Cyber Patrol blocks access to Yahoo...

[Shirl Kennedy]

Read it and weep...

Cyber Patrol deflects Yahoo rumor
By Courtney Macavinta
NEWS.COM
November 17, 1997, 2:05 p.m. PT
URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,16471,00.html

The latest online rumor today was that the Internet screening program Cyber
Patrol was blocking access to the entire Yahoo directory, which by many
counts is the most-visited site on the Net.

The allegation sent Cyber Patrol into a frenzy. The company's product is
designed to keep minors, and in some cases, workers, out of pornographic and
other adult-oriented sites on the Net. The blocking program maker claims
that unless a customer chooses to do so, its product doesn't block access to
search engines or keyword search terms. For example, using Cyber Patrol's
default settings, a surfer can see Yahoo descriptions for links to
pornographic sites, as well as graphic ads that are displayed when a search
term such as "sex" is typed in.
But as of this morning, the Cyber Patrol's own mechanism that allows a
person to search for blocked sites, CyberNOT, reported that Yahoo was,
indeed, a site banned by the program, leading to confusion and cries of
censorship by some on the Net. Yahoo reportedly links to 730,000
sites--including a sea of sexually explicit material.

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Shirl Kennedy
Internet Waves columnist
Information Today