Major UK ISPs & Google Increase Contribution to Fight Illegal Content

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) announced that ".. we are pleased with the announcement of the UK’s four largest ISPs – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media – that they will commit an additional £1m collectively over the next four years to further crack down on the creation and distribution of child abuse material online. The companies will work together with Government, IWF and CEOP to establish how best these funds can be spent to tackle the availability of online child abuse content. The additional funding will supplement the existing zero tolerance approach to child sexual abuse material online, adding to the existing contributions that each company makes both in relation to the ongoing battle against illegal material online, and investment in technology and awareness raising to help parents protect children in the online world".

IWF is also supported by traffic management vendors, who can use its blacklist to block illegal content.  Among the members are ByteMobile (Citrix), Cisco, Checkpoint, Allot Communications, Huawei, Fortinet, BlueCoat, Optenet, Adaptive Mobile, Sandvine and Openwave Mobility. See the complete list here. Google also donated £1M - See "£1million donation for child sexual abuse charity" - here and announced its ".. continued commitment to combating child exploitation online" - here. .

Susie Hargreaves, IWF Chief Executive, said: “This is a great commitment from the UK internet industry. We are ready to step up the fight against online child sexual abuse content. By expanding our resources and by allowing the IWF to proactively target child sexual abuse content, we can make real headway towards our shared vision of an internet free of child sexual abuse content.”

See "IWF ready to step up the fight against online child sexual abuse content" - here.

Vodafone UK: Web Traffic Filtered by Bluecoat, w/RT Content Analysis

  

The NO DPI site reports that Vodafone UK filters web traffic using a Bluecoat based filter. The article provides some packet traces as a prove and then brings VF's response.

The rather detailed response provides a good explanation on the technology associated with network based web filtering service - how illegal traffic is blocked (based on IWF lists - here) and how sites are categorized using a pre-populated database and real-time content analysis.

"The Bluecoat filter you refer to classifies every internet site into one or more of over 70 categories.  In order to apply the adult bar to protect our younger customers, Vodafone take these 70+ categories and rates them as either Adult of Universal.  As the internet is growing at an ever increasing rate, so there are a percentage of sites not yet classified by Bluecoat as they are too new. To be on the safe side,  when a user requests a site that is not classified, the Bluecoat system pulls the page requested and checks to see if there is any obvious content that would make it necessary to classify it.   If it does appear adult, then the warning page is displayed. If not, it is served to the customer in the normal way.   In order that we preserve customer service in terms of performance, but do not compromise safety, this is all done simultaneously. Vodafone do not retain any of this information.  The site will be dynamically rated on each visit.  If the site is a more popular one, it is added to the database and the checking process would stop occurring If a customer is over 18 then they can access any internet site they wish with the exception of sites dealing with child abuse images as classified by the IWF.  If a customer is under 18 then where content is regarded as unsuitable we serve a warning page.Bluecoat does not constitute ‘spyware’.  It is a network operation applied to every internet request and we are required to do this in order to meet our regulatory and industry obligations. This is not a question of intercepting customer communications but the safety of our younger customers in a dynamic environment.  Other network operators use the same or similar systems"

See "Vodastalk; Vodafone and Bluecoat Stalking Subscribers" - here.

See also:

• UK Government Pushes ISPs (Again) to Provide Better Parental Control - here
• UK: Public Pressure on ISPs to Enforce Parental Control (Killing a VAS?) - here
• Vodafone Turkey Uses Optenet and Allot for Web Filtering - here
• TalkTalk [UK] Launches Free, Opt-in, Parental Control/Malware Detection - here

 

Australia: Telstra, Optus and Primus Agree to Voluntarily Block Illegal Web Traffic

     

The Australian government is trying, for some time now, to set regulations that will require ISPs to block access to web site showing illegal content ("Blacklist").

Illegal content is a flexible definition - while it is usually associated with child pornography (such as the list updated by the IWF - Internet Watch Foundation) it may include other content as well, certainly when the list comes from the government (see "Google, Yahoo, Microsoft fire back at Australian Web censorship plan" - here).

Last Friday, the Australian Communication minister, Stephen Conroy, announced that the government is going to make some modifications to its original plan which will delay the execution by a year. See "Outcome of consultations on Transparency and Accountability for ISP Filtering of RC content" - here.

3 major ISPs (Australia has over 200) - Telstra (45% broadband market share), Optus and Primus announced that they will voluntary block child abuse sites, probably hoping that what they will do will become the regulation itself, with no additional requirements.

There are a number of ways to implement a URL Blacklist service. It may be done based on filtering of IP addresses, with possible false-positive mistakes, or by DPI solutions that will examine the URL in each HTTP request. It’s a trade-off between cost and service quality. In both cases, continues update of the blackist is required.

Telstra's Group Managing Director, Public Policy and Communications, David Quilty said in a press release - ("Telstra supportive of interim internet child protection measures" - here): ".. it is important for people to understand that there is no magic solution which will make the internet 100 per cent safe. As a result, we will continue to work closely with the Australian Federal Police, ACMA and other authorities to combat the abuse and exploitation of children.”