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BT, Sky, and Virgin Enforce UK Porn Blocks By Hijacking Browsers
An anonymous reader writes with this story at Ars Technica, excerpting: BT, Sky, and Virgin Media are hijacking people's web connections to force customers to make a decision about family-friendly web filters. The move comes as the December deadline imposed by prime minister David Cameron looms, with ISPs struggling to get customers to say yes or no to the controversial adult content blocks. The messages, which vary by ISP, appear during browser sessions when a user tries to access any website. BT, Sky,TalkTalk and Virgin Media are required to ask all their customers if they want web filters turned on or off, with the government saying it wants to create a "family friendly" Internet free from pornography, gambling, extreme violence and other content inappropriate for children. But the measures being taken by ISPs have been described as "completely unnecessary" and "heavy handed" by Internet rights groups. The hijacking works by intercepting requests for unencrypted websites and rerouting a user to a different page. ISPs are using the technique to communicate with all undecided customers. Attempting to visit WIRED.co.uk, for example, could result in a user being redirected to a page asking them about web filtering. ISPs cannot intercept requests for encrypted websites in the same way.
There is no Man-In-The-Middle attack. The man at the end is cut off. Nobody tricking you into anything; just annoying you.
And if you read the article, this only works for unencrypted connections where you should have known that anything can happen.
"free from pornography, gambling, extreme violence and other content inappropriate for children"
And I want a user friendly internet, free from governments, corporations, extreme advertising and other content inappropriate for ANYONE.
Cameron, please, for sanity's sake: Stop talking. Or, better, stop breathing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Brilliant idea.
Now instead of offering the parents an option to enable a porn filter, little Billy goes to a random kids website and gets asked "Do you want to watch porn?".
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Yes. The fact that no such legislation exists. This is a voluntary ISP scheme
Or you could use the service the ISP provides you with for free, that's easy to set up, available in the UK, and works with all network connected devices.
The UK ISP filters are completely voluntary as well.
We tried. No suitable product became available. David Cameron pushed the market into providing such a service. The market obliged. If you really have a problem, you can always choose one of the dozens of ISPs that doesn't offer this service.
Why? You don't even have a choice of ISP in a lot of the US.
Seriously, what's in it for the ISP to push these things?
I'm guessing that the gov't is leaning on ISPs to get an explicit buy in/out of filtering per customer. So that later on, when someone in the household stumbles upon that midget porn site, no one can claim shock and offense.
The down side (as others have pointed out) is that little Timmy might be the first one onto the family Internet connection one morning. And the "Do you want to watch porn?" might not get the response intended.
Have gnu, will travel.
We tried. No suitable product became available.
Which is pretty clear proof that pretty much no-one wants their Internet pre-censored.
David Cameron pushed the market into providing such a service.
And, last I read, something like 4% of people had chosen to have their Internet censored. They're probably the ones who clicked 'Yes' by mistake, thinking it meant 'Yes, I want the Internet, not Davenet'.
My brief experience with this was really rather annoying. the filters activated a couple of weeks ago. A bunch of websites (inc my porn) just gave 500 errors. I was not taken to a page to explain what was happening. I only realised that my Cameronwall had been activated when my friends confirmed that they could still access the sites I could not. I logged into my BT account, found the part where I turn them back off again and did so only to be told that it would take up to 24 hours for the change to take effect. Additionally my partner's Macbook started to give a range of weird errors when connecting to a variety of webpages. I'm not overly techy but it seemed our router was remembering the redirect and still using it for a bunch of sites (even though the block had been removed by this point) and the macbook was refusing to display the sites it was being redirected to because it had detected a suspicious re-direct.
This doesn't sound much different than the T&C redirect page when you use public WiFi.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I must say I've never needed a filter to avoid porn on the internet. I'm not sure why the government feels it must block access to something I don't wish to see in the first place, unless it ultimately has ulterior motives, intending to derail the free flow of information necessary for a participative democracy in the name of public morality. It's ironic that a government which recently ruled that health practitioners must refer patients for abortion in spite of their individual moral objections is now suddenly concerned about access to porn. I find it more believable that the ultimate goal is to restrict access to information embarrassing to the ruling party, using the ostensible reason of porn filtering to silence dissent.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
..with the government saying it wants to create a "family friendly" Internet free from pornography, gambling, extreme violence and other content inappropriate for children
Point #1: You do not 'own' the entire Internet
Point #2: It's not up to you to 'clean up' the Internet
Point #3: It has been proven over and over and over again that 'net nanny' and other censorship does not work
Point #4: Governments will subvert any censorship technology for their own propaganda and agenda purposes, destroying the original (misguided) intent
Point #5: Regardless of whatever you're telling your citizens, you likely will end up discriminating against people who don't want your filtering
Point #6: Ultimately your efforts will fail, for reasons of Point #3, and because people will always find a way around it regardless.
..and finally, not a 'point', but just my personal opinion on the matter: I think any government that engages in censorship are a bunch of fucking assholes who don't deserve to be in power. Leave the Internet alone and let people decide for themselves what they do and do not want their families and themselves to encounter or do there. Police UK-hosted sites against outright illegal activity or content? Yes. Make moral decisions for everyone else? Hell, no.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It's pretty standard for providers to redirect to one of their pages when they need to bring something to a user's attention, or get user-input.
Bullshit. I have never had my ISP hijack my connection to either communicate with me, or to get my input. They typically just include a flyer with my monthly bill (which I promptly discard, because I have zero interest in any relationship with my ISP beyond "I give you dollars, you serve up the bits I request").
And it's not hijacking.
I request page X. They serve me page Y that demands that I take some action before they'll let me get to page X. Tell me, AC, how do you define hijacking, if that doesn't do it for you? "Saaay, nice airplane you have here! For your own good, though, we just can't let it go on to Dallas until you give us all your jewelry and electronics".
I do have to wonder, though - What will the UK nannies do if essentially the entire country opts out and says "Yeah, thanks, but we want our porn and violence, thankyouverymuch"?
The UK ISP filters are completely voluntary as well.
Nope, Cleanfeed cannot be opted out of except by blocking it with something like a VPN.
David Cameron pushed the market into providing such a service. The market obliged.
He threatened to legislate, the ISPs decided to develop a crappy, ineffective token service to shut him up rather than deal with being legally required to do the impossible.
If you really have a problem, you can always choose one of the dozens of ISPs that doesn't offer this service.
Nope, Virgin Media is the only choice available to me. My BT line can only get a very unstable 1-2Mb/sec.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC