Update - 4/2 -Taking aim at filters

[Art Wolinsky <awolinsky@OII.ORG>]

Hi Folks,

Here's today's update along with the story I promised you.

Even though people are on break, responses are coming in and from what I'm
seeing already this will be worth continuing and widening after colleges
return and k-12 schools come back from Easter break.

Today I have two fun facts.
1)  WebSense apparently doesn't agree with the White House that it's
important for kids to get information and statistics about drug abuse.
They are blocking a link at www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov leads to drug
facts and stats.  Thanks to kayak for that one.
2) J.A.C. informs me that Bess blocked the Detroit Boat Show.  Must be
those sexy models, or is it that Bess is all wet.

Keep those reports coming.  Remember, the report form is at
http://oii.org/overblocking.html
Some of you have been writing to me in email instead of using the form.  I
understand that you may not have access to the web at the same time you are
reporting to me, but if you write in email, please try to include the URL.
That will make it possible to test the site in a variety of filters.  Thanks!

OK, yesterday I promised you a story about how some college students used
XXX to get funding for a high-level plasma physics project.  Well you are
going to get two for the price of one, because another one just came up as
I was preparing to write this message.

When I first began learning about the web, I immersed myself.  I wanted to
really get a picture of what the web was like.  One of the neat sites that
was around then, and is still around was WebRoulette.  If you clicked on
the Roulette wheel it would send you to a random site out on the web.  If
you click enough times you get a feel for the composition of the web.  You
get the good, the bad, and the ugly (and a lot of other adjectives).

I would visit a site and if was interesting I would check it out.  If not,
I would move on.  Well on one spin of the wheel I ended up at a high level,
plasma physics, project at a university in California.  I read about three
sentences, understood one and almost fell asleep.  I was just about to
click off of the site when something in the URL caught my eye.  The
directory in which the information was housed was named XXX.

I thought that was odd.  My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to
try to find out why they chose that particular naming structure.  I had a
cup of coffee to get the caffeine jolt and stay awake and I started to read
on.  I found that the project was funded by a grant and part of the grant
included building the web page and keeping track of the number of visitors.
 BINGO!!!

By naming the directory, anyone making a search for adult material or
pornography could end up at their web page and add one more visitor to the
count.

Now on to story number two.  While getting ready to write the story above,
I decided to see if WebRoulette was still around.  It was, and I took a
spin.  On my 3rd spin I ended up at a travel web site
<http://www.nakedplanettravel.com>  They specialized in adult theme tours.
Since I was using CyberPatrol with all of the sex categories and keyword
filtering turned on, I would have thought it would be blocked, but it
wasn't.  I looked around the site, and it wasn't offensive or pornographic,
but I really didn't think that I would want students signing up for
information about how they could book a trip with a real porn star.




***************************************************************
Art Wolinsky                                awolinsky@oii.org
OII Technology Director         http://oii.org/
East Coast Facilitator           http://web-and-flow.com/
National Action Committee    http://www.wiredkids.org
(609) 597-9481 ext 337          (609) 698-8223

***************************************************************
I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.
I will surely learn a great deal today.
***************************************************************

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