Commercial filters block legitimate websites

COMMERCIAL filters are increasingly blocking user access to legitimate websites.

Websense is one of the largest players in commercial filter space, along with McAfee, Cisco Ironport and Blue Coat / File

GOVERNMENT firewalls and censorship are not the only threat to online freedom, with commercial filters increasingly blocking user access to websites, Tor Project founder Roger Dingledine warns.

As companies and public-sector organisations adopt unified security products and web content security, many more employees may find legitimate websites are blocked, along with known nasties, The Australian reports.

"The Tor Project website is often blocked by filters used by news organisations, for example," he said.

"Journalists in the US are being censored by commercial filters such as SmartFilter or Websense which prevent access to the internet as the rest of the world sees it.

"People are pretty upset when it happens to them."

Websense is one of the largest players in this space, along with McAfee, Cisco Ironport and Blue Coat.

Content-control software, also known as censorware, is used to prevent people viewing material considered objectionable by the computer's owner, or by government authorities.

It can be applied at various levels ranging from nationwide, or by ISPs to clients, corporations for employees, by schools and libraries for students and visitors, or by parents on a home PC.

"Part of the challenge here is that many vendors sell to countries in the Middle East and Asia, which may have quite different (blocking) priorities," Mr Dingledine said.

Read more at The Australian.