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Age Verification Starts with YouTube Music Videos
The UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport celebrated that YouTube and Vevo will be forcing age restrictions on music videos. On one hand the Government claim; Introducing age rating for all music videos online was a manifesto commitment – making the pilot permanent and working to extend this internationally by sharing our experience
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PacketFlagon – The HydraProxy
Today marks 1 year since the Immunicity arrest that saw someone get arrested for allowing people to send their HTTP(s) traffic where they wanted to without interference. In that time it’d seem that the City of London Police haven’t really done much; @STCPI They made this statement earlier this month. Bail was extended twice. 1yr
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Sony Email Leaks Shows Refusal To Fund PIPCU As Well As Conspiring With (and against) Government Ministers
Funding PIPCU During a meeting on September 5th 2014 with Mike Weatherley (the Prime Minister’s IP Adviser) Sony noted that they and the MPAA were not pleased at the idea of being asked to fund PIPCU; The potential (now likely) request for Rights Holders to contribute funds to support PIPCU will be limited to whatever
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Introducing Brass Horn Communications
Brass Horn Communications is a non-profit entity registered in the UK whose sole purpose is to provide Internet based services and education to help people evade censorship and avoid surveillance. Their first Tor Exit node went live on March 2nd 2015 joining 8 other multi-purpose Tor relays, additionally Brass Horn Communications has adopted the infrastructure
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Introducing ASafe.Space
David Cameron recently said in a speech that he would deny potential Terrorists a safe space on the Internet to communicate; The obvious problem here is that everyone is a potential Terrorist so what David Cameron is actually promising that he intends to legislate against anyone having a means of communication that is secure from
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Police Want To Link Your Identity To An IP Address – But Don’t Like It When You Do It To Them
It was reported today that Theresa May is intending to introduce new measures requiring Internet Service Providers to keep data that identifies online users. Obviously most ISPs will retain some information such as the authenticated credentials, IP issued (if DHCP or similar) MAC addresses of the modem etc but the article doesn’t make it clear
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Increase the Cost of Filtering to ISPs by Raising ADR Complaints
OFCOM has a lot of rules for ISPs to follow and under General Condition 14 (GC14.5 – Dispute Resolution) – all ISPs in the United Kingdom are required to be members of an approved ADR scheme like CISAS or Ombudsman Services, which are designed to supplement (not replace) the ISPs own internal complaints procedures and
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Filters Are For Coffee – Not The Internet
Today is International Coffee Day so what better day to take the Open Rights Group tag line of “Filters Are For Coffee Not The Internet” and investigate the capabilities of the Internet filtering at various coffee locations. Costa Coffee / Cafe Nero – O2 Wifi DNS Spoofing: Partial MiTM SSL: No Deep Packet Inspection: Yes
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How to Bypass O2′s Internet Filtering without a Credit Card or Identifying Yourself
O2 were next on the list for a tear-down of their filtering anyway but as luck would have it they blocked RoutingPacketsIsNotACrime.uk which meant I had control of both ends of a TCP/HTTP connection that was being filtered. Being able to investigate what happens from both sides is an opportunity that is too good to
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Defeating DNS Based Filtering (Sky, BT etc) with DNSCrypt
Several of the “Big Five” ISPs utilise a form of filtering that intercepts DNS requests and spoof replies for sites that are on the block list, in certain cases if you are able to resolve the IP address out-of-band (e.g. a hosts file) then you can browse uninterrupted. We already know that most ISP implementations
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More Laws Proposed To Enforce Censorship – Now At A Device Level
Earlier in the year we saw Internet censorship try and creep in through the Children and Families Bill and now our MPs are at it again. Geraint Davies MP has proposed a bill that whilst sounding noble on the surface (the prevention of revenge porn in essence) also includes a requirement that manufacturers add a
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The Laws PIPCU used to intimidate Immunicity
Following the announcement of the City of London Police’s arrest of the operator of Immunicity.co.uk I issued a Freedom of Information request to ascertain which laws were used. Yesterday I received a reply; The laws in question can be found on legislation.gov.uk but are copied below for convenience; Serious Crime Act 2007 44 Intentionally encouraging
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Building a PIPCU Resistant Immunicity Style Proxy Using Tor
A Little History In June 2004 BT took the step of putting technical measures in place that allowed them to censor the Internet. At the time there was muffled dissent at the idea of creating and deploying such technology but those voices were silenced by accusations that opposition to CleanFeed was to support the abuse
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The City of London PIPCU attempts to Block Proxies (and fails)
The City of London Police Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) arrested the operator of immunicity.org “on suspicion of running an ‘umbrella’ website providing access to other websites which have been subject to legal blocking orders.” So some private entities sued some other private entities to prevent their customers from accessing certain websites. This, as
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Introducing the Department of Dirty
Open Rights Group Launches Blocked.org.uk to track UK Net Censorship & Is Immediately Censored
At midnight this morning (July 2nd 2014) the Open Rights Group (re)launched their Censorship Monitoring Project at https://www.blocked.org.uk. Within hours it had hit the front pages of reddit, Hacker News and BoingBoing, it was also featured on the Telegraph and exploded on Twitter. How did the ISPs respond to this new found exposure of their
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Claire Perry – Ostrich or Hypocrite?
Claire Perry recently attended an event about tackling domestic violence So glad @claire4devizes could join us at our #Footballunited event this afternoon! — Women's Aid (@womensaid) June 10, 2014 Despite numerous reports of Internet filters causing overblocking of domestic abuse help websites including a warning from Woman’s Aid Chief Executive Polly Neate; Claire Perry is
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Bypassing EE’s Content Lock system without a credit card or identifying yourself
When you buy a service from EE it will be filtered at their moderate level by default, the other options are Strict and Off. Strict is designed to be safe for children and Off is for Adults. Of course even if you were to request that all filtering to be turned off it is still
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More Overblocking for reasons of “Sexual Orientation” – This time at Costa Coffee
It didn’t take long for more high profile websites to get overblocked by overzealous filters. PinkNews.co.uk reported today that it is blocked at Costa Coffee locations due to “Sexual Orientation”. Yes, we’ve got to protect those kids from the childhood corrupting influence of Gay news. But don’t worry, in the event that someone then planned
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EE – Your Internet must be Filtered if *anyone* under 18 has access
So: when @EE enable Porn on your PAYG Wireless Broadband, you won't *believe* the Terms & Conditions: pic.twitter.com/mpxiiKZBL9 — Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) May 16, 2014 So as an Adult it appears you are contractually obliged to be filtered if anyone under the age of 18 is going to “use” the SIM. And yet EE still
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U.K. Government Willing To Block EU Net Neutrality Deal
BuzzFeed has reported that the Government is so intent on continuing to block online material, that it is willing to block the EU Internet Neutrality laws; Note that is no longer just about protecting children, it’s safe to say we’ll start to see the blocking of “extreme” material soon enough…
InternetMatters PR Campaign Starts Up
As part of the plan to filter the Internet the big ISPs also agreed to fund an awareness campaign to educate parents (the cynical among us believe this to be a PR ploy to gloss over the surveillance impact of DPI, filtering & the expansion of CleanFeed esque silent censorship). The InternetMatters website itself (
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Using Anonymous Visa Cards to Create Untraceable Surveillance / Censorship Avoidance Proxies or Webhosts
It is still possible to anonymously purchase on-line resources which will be useful for those wishing to frustrate Internet surveillance, evade Internet censorship or blow the whistle on something without risking the exposure of their identity. Finding a pre-paid card that can be purchased in cash with no questions asked is trivially easy, any card
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Installing TOR on Windows Securely
As mentioned on our Top Ways to Avoid Filters page the Onion Router Project (better known as TOR) excels at bypassing censorship technologies such as the Sky Broadband Shield, the TalkTalk filters, BT Parental Controls and even the Great Firewall of Cameron China whilst at the same time offering almost perfect anonymity. TOR is an excellent choice
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Slippery Slope Part II – They make it law anyway
The ISPs tried pacifying opponents of UK Web Filtering by telling them they had to do it or David Cameron would legislate it anyway. They backed down and co-operated. Only a few weeks after a Lord suggested it be mandatory an amendment has already been proposed to the Children and Families Bill; You can read
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Sky Overblocks and takes out JQuery
ThinkBroadband (amongst others) has reported that Sky has yet again overblocked a website. This time it was code.jquery.com which a lot of other websites rely on to serve the well know Javascript frameworks core files from. Things like this are bound to happen, were predicted to happen and will continue to happen, causing untold damage to businesses
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League of Legends patches intercepted by DPI / URL Filters
LazyGamer.net has reported that patches being rolled out for League Of Legends has been blocked due to incidental filenames. What is obviously quite scary about this revelation is that it means that this might not just be a simple URL or DNS based block but could be indicative of the far more intrusive Deep Packet
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Lord asks “Shouldn’t Filters (that don’t work) be compulsory?”
On the same day that the BBC reports that “Children can turn off Net Filters” a LibDem Lord has asked whether the choice of filtering should be taken out of parents (read everyone’s) hands and be made compulsory Within weeks of the filters that everyone predicted would herald a slippery slope to mandatory filtering with
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Are BT & Sky Adopting Filters to Reboot Phorm?
