UK working to unblock harmless sites barred by Internet filter

By VCPOST Staff Reporter

Jan 31, 2014 02:32 PM EST

The "child safety" firewall of the UK is now taking full effect and has caused some problems. Instead of cutting off access to pornographic sites, the Internet filters have wrongly blocked some charities, educational websites, and other harmless sites based on their algorithms, according to VentureBeat.

The government says it is now building a list of whitelisted websites accidentally blocked by the firewall. They are also crafting a standard reporting method for operators who think their site or content has been wrongly blocked to communicate with the Internet service providers (ISPs), the report detailed.

In December, UK-based ISP TalkTalk apologized after erroneously filing London Friend, which is a lesbian, gay, bisexual,and transgender (LGBT) charity site, as pornographic. Sky flagged a legitimate privacy news site called TorrentFreak. The filter also blocked an update to the game League of Legends because of some files with the letters "s-e-x" in it (for example, VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj), the report explained.

As of now, there is still no official list of blocked content. Only new connections are affected by the web filters. Internet clients can also opt-out of the porn blocker by contacting their ISP, VentureBeat reported.

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