The ADR process is a very useful tool for consumers, albeit an unpopular one among ISPs (i.e. they still have to pay up to around £350 +vat in fees to the ADR regardless of whether or not they win), but some smaller providers continue to flout the rules by wrongly assuming that they don’t have to offer an ADR or by failing to make customers aware that one is available.

The key here is that if one were to make a request to unblock a website and the ISP doesn’t co-operate then you can start the ADR process.

Upon being told that the ISP won’t unblock the website request a deadlock letter in accordance with the Alternative Dispute Resolution process.

At this point the ISP representative will probably try and convince you that you cannot make an ADR complaint about this as they are scared of costing the company ~£350. Insist on your deadlock

Imagine if everyone with a censored Internet connection raised an ADR complaint for every blocked website.

Choose.net has an excellent guide on how to go about raising an ADR.

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;

Women’s Aid is warning that the new ‘porn filters’ used by most major internet service providers may be putting women experiencing domestic violence and others at risk.
It has been revealed that filters used by all four major providers are blocking access to lifesaving websites providing information on domestic violence and sexual health.
The charity is highlighting that it could be very dangerous for a woman experiencing domestic violence to ‘opt-in’ to domestic violence information sites, as her partner may check her computer and see she’s been accessing the information.Polly Neate Dec 2013

Claire Perry is insisting that such concerns and warnings are “peddling dangerous rubbish”

@NetworkString- as you know that is total fantasy but if it makes you happy to peddle that dangerous rubbish then hey, have a great day.

— Claire Perry (@claire4devizes) June 10, 2014

Is this MP simply sticking their head in the sand so as not to accept the damage they’ve caused or do they want to appear to be doing one thing regardless of what their actions actually cause?

How many children have been unable to reach the NSPCC or Childline website and how many woman have been unable to reach rape or domestic abuse help websites now that the filters are in place?

Of course even if you were to request that all filtering to be turned off it is still possible that you’ll fall foul of an incorrect IWF filter and be presented with the following page;

Putting the IWF and their secret blocklists aside there are many reasons you may not want to disclose information to EE or handover a credit card (you might not have one for instance) but still need to get past their filters that will block a female centric “adult” site that blogs about Censorship due to the content of the copy but will quite happily let you visit LiveLeak.com and watch people get killed.

The good news is that the EE Content Lock is quite easy to circumnavigate.

DNS Spoofing: No
MiTM SSL: No
Deep Packet Inspection: Yes
Destination IP Transit Interference: No
-
Unique Reason for Block: No
Categorised Block: No
Ability to report incorrect block: No

The goto advice is always to download Tor as it will not only bypass all filtering but it will also help mask those who need to use Tor to aid in protecting their privacy.

If you aren’t comfortable with installing software such as Tor then you could follow our guide on Creating a SOCKS5 Proxy which also works perfectly.

Finally the EE Content Lock system cannot MiTM SSL so even for blocked URLs such as http://reddit.com/r/nsfw (note that reddit.com isn’t blocked but /r/nsfw is!) can be accessed by using SSL.
Unfortunately reddit relies heavily on Akamai so the SSL certificate will be incorrect and you really shouldn’t get in the habit of accepting incorrect SSL.

Whilst this post proves it is trivial to bypass Government co-erced filtering it is likely that there will soon be a call to make filtering mandatory and criminalising attempts at bypassing them.

The best way to prevent this is to write to your MP and tell them that you don’t believe that any form of filtering has any place on the Internet.

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 on browsing to Stonewall to report what they may feel is an inappropriate block bordering on discrimination they’d find that Stonewall is blocked too.

Things are only going to get worse…

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 don’t tell you exactly what else it is that you’ll be blocked from seeing as their block lists aren’t public.

The InternetMatters website itself ( http://www.internetmatters.org/ ) contains a lot of actually useful advice and doesn’t resort to scare tactics for sensitive subjects like Grooming or Bullying to encourage the use of filters.

Furthermore the website even tells visitors that No Filter is 100% effective;

This leads onto a point highlighted in a recent tweet for the campaigns twitter account;

Whose responsibility is it to keep your children safe online? http://t.co/RkBOPlOK8P #internetmatters pic.twitter.com/hoWoajm6da

— Internet Matters (@IM_org) May 14, 2014

96% of parents believe it is their responsibility to keep their children safe (so not the ISPs) and no filter is ever 100% effective.

So why did David Cameron and Claire Perry insists that ISPs start filtering the Internet?

Why has TalkTalk deployed surveillance grade Deep Packet Inspection equipment on their network? Why does Sky and others interfere with in-transit packets to spoof responses to legitimate requests?

One answer is that this equipment makes it easier for the Police & GCHQ to intercept traffic. It also enables rights holders to arbitrarily choose where your packets can go by blocking ThePirateBay.org and others like it.

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 and people.

JQuery was temporary blocked this morning having been misclassified. Our review process kicked in shortly afterwards and the site was unblocked just over an hour later.Sky

If your patcher logs show many lines like this:

RADS::Common::HTTPConnection::GetFile: File not found

And that happens with files with a name similar to this:

VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj

XerathMageChainsExtended.luaobj

The cause is that your provider is blocking any URLs that contain any pornographic content. Apparently that includes cases like this. An other cause are Router protection settings, which may also block the word sex.

If you are experiencing this problem, you can try to get the whole LoL folder zipped from a friend every time you patch, or just call your ISP to lift the blockade.

Edit: This should only happen to people who switch or signup with new ISPs after a certain date (I’m assuming 1st Jan). The filter won’t be on by default to any existing customers, at least it won’t on BT, so most people will be unaffected. If the filter is on, all it takes is a call to your ISP and it’s off. (thanks to /u/mejti )

Edit2: Read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/uk-internet-filter-block-more-than-porn_n_3670771.htmlhttp://www.reddit.com/user/LoLBoompje

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 Inspection technology rolled out by China and TalkTalk.

It’s not a long shot to fear that games will start breaking or gamers will get accused of cheating by software such as Steams VAC if ISPs start blocking data (e.g. chat messages or server instructions) that contain naughty words.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron wants all Internet providers to block porn by default, to protect the children. This filtering requirement is controversial for a number of reasons, not least due to ISPs’ filters targeting a wide range of other content too. Sky’s newly launched Broadband Shield, for example, blocks numerous legitimate file-sharing related sites including uTorrent and BitTorrent.com, download portals for Linux distributions, and even TorrentFreak.TorrentFreak.com

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 to evade the filters?

As the OpenRightsGroup aptly puts it;

O2’s under-12 whitelist includes mcdonalds.com but excludes childline.org.uk - showing that their aim of promoting child safety with this product really is not delivering very well.Jim Killock

Unfortunately as more and more people complained O2 started blaming 3rd party organisations;

@pseudomonas We use BBFC who review content that’s suitable for under 12s so we can offer our parental opt-in service.

— O2 in the UK (@O2) December 23, 2013

BT likewise tried shifting some of the blame for their disgusting blocking of material about “gay and lesbian lifestyles” as just being a mistake in the wording;

There has been an accidental mis-description of the way our parental controls operate. Some parents of very young children may wish to block sex education material.

One of our optional filters does just that. It does not discriminate between heterosexual and LGBT content. We apologise for any confusion that has been caused.

We shall review the way we describe the optional sex education filters available for parents of very young children. The filters in question are not turned on by default but must be activated only if chosen by parents.

BT Spokesperson

The OpenRightsGroup and TheRegister have more detailed articles on the subject.