FOI Request Reveals UK Houses of Parliament Workers' Passion For Adult Content

Anita Hunt (lissnup) writes "Hot on the heels of Dave Cameron's demands to make such content universally 'opt-in,' the Independent reports 'Westminster computers were prevented from accessing sex sites 114,844 times last November alone and on 55,552 in April, while February saw just 15 and in June officials blocked 397 attempts.' No explanation has been offered for the variation, although it would be interesting to know if the fall in the number of recorded/reported attempts coincides with the date the FOI request was filed."

Comments

Re:Bogus.

[hairyfeet]

Boy ain't that the truth! I did a 6 month temp job at a hospital once and one of my jobs was to show nurses how to beat the porn filters! It turned out the PHB who had bought the crap (at an insane markup over a martini lunch from what the rumor mill said) refused to even entertain the thought that his software might be shit but the stupid software would block ANYTHING to do with words like breast or prostrate no matter how many times the IT guys told the stupid software not to, kinda a problem when you have a large part of the hospital dealing with cancer. So I got to go out each morning and show the noobs how to blow past all the filters that the PHB paid insane money to put up, the wonders that is corporate bullshit.

Re:Use some logic and it might make sense.

[hairyfeet]

You are correct in all counts, I would only add that there is a major source of infection that most geeks around here probably don't even think of that could seriously tilt those numbers...USB drives and sticks.

Working in a little shop I tend to get exposed to more hardware than most and can see trends emerging and in the past few years the number of cheap flash sticks infected with clickjackers and other bugs have frankly gone right through the roof. Since they can no longer count on autorun they instead disguise themselves as "value added" software on the drive, drive security software, free movie players, stuff like that. Many of these bugs are clickjacker variants which for those that have never encountered one are used to commit ad fraud by driving up hits to websites, many of which are porn sites. With a clickjacker you'll see page hits suddenly explode, I have seen clickjackers that would cause hundreds of new windows to open within seconds, talk about dragging a machine to a screeching halt.

So just going by the data we have here, with the number of hits going from over 10,000 to less than a hundred? Sounds like somebody let a clickjacker loose on their network. Feel sorry for the IT guy if that was the case, the new clickjackers are nasty little buggers and pretty damned hard to kill without just wiping everything and starting over. I hope they had a really solid backup strategy in place if that were the case, otherwise talk about a nightmare.

Possibly normal web filter catches.

[Technician]

We have a no porn policy posted at work as part of the hostile work environment compliance. We have a corporate filter with a splash page providing warnings. Policy does acknowledge the occasional mis-directed web page, bad search result, ads for adult content or products. Even Slashdot provided some warning pages due to some troll links that are NSFW.

Even though I have never searched for Adult content at work, I get the splash several times a week. Sometimes several ads on an otherwise normal page have shrunken warning splash screens so based on counts alone, normal web activity including surfing Slashdot is good for several hits to several 10's of hits on a Adult or other restricted site link. Hacking is the other big reason I see the warning page, but the description given for the reason the site is blocked is for hacking. When I follow info following Defcon talks often provides prohibited advertisements or articles or "Hacking" websites.

If you are not on a corporate filter/proxy, then you may not realise how easy it is to add to these counters without even trying.

Re:Bogus.

[Geoffrey.landis]

Having seem what sites get blocked, I'll agree with "bogus".

For a long time I couldn't get to the JPL Mars Exploration website, because of three letters in the middle of its URL (which used to be marsexploration.jpl.nasa.gov).

And as for trying to access the old physics preprint server (since renamed to ArXiv): xxx.lanl.gov -- forget it.
(I hate to say what autocorrect just tried to corect "lanl" to...)