TalkTalk’s filter fails to restrict access to adult sites

It would probably be a parent’s nightmare to step into the room and see their child looking at pornographic websites on the Internet. But it would probably even be a bigger nightmare even if they won’t catch their kids in the act, because who know what else they could be looking at on the Internet when left unsupervised.

How parents let their children access the Internet is both their responsibility and depends upon their discretion. Prime Minister David Cameron had earlier expressed that he wanted Internet service providers to provide porn filters with their services so that parents could limit and block off sites should they choose to elect to. He had called on providers BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin to make surfing filters available to their subscribers.

A representative from TalkTalk explained: “This is called ‘active choice’ rather than an opt-in or opt-out.” TalkTalk has been promoting their filtering system called “HomeSafe” in the past few months. The provider touts it as a product that can restrict access to pornographic sites as well as safeguard your laptop or PC from viruses and malware.

HomeSafe operates at a network level, so parents don’t really have to do much in order to set the entire thing up. This approach at a web filter was garnered praise from MPs and campaigners.

However, it was recently reported that HomeSafe was unable to block the pornographic website Pornhub. Pornhub is the third largest pornography provider in the world and offers explicit videos and content for free.

This was discovered by Cherith Hateley, who is both an IT expert and a mother of three teenagers in south London. Hately found that the HomeSafe blocking page only relegated to a small box on the site, making the regular content still visible and accessible. She explained: “The ‘you have been blocked’ page has been diverted to an advertising slot within the Pornhub homepage thus opening access to it.”

She added: “The HomeSafe barrier has been knocked down, technically and literally. TalkTalk should inform all their HomeSafe customers that their children are still able to see pornography so that parents can supervise more.”

A TalkTalk spokesperson has acknowledged the failure and has said that technicians were currently working on a fix. He stated: “As the only network-level filter, TalkTalk’s HomeSafe is the most effective way of protecting children from content parents consider harmful. While no technical solution alone is able to solve the issue of child Internet safety or be a substitute for parental supervision, we firmly believe that HomeSafe is a step in the right direction.”

Source – The Telegraph