Slashdot Mirror
T-Mobile's Optional Censorship Falls Down
An anonymous reader writes "T-Mobile USA offers a 'feature' to restrict access to certain kinds of content. This is called Web Guard. Supposedly Web Guard is supposed to inhibit access to content that falls under certain categories. The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), developed a tool to detect what sites were being censored. Amongst them were political news sites, foreign sports news sites and other sites that should not have been censored." It's quite an eclectic bunch of sites that are blocked, but then censorware tends to break in interesting ways, even when it's not by design.
Why shouldn't Newgrounds be on that list? Newgrounds is full of crappy porn "games" and other adult content. Blocking Newgrounds makes just about as much sense as blocking 4chan.
When I switched my T-Mobile Sim from a contract to a prepaid sim it automatically enabled this 'feature'. I didn't notice until it blocked access to a 2nd Amendment forum. The process for getting it disabled was fairly annoying as well. They wanted all kinds of odd information from me to verify my age. I suppose they were doing a public records lookup. The guy on the phone said it's because children can buy a prepay sim. If AT&T wasn't worse I'd probably have just cancelled service with them.
When I went to the URL in the article, I got a warning about a "web threat", claiming the site contains malware. Does it really... or are the censorware companies covering for each other?
... censorware tends to break in interesting ways, even when it's not by design.
In web development circles this is known as the "clbuttic mistake". ;-)
Google it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The author seems amazed that a tool intended to make it difficult for kids to reach certain sorts of content blocks proxy sites. Either they have no clue about what they're talking about or they're prepared to ignore the gaping flaws in their own argument to make a point.
The chat log at the bottom clearly shows they're just looking for mud to rake. The low-paid chat support guy isn't going to know that stuff to start with, and the ooni moron just keeps repeating himself as if it will make him look smarter.
Elgin marbles, Sears catalog, National Geographic, your local art museum. How about the neighbor's bathroom window? What else can we keep the children from being traumatized by? Meanwhile people are beating, starving, raping and killing their own kids even as we sit and read this.
Note that the censorship options do not include "advertising".
It seems that everyday something new comes out about poor service, censorship, or price gouging. No mobile company is excepted, which makes "I'll leave you for a company that treats its customers better" an ultimately empty threat. Is there space for competition here? Do we need to advocate public interest laws and industry regulation?
Except the list is so tangential and to be ridiculous censorship. e.g. Westmaster Junction, the discussion site for webmasters, Null Referer, a site that hides your referring page URL from websites you visit, Cosmopolitan magazine, a Russian programmers discussion forum etc, etc.
This is typically what happens when you have secret censorship, the list just grows and grows in ever more tangential ways and before you know it Slashdot is on the list because some commenter pointed out some flaw in some protocol used for some site used for filtering.
As a T-Mobile customer with 2 accounts (one of them pre-paid) I had no idea it was being censored. I despise ANY ISP censoring my web experience that I pay good money for. Even if I don't access these sites, I'm a grown man and I prefer to make my own decisions.
Unfortunately, the article seems to be lacking the obvious question: how to turn it off.
A quick Google search yielded some results:
http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-2144#How_do_I_enable_or_disable_Web_Guard_at_My_TMobile
Done.
I feel as if a million T-Mobile customers screamed out in agony and are snuffed once they have read this article...
So, even though the account holder can disable the censoring, would it be an accurate guess that quite a few slashdotters with T-Mobile here are now considering leaving to a different telecom?
If it's optional isn't it the end users (self)censorship? It is a service that T-mobile does not charge for, can easily be turned off, and is probably only there from a business standpoint to protect themselves from litigation. I honestly don't see the problem.
Michele Malkins' site is censored but Michael Moore is not.
I think we have a left handed policy maker...
I'm constantly finding T-Mobile blocking innocuous websites here in the UK on my iPhone. When I check the site later, I see no reasons why it doesn't work. I've seen similar issues with Orange, before my employer moved contracts to T-Mobile (the problems with Orange were before the companies merged).
They're totally frustrating, and that's not just because they charge £7.50/MB when I'm on business trips to US or China. Taking Eurostar to Germany, I find tethering doesn't work in France, it works in Belgium, and then stops working in Germany, even if I'm connected to Orange.fr or T-Mobile.de. Of course, on those business trips I rarely have time to call them before I'm back in my hotel at 10pm, by which point support calls go to a call centre in the Philippines. The last couple of times my call has been answered by some chap who sounds like he's from the American deep south, and seems to have no ability to help (oh sorry sir, all computer systems seem to be down now).
T-Mobile, an utterly shit company, /Rant over
And P.S. Why is /. so shit and still unable to display the GBP symbol correctly after all this time? I see a capital A with a circumflex over it before the currency symbol. Bah, time to go and enjoy this lovely spring weather.
"Supposedly Web Guard is supposed to inhibit access to content that falls under certain categories."
Supposedly it is supposed to? Ya suppose?
This is how censorship begins. Right now, you and I are kicking up a shitstorm. We don't want our connections to be censored, so we call in. Right now, there's a thousand working stiffs who are too tired or just too embarrassed to call and deal with people they can barely understand so they can visit boobies.com on their phones.
In five years, they'll have one person at that part of the call center. It'll be an unpublished number, passed around only by word of mouth, and it'll be widespread knowledge that cell phone internet is inherently restrictive and you can't look too much up on it.
This is how censorship begins. It starts with the people in power saying, "We're not going to take your Internet away, don't worry. We're just going to hold on to it. Now we're going to put it over here, okay? You can come use it any time you want, okay? Now we're going to take it down the street here but it's just a block away and you can come use it any time you like. But when under our roof, you'll follow our rules.."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
From a message I sent to a web site owner who has traffic and (claims to hate) censorship. Mikey didn't respond BTW.
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010
To: wrh@whatreallyhappened.com
Subject: T-mobile default blocks you. Just FYI
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 21
The wireless on the 1500 min pre-pay plan has the following message:
Content Restricted
The Web Guard feature has been enabled on your line.
Web Guard has restricted your access to this content The person on your
Wireless account who is designated as the Primary Account Holder can
disable this restriction through the account management website.
So no one should act like this is news.