Anonymous Proxies

[Seth Finkelstein]

Robert Day wrote:
> For those libraries that do use filtering software, what do you do
> to combat users employing anonymous proxy services to bypass that
> filtering? We are finding it an increasing problem. We use a certain
> product that is quite good at doing its filtering job but it takes
> just 5 minutes on Google to get round it and into some fairly
> hardcore porn. Yes, we can add proxies we find manually but there
> are hundreds of the things.

	Do you have any objection to naming the particular product?
Generally, as a statement of fact, all major censorware deals with
the issue of banning anything that threatens the control of censorware.

	See my anticensorware reports:

BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE: (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity) - a
secret category of BESS (N2H2), and more about why censorware must
blacklist privacy, anonymity, and translators
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php

BESS vs The Google Search Engine (Cache, Groups, Images) -
BESS bans cached web pages, passes porn in groups, and considers all
image searching to be pornography.
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/google.php

SmartFilter's Greatest Evils - why censorware must blacklist
privacy, anonymity, and language translators
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/greatestevils.php

The Pre-Slipped Slope - censorware vs the Wayback Machine web archive -
The logic of censorware programs suppressing an enormous digital library.
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/slip.php

	Just curious, can you confirm that your library plans to
ban the huge digital archive "The Wayback Machine"? It's typically
considered similar to anonymizers by censorware. If you don't ban it,
of course, someone could look up the images it archives. Will you
be banning image search engines too? (they often store images locally).

	It's good to see this matter being raised. I think it's
important to understanding that censorware is not "filtering".
Rather, it's about controlling people. That is, here you are, asking
about banning anonymous proxies. They aren't porn. They have to be
banned precisely because they're escapes from censorware. So do any
other escapes. That just follows as a matter of technical implication.

	By the way, if you're using either Smartfilter or Surfcontrol,
you should know that Websense (a competitor) is making it a practice
to release a new batch of sex site every business day which are not
banned by those other censorware blacklists. I am not making this up. See:

Websense - free sex sites and "blacklist wars"
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/websense/free_sex.php

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf at sethf.com  http://sethf.com
Anticensorware Investigations - http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought list - http://sethf.com/infothought/
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html