test web filtering

[mmcgurty]

My security team goes to playboy.com... mainly just articles and longer has porn but should still be filtered as a porn site

A colleague and I just found out testing our proxy the other day that Playboy.com is no longer considered Porn by our Bluecoat Proxy but rather Entertainment since they have now switched to more like a Maxim magazine style magazine/website.  We thought our changes broke something but turned out it just wasn't blocked anymore.

[deanwebb]

Try looking up some of the more... "out-there" sites... I once had to filter for one employee's fetish for women with casts on. No nudity at the sites, but a guy had to pay $25 a month to see women in arm and leg casts in various provocative poses.

There was more than one site, as I recall... but I knew the rule about there being pr0n about just about anything long before anyone made it into a rule about the Internet.

But the out-there sites tend to have names that don't flag in URL text filters. "Womenwithcasts.com" almost sounds like an online support forum...

[SofaKing]

But the out-there sites tend to have names that don't flag in URL text filters. "Womenwithcasts.com" almost sounds like an online support forum...

It's an online support forum for someone  ...

[NetworkGroover]

Another challenge is undesirable content put on sites not classified as porn.  If you for example allow blogs, and someone puts naked photos from their Cancun trip, it won't be blocked.  Had to explain to a customer that Websense wasn't performing optical scans of pictures. ;P.   Also Google Searches... Websense could integrate with Google's little kiddie protector thing.. but if Google didn't classify the content at a certain level, it wouldn't be blocked.  Kids searching for "breasts" brought up pictures from sites not classfied by Websense or Google as high risk.. so... there ya go.

[wintermute000]

I read an article a while back on the massive human operations that manually classify content for services such as websense. Apparently its a mind numbing yet stressful job that burns people out really quickly - nobody can be exposed to that much filth full time without eventually coming out damaged.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/


Reminded me of the apocryphal story of how the CIA spent billions developing sophisticated expert-learning AI assisted programs for web based astroturfing/propaganda, allowing one human operator to masquerade as 20 or 30 fake individuals simultaneously, whilst China just paid an army of actual astroturfers a dollar a comment

[deanwebb]

Facebook and other guys have to hire content moderators. Third world people that live next to an Internet cafe who think they can make some easy money... two weeks later, they are husks with their cores shredded by what an unfiltered Internet is capable of.

It is never easy money, saying "no" to the raw Internet.

[icecream-guy]

I ran into a number of commercial websites, that were hacked, had sub-sub-directories created to host pOrn, no links on any pages, you just had to know where to go via the specific URL.

[Nerm]

Try looking up some of the more... "out-there" sites... I once had to filter for one employee's fetish for women with casts on. No nudity at the sites, but a guy had to pay $25 a month to see women in arm and leg casts in various provocative poses.

There was more than one site, as I recall... but I knew the rule about there being pr0n about just about anything long before anyone made it into a rule about the Internet.

But the out-there sites tend to have names that don't flag in URL text filters. "Womenwithcasts.com" almost sounds like an online support forum...

Casts? Really? I have seen some odd fetishes but that is just weird lol.

[deanwebb]

Try looking up some of the more... "out-there" sites... I once had to filter for one employee's fetish for women with casts on. No nudity at the sites, but a guy had to pay $25 a month to see women in arm and leg casts in various provocative poses.

There was more than one site, as I recall... but I knew the rule about there being pr0n about just about anything long before anyone made it into a rule about the Internet.

But the out-there sites tend to have names that don't flag in URL text filters. "Womenwithcasts.com" almost sounds like an online support forum...

Casts? Really? I have seen some odd fetishes but that is just weird lol.

It's a big crazy world that takes all types to make it go 'round... someone, somewhere, is buying a toaster for all the wrong reasons. What those reasons are, I can't say... but I just know, deep down, that the reasons are wrong.

[NetworkGroover]

Websense to my knowledge uses crawlers.  The only manual operation that they do that I'm aware of is when customers specifically request a specific classification of a website - then it of course has to be reviewed.

EDIT - After looking at that article though... I wonder if the crawlers are people