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Webwasher versus Web Content Creators?
rjnagle asks: "While trying to access a recipe web page of a friend Mary Anne Mohanraj from work, I was dismayed to find that Webwasher, my company's content filtering application, had blocked it. It's true that Mohranraj's site contains some tastefully written text-only erotic stories, (Mohanraj has published several distinguished books and anthologies ), but apparently Webwasher's filtering rules block everything from the domain--including her writing diary, Sri Lanka travel photoessay, poetry and yes, her reading list of Indian writers. Leave aside for the moment the question of whether
employees should do personal surfing on company time or what type of material is appropriate to view from work. Please answer these questions: How can content creators prevent their entire domain from being blacklisted because of a small
amount of controversial content? Given that Webwasher's corporate customers rarely tweak Webwasher's default blacklist settings, doesn't this imply the need for Webwasher to make their filtering algorithms readily available? (Apparently, even the product's installation
documentation is password-protected). If content filtering programs like Webwasher have a tough time distinguishing between a teacher's educational philosophy and hardcore erotic fiction, shouldn't the software company offer an online form for content creators to appeal being blacklisted? Having lived in Eastern Europe, I've seen firsthand how content filtering (ostensibly for reasons of social utility) has produced a society of ill-informed, unquestioning citizens."
We have a similar situation where I work. There's not much you can do about it, unless you have a solid work-related reason to use a particular blocked web site. At least officially.
What I've done is create a squid proxy on my home system. Then I used proxy auto-configuration file to use that proxy only for sites that I've wanted to visit that are blocked. (I was already using such a file to block advertisements, adding in a section to use a proxy for selected sites was trivial.)
How can content creators prevent their entire domain from being blacklisted because of a small amount of controversial content?
Put the possibly objectionable content in one subdomain (e.g., naughty-bits.mamohanraj.com) and the rest in the www subdomain (e.g., www.mamohanraj.com/).
This is of course purely a guess, I've never had the misfortune of going through a content filter.
You asked what the site can do; of course the site's (would-be) visitor can go through a web proxy , or vnc to his own machine at home and run the browser on the remote box (yes, pictures won't come through as well, but wanking is mostly about the imagination, so you'd probably have a better time at it anyway), or ssh to his home box and wget from the home box and then ftp back to the office, or html tunnel through his home box to the site.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Can you not use the Google cache of the site you are trying to access?
It's not that hard to get past corporate web filters. Just use SSH tunneling to your home computer & surf the web. Or use one of the many anon. proxies...
That's not going to work in the large number of corporate workplaces where web access is forced through a proxy server.
The ultimate bypass is to run a cgi proxy on an ssl site off your cable modem.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Having also lived in eastern Europe, it seems to me that such regimes have produced some of the most questioning, cynical and generally skeptical people on the planet. Don't confuse apathy with assent. Not so long ago, most companies I worked for blocked the ENTIRE internet from employee computers, so I really don't care if they're going to filter some minor subset of it. I can do my unfiltered personal surfing at Starbucks on my breaks and at home at night. What's the problem?
Domains are cheap. Put the stuff that isn't work/child/whatever safe on a separate domain.
now groups.google.com is blocked, and they tell me they won't unblock it.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The thing about content filters is that everyone's viewpoints and intentions are different when they come up with the filters. Take these examples: a typical home user, an employee of a 50,000+ employee corporation, a network administrator for a grade school, and a network administrator for a 50,000+ employee corporation. Each of these people have very different needs in a content filter and that is where the problem comes in.
You mention a single website that included some recipies in addition to some erotic material. Supposing I worked for the large corporation and was in charge of tweaking the content filter and that domain name was brought up. After quickly inspecting the website, I don't think that I would hesitate to block the entire site. Looking at the nature of the author of that site, I could see the possibility of the URLs to the erotic material either changing or being more graphic in the future, and the safe way to eliminate those possibilities would be to simply disable the domain. In this situation you have the single author of the website that may be upset if the site is blocked.
Another example would be moderately malicious websites and/or advertising websites. Again, supposing I was a network administrator for any company and we didn't want any of the employees installing any 'malicious' software, I would choose to block sites that tried to install software that I myself deemed 'malicious'. These sites would include n-Case, MyWebSearchBar, WhenU, and many others that offered 'malware' or 'spyware' or any other software that indicated they could possibly be either of these. I actually work for a company where I manage the content filter, and my viewpoint is that I block the entire site if I notice any malicious intentions from it. These 'malicious intentions' can even come in the form of Gator trying to install itself when visiting the site. These immediately get labelled in my book as malicious sites and they are banned entirely. Is this the best way to do it? Maybe or maybe not, but that is my viewpoint on it and it's how I manage the content filter.
Now if I a company that created a web content filter, I would want these same malicious websites blocked by default, however that would probably never happen. Many of those are backed by corporations that could easily file lawsuits against my content filtering company for labelling their site and/or software as 'malware'.
Just some ramblings here, but the basic idea is that everyone has a very different viewpoint when comes to content filtering. Nobody wants their content blocked, but often blocking it fits much better with the viewpoints of those implementing the filters. In the case of erotic material, most everyone that implements a content filter blocks all erotic and pornographic material. It is impossible to make everyone happy when it comes to content filters.