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Sunday, July 02, 2017

EoZ censored by Sky Broadband

A couple of weeks ago, an EoZ reader mentioned to me that he couldn't reach my site through the UK's Sky Broadband.

I wrote to their technical support and received an answer on June 20:

Hi
Thanks for getting in touch
On initial inspection, the site is still categorised under the Dynamic and Blogging categories. So if this is the case, then no filters on the Broadband Shield would restrict this site.
I have asked our content list provider Symantec to review the site to make sure the category is correct. There is a possibility that malicious software was detected which would be filtered by the Broadband Shield under Phishing and Malware, but this may already be removed
Once I have a reply I will be back in touch
Kind regards
Brian Bolton
Service Excellence Consultant

This is the third time I have contacted Sky; I did it in 2015 and 2016 for similar issues and each time they claim that when they looked at EoZ it was categorized as "Dynamic and Blogging" and is accessible to all.

Then another person tweeted me the same thing yesterday, and included a screenshot showing that EoZ is blocked for "Weapons, Violence, Gore and Hate."



Moreover, the person who wrote to me says that Sky's documentation on how to change one's settings doesn't apply to him because his ISP was bought by Sky but he doesn't have a Sky account that allows him to edit these settings.

This means that anonymous, arbitrary people have the ability to censor websites they do not like by simply complaining to some ISPs without any fear of they themselves being exposed for their censorship attempts or even having to prove their claims.

This is very troublesome. And beyond that, Sky's insistence that this categorization is from Symantec does not seem to be true; Symantec's Norton website checker sees no problems with my site, but there may be another way that Symantec categorizes site. Yet Sky customers (and one other British ISP)  are virtually the only ones who have mentioned this issue to me; Symantec filtering is used worldwide.

Sky customers can contact Sky technical support to complain at CRSupport@sky.uk.




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