“He said that staff told him the blocks were in place to “protect children”, with one salesman saying he did not wish his six-year-old son to view gay websites by mistake.”
Er, how about not getting your six-year-old his own mobile phone then?
It’s all about the small print apparently, anything even vaguely adult is blocked by the 3network.
Most recently even the iPhone app Scruff is blocked, previously I could use it and now I can’t. Seems the network can pick and choose and take away our ability to choose.
I have been with vodafone for 3 years – never had a single problem accessing any gay website. I’d like to know which ones are the problem here. I get through my PinkNews newsletter daily and read the stories through the URL. Also if I ever want to check and see if any press releases I send are posted on gay websites, I too have no problems. There can often be issues with Java based websites or image heavy – but other than that – alls cool!
As a bisexual eighteen year old (girl), I get most of my LGBT news through the likes of Pink New, AfterElton and AfterEllen. I have never had problems accessing websites on my mobile phones (I am on a vodafone network). I have, however, had problems with other filters.
My school implemented a filter system called “Impero”, which blocked sites that were considered inappropriate for school usage. Everytime I tried to access either one of the AEs, or the Pink News, I was told that the the site content was “inappropriate” and “offensive”. I could understand this (I should probably not have been looking up these sites in school, but like anyone at school ever uses the computers in a 100% appropriate way!), but the system let through many sites that were more explicit, or had more raunchy content, of a straight nature. They just picked up the word “gay”, “lesbian” and “bisexual” and immediately classed it in the offensive category – even when a lot of it was genuine news stories and political topics.
Have you had issues accessing websites from your mobile phone? Have you found that some websites which contain no adult related material were inexplicably blocked?
Most mobile phone networks operate a default filtering system which screens for adult content or unmoderated material. However these are often incorrectly applied . We at the Open Rights Group aim to compile evidence to pressure these offending mobile phone operators into amending their filtering systems.
Help us in our campaign by reporting these incorrectly blocked sites at blocked.org.uk and for further information on this and other civil rights related issues, please visit us at openrightsgroup.org.
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“He said that staff told him the blocks were in place to “protect children”, with one salesman saying he did not wish his six-year-old son to view gay websites by mistake.”
Er, how about not getting your six-year-old his own mobile phone then?
It’s all about the small print apparently, anything even vaguely adult is blocked by the 3network.
Most recently even the iPhone app Scruff is blocked, previously I could use it and now I can’t. Seems the network can pick and choose and take away our ability to choose.
I have been with vodafone for 3 years – never had a single problem accessing any gay website. I’d like to know which ones are the problem here. I get through my PinkNews newsletter daily and read the stories through the URL. Also if I ever want to check and see if any press releases I send are posted on gay websites, I too have no problems. There can often be issues with Java based websites or image heavy – but other than that – alls cool!
As a bisexual eighteen year old (girl), I get most of my LGBT news through the likes of Pink New, AfterElton and AfterEllen. I have never had problems accessing websites on my mobile phones (I am on a vodafone network). I have, however, had problems with other filters.
My school implemented a filter system called “Impero”, which blocked sites that were considered inappropriate for school usage. Everytime I tried to access either one of the AEs, or the Pink News, I was told that the the site content was “inappropriate” and “offensive”. I could understand this (I should probably not have been looking up these sites in school, but like anyone at school ever uses the computers in a 100% appropriate way!), but the system let through many sites that were more explicit, or had more raunchy content, of a straight nature. They just picked up the word “gay”, “lesbian” and “bisexual” and immediately classed it in the offensive category – even when a lot of it was genuine news stories and political topics.
It’s this setting that needs to be fixed.
Have you had issues accessing websites from your mobile phone? Have you found that some websites which contain no adult related material were inexplicably blocked?
Most mobile phone networks operate a default filtering system which screens for adult content or unmoderated material. However these are often incorrectly applied . We at the Open Rights Group aim to compile evidence to pressure these offending mobile phone operators into amending their filtering systems.
Help us in our campaign by reporting these incorrectly blocked sites at blocked.org.uk and for further information on this and other civil rights related issues, please visit us at openrightsgroup.org.