Are we being blocked? The answer seems to be, in the UK, on some ISPs, in certain conditions, yes. For example, if you’re with BT, and you’re a new customer (since mid December 2013) and you didn’t opt out of filtering, then snuffhouse.org is inaccessible, presumably due to the tobacco content. Something similar applies to vodaphone’s mobile data service, though I haven’t gone to the effort reading up their conditions; if it applies to new and old customers, if the filter is default on or off and if there are levels if filtering, &c. www.blocked.org.uk is a website that allows anyone to check any website for UK filtering and it makes for an interesting read. I’m no internet rights activist, but I think it is a concern when websites can be blocked due to false positives – women’s rights sites, LGBT sites, abuse support, or just regular sites. On blocked.org.uk they mention a guy who trades and services Porsche cars and he got blocked. Why, given that the filters are there to protect children? BT has three levels, apparently, and blocked.org.uk states that where there are different levels, it uses the mid or default level. See here for blocked.org.uk report on snuffhouse.org
As an aside, I started looking in to why I couldn’t get snuffreviews.com to work. A bit more searching and I found that the site is down (indefinitely?) and not filtered.
@snuffereastlancs A few months back I started using Vodafone for data on one of my mobiles and this forum was blocked as were various pipe forums and online tobacconists. I got round it temporarily by using a VPN but to get the block lifted you have to visit a Vodafone store and prove that you are over 18 and request that the filtering is removed. I have no idea what BT do and from past experiences with them I would never use them for anything! Yes - snuffreviews.com appears to have bitten the dust. There is a site called snuffreviews.net but that has just been saying “Coming soon” for several months so I don’t hold out much hope for that.
I wonder where the filtering happens (I’m in IT) and could it be something as simple as removal from their DNS? Change your DNS settings to instantly circumnavigate BS like this. @lunecat Oh, they could find us through their search engines, but not access – what, I wonder, does it look like? Is there an explaination or does it just appear to be down?
@snuffereastlancs On Vodafone when I attempted to come here I just got a page from them saying that the site was blocked with a link to an explanation on their website of how to remove the block. I can’t remember the exact wording and cannot duplicate it as I had the block removed. So there was no suggestion that the site was down.
Unfortunately many ISPs use a simple filtering system as a first line of “defence” it’s often as simple as a word or sentence blacklist, snuff has had less desirable meaning and as such will be on many of those lists
I encountered blocking when I was visiting my mom in the UK last year. Since transferring large files is such a hassle, and since photo sharing sites are a pain in the rear end, I usually use torrents to share family photos in bulk. I tried to get hold of some photos for my mom while I was there, but all of the torrent sites were blocked. I ended up having to get my wife to email the torrent seed file over to me. Thing is, this only affects legitimate users. If I had wanted an illegal copy if a movie or something, I could have worked around it in a few minutes.
the blocking i get for various things here in the uk has led me to spend £5 a month on a VPN service. makes downloads slow as hell, but it does circumvent certain blocks. wish i had the motivation to find a faster vpn, but i just cant be bothered haha.
I’m not in the UK to test it at the moment, but wouldn’t a simple proxy server get around the problem? Unless all those are on the banned list of course…
i plumped for VPN because of the added speed, reliability and security. im with Private Internet Access at the moment, and the only problem i have aside from occasional speed issues is its a US based service, leaving them open to being threatened by their government, while theres no logs, theres nothing stopping them being forced to hand over access or add backdoors etc. plus i can just configure it across all devices easily.
Just use Tor to circumvent the blocks…
…and then you get on the NSA records, British or not! and can you get Tor on Android? Went for a three night break in the Cotswolds, they had bt, and every time I wanted to access this forum, I had to choose no parental controls. Ho hum
you can get tor on android, but its a useless network for anything other than general web browsing or pretending you are a tech nerd to clueless friends. i can almost function as normal through VPN, whereas many sites ban tor IPs for abuse, the connection speed is pitiful, and theres no ad blocking.
Porn Free. When Steve Jobs launched the I-Pad he described it as the world’s first porn free computer. When I heard that, I decided that I would never buy one. Naturally anything that can block porn can block tobacco, radical political ideas etc. Its not just an ISP that can block your access to a site, the technology is in place for your computer to do that. I can see no signs that things will get better, I think we can expect them to get worse. TOR can get round some blocks but gets blocked buy a lot of mainstream sites. Try getting on Wikipedia using TOR. Torrents are probably the best bet for a long term solution, but as doctorbeat points out, the people who want to control the internet block the web sites that allow access to Torrents.