Is your filter better than this?

[sigma]

Does your system flag up as "Safeguarding" a blocked image result for say a "Coca cola" bottle because the Google image search result found it on a domain that was categorised as "alcohol"?

 

I'm talking about the Google image search result web page where the image is blocked because domain is "alcohol" and the pupil only ever searched for a Coca Cola bottle image and never moved from Google. I am going under with false positives and sloppy categorisations.

[robintech]

Not sure if it would flag it, Smoothwall does show the moments before and after in our reports so fairly easy to dismiss false positives as search terms would be in there.

Do know we had to force old google images otherwise Google can show them inappropriate thumbnails

"The Google image search interface use a presentation method to create it's interface that obscures some of the source links from the Guardian web filter. This can result in some inappropriate thumbnails being shown. Access to the source of those thumbnails will still be blocked."

[tom_newton]

Knowing that there's probably only Smoothwall that looks at the URLs for images in a google search - I suspect this is us? I have asked the team to check if indeed we're picking up a site like this.

We have a choice of alerting on the sites google pulls images from, and suffer potential FPs (you can see how this might be really important if it was radicalisation material, rather than a bottle!), or not at all. Of course that means if a domain contains a preponderance of material about X, then in this situation, we classify all images as potentially X. I'm sure there's some runes we can use to prevent those being blocked/reported on if that's what you'd prefer.

[mavhc]

Need some levels of how bad a category is, alcohol isn't as bad in an image search as porn for example

[sigma]

Hi Tom, I appreciate your response, but actually, it’s not Smoothwall in this instance.

 

I have no real objection when OK images are blocked from ‘not OK’ domains, but I have so many of this type of thing, and too many occurrences of things which really are a safeguarding issue. - such as ‘yet another site’ offering online chat or video chat with adult strangers that does slip through that I wondered if there was anything better.

 

(I know when pupils find these sites as they start with ones that are blocked and reported on and keep going until they find one which works, then they get caught in one of my ‘logon’, or create account traps).

[tom_newton]

Oooh, interested to know who it is - I had our team check to see if we alert on the specific thing you mention (we don't). I'd probably suggest that you consider if it's worth alerting on alcohol sites at all? Maybe just reporting on those.

[sigma]

Hi Tom,

 

I think it would be unprofessional for me to say who it is, and I suspect its the upstream configuration and not the product per se.

[sigma]

Hi Tom,

 

I think it would be unprofessional for me to say who it is, and I suspect its the upstream configuration and not the product per se that is the issue here.

[tom_newton]

Quite possible - appreciate your discretion!