Several years ago the UK Internet was tied up in an opt-in / opt-out battle about ISP proxies tracking your movements on-line to monetize advertising. Now we have a new opt-in/opt-out battle but this time it is about ISP proxies tracking your movements on-line to prevent you seeing things you’re not allowed to see. Could
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More smackdowns for the UK Police / Government
TechDirt have reported that EasyDNS have been victorious in their pursuit of due process when it comes to seizure of Domains by the City of London Police. As you may be aware, the City of London Police’s new intellectual property crime unit took it upon themselves to seize domains they believed were involved in copyright infringement
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The Possibility of a Legislative ban on Internet Filtering!
Oliver Wright at the Independent has just broken the news that Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron is going to propose legislation that enshrines the “digital rights of the citizen” which would include stopping “any requirement for opt-ins, opt-outs, filters, lists or controls on legal material”. DigitalRightsOfTheCitizen.co.uk has been registered and we’re about to start a campaign to
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Building a SOCKS5 Proxy with a Digital Ocean Server to Bypass UK Internet Filters
If you don’t currently run Linux on your desktop I would strongly suggest it. Try Fedora or Ubuntu. If you don’t want to run Linux permanently but do want to try this method then a Live Boot CD of Fedora or Ubuntu (or any other Linux OS of your choice) would be an ideal method.
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Basic DNS Filter Evasion: HOSTS file
Background: Various ISPs such as Sky and BT use DNS manipulation to spoof responses that forwards requests to their proxy server instead of the correct response. Taking BT as an example a request for a blocked site has been seen to return an IP from within this netblock instead; inetnum: 213.120.234.0 – 213.120.235.255 netname: BT-UKIP-IPV4-INFRASTRUCTURE
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Publicity Leads to an unblock for TorrentFreak
days after TorrentFreak posted about Web filtering in the UK Sky has caved and admitted to yet another over blocking mistake and has recategorized torrentfreak.com so it is now reachable. In the opening of their article the BBC clearly state that overblocking is affecting lots of other legitimate websites; Whilst this is a victory for
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TorrentFreak Blocked
TorrentFreak.com the self described home of breaking news about File-sharing, copyright and privacy is the latest website to fall victim to UK Internet filter overblocking. If you are able to reach the page you can read the full write up here, if you can’t reach the page maybe it’s time to start looking at ways
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The Lie of Child Safe Filters
O2 have long had filters on their WAP/GPRS/3G networks to protect the children but as more attention is being focused on Internet filters and their ineffectiveness we’ve come to realise just how bad the situation is. As the OpenRightsGroup aptly puts it; Unfortunately as more and more people complained O2 started blaming 3rd party organisations;
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Censor Pages Allow Injection Attacks & Arbitrary URLs
BT, Sky Broadband and Talk Talk have implemented opt-out Network level filtering for their customers. The thing is, as well as overblocking websites that should not be filtered the ISPs have poorly implementated their block pages. http://makeyourispblock.me/ was registered at 2am on the 22nd of December but due to the badly designed block pages it can be made
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GoAwayCameron Chrome Plugin Released
An enterprising Computer Student from Singapore going by the name @nubela on Twitter has released a Chrome plugin that allows people to evade some of the ISP filters. On his websites goawaycameron.co.uk he has published a mini FAQ and a getting started guide; Well here’s to hoping it, and the reasons for needing it, go viral!
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BBC Newsnight exposes Filter Overblocking
As the four ISPs who are spearheading the ill-fated UK Internet filters are on the eve of rolling out their solutions the BBCs Newsnight program experimented the filters and unsurprisingly encountered distressing overblocking. Let’s not forget that back in June Ms Perry dismissed concerns about overblocking as a “load of cock” and yet here is the
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#CensoredUK Day of Action
The Sex and Censorship campaign put out a call to arms earlier this week for December 12th to be a day of action for calling attention to UK Internet Censorship. As one of the technical volunteers to the Open Rights Group Censorship Monitoring Project I decided to track how the campaign went on Twitter using
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Android Censorship Probe Project Launched
Bowdlerize is the code name for an Android app based probe that is part of the Open Rights Group Censorship Monitoring Project, a crowd sourcing project to map the extent of censorship & filtering on the Internet URLs are gathered from social media or user submissions & then sent to Android devices with the Censor
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Further Proof Claire Perry Doesn’t Understand What She Has Created
Not content with accusing bloggers of sponsoring the hack of her website Claire Perry has further demonstrated her lack of understanding of how the Internet and indeed her own filters are going to work. @claire4devizes No it's not, the ISPs will probably apply a filter within their core routing / aggregation the same way they
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Jimmy Wales: David Cameron’s porn filter idea is ridiculous and will fail
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, one of David Cameron’s most high-profile technology advisers, has rubbished plans to introduce porn filters through the UK’s internet service providers, dismissing the proposals as “ridiculous” and saying money would be better spent on policing internet crime. He went on further to say The ISPs hate the idea, consumers hate the
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