You know I ask because I want to know. And also because I want to mold you into a feminist, bit by struggling bit. :)

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Don't you worry, I am not the same girl I was back then.

I think my connection was Maria claiming the site's content is not inappropriate....but it is sometimes, no? I mean, not to be, but maybe others.

I need a nap.

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and I would say some of the site's content is inappropriate, but it would be for other reasons than squee morality one and Imma gonna shut up about them before I get myself in trouble. :)

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I knew I shoulda dated women. :)

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Or, it could be a misconfiguration issue. Either of these first 2 choices, means that their network might have serious security flaws.

Lastly, they could be concerned enough about liability, that they wish to address on their customers' bad Internet habits as well as their employees' and have discrfeet networks, but both are censored.

The most common commercial product/service is WebSense, the next most-used is SurfControl, which was acquired by WebSense a little more than a year ago. There are any number of other solutions / products / services, as well as ways of manually configuring "blacklists" on network appliances, or pushed directly to workstations.

Employers have valid reasons for doing this - it's their network - and as an employee, you usually sign a document an Internet Usage Policy, designed to limit their liability, and keep you working rather than surfing. In general, censoring your customers just pisses off your customers.

These types of content-filters are far from perfect, and often arbitrary. To be effective, they must be properly configured, maintained, and must allow enough "freedom" for users to access content that has legitimate business or personal value, under the scope of what the needs of the business are. Merely using the word "sex" (such as in a profile - i.e.:Sex: Male) is enough to blacklist a site under the category of "sex sites."

What is generally considered more fair, is report-generation, rather than outright blocking for all but the most offensive sites. Jezzies, be aware that all traffic on your employers' network could be monitored and possibly fed into a report given to your superiors. Surf wisely.

Any time a government gets involved in censoring the Internet without public court proceedings, we all lose.

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