We have recently had a new content filter system installed on the servers at work. As with all things, you get a few problems early on. Some things are good, like being able to now read the BBC Blogs; other effects aren’t so good, like the system accidentally blocking the whole of the rest of the BBC site. Anyway, once those things are ironed out, it’s fine.
The new system uses active filtering through each page that is loaded and blocks a page if it detects inappropriate content. I’m not sure exactly what counts as inappropriate and I don’t really plan on testing it to the limit (although it is always worth exploring to make sure it is correctly set up). It does, very helpfully, give you an explanation of why a page is blocked when it is blocked. Unfortunately, it looks like this:
I don’t know about you, but don’t you think that’s a little… ironic? The page content is blocked because there is – shock! – a swear word on the page, so when telling you why the page is blocked, it spews out the word in question, but not the rest of the content. Oh yes. Big. Fat. Fail. Although you have to admit, it is pretty funny, even if I did nearly choke on my lunch at the time.
It does beg the question, though – if it detects, shall we say, “raunchier” behaviour, does it do the same? Let’s hope not, eh?
Sounds more like a fail on behalf the person setting up the filter; I doubt very much if the filter is set up to do that by default.
The filter at the church office gives a reason, and displays a helpful form so that you can contact the administrator if you think the block is incorrect.