
I wish. Instructables is generally blocked as a "terrorist" site.

Example:
I just thought you should know
www.8e6.com
is now losing your site under the category:
Terrorist/Militant/Extremist

I'm with #21 (Meridian) on this one.
BoingBoing has complained in the past about being put on these lists (and offered ways around the censorware). Yet bb continues to push the envelope of "questionable" posts. Meridian listed several links, I'd offer this one:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/top-10-sex-memes-of-.html
I'm not debating the issue of whether or not Censorware is right or wrong. What I'm pointing out here, is that you can't be posting about things like Goatse - and then get upset that you're flagged.
All that said, I'm an adult. I can chose to deal with things like this. But in a public access library, schools, offices, some of bb's posts are inappropriate. I can't fault them for wanting to block those posts.
If you want to be seen by all, consider that before posting something questionable.
(I offer this comment as a HUGE FAN of bb - I'm not trying to be nasty.)
Xeni - I'd be interested in your logic as to why you think bb has been misclassified.

phoenixtrap.com was blocked by a previous employer as "digital music", because it was my band's web site up until we broke up in 2004.

When i got to college today, the filters had reset to the default set by websense. This included boingboing, but also StumbleUpon, which is quite frustrating.

Also it has blocked a lot of proxy sites, but being IT students we found a way round it.

My inconsequential blog is hosted by a friend; they use their domain to host blogs for a small group of us. Their domain, slithytoves.org, redirects through dynamic DNS to slithytoves.sytes.net, and that's the issue: ALL of sytes.net, regardless of WHICH subdomain or WHICH redirect, appears to be blocked as "pornography" by some filtering software. My brother, who works for a large company you've heard of, can't see my blog at work because it's "pornography."

It seems so lazy to block an entire dynamic DNS forwarding domain because maybe there was a naked lady on one subdomain at one time.

I just remembered my parents, who are RVers, can ALSO often not see my sytes.net blog from public libraries because of "pornography." The filtering company we've seen is WebBalanced.

Their marvelous website includes this gem:

Employees average 2 hours per day viewing porn, reading email, chatting with friends, playing games, downloading, shopping, searching for jobs, and more, at your expense.