The children at YOUR SCHOOL can access porn images under the LGFL filtering...

[ConradJones]

Well yes and no. Most phones/tablets etc can switch between wifi and mobile with a simple toggle. So, browse on wifi, hit a block, switch to 3g to get blocked content, switch back to wifi when done.

 

totally agree, unless like our building you can't get a signal!

[Geoff]

totally agree, unless like our building you can't get a signal!

 

I doubt 'build thicker walls' would be an acceptable solution to pitch to the SMT. And no, Mobile phone signal jammers are illegal.

[ConradJones]

electronic jammers are. concrete isn't

[Nodrog]

I had loads of grief with excite and ended up talking to them direct and they just did not want to help resolve safe searching which sounds like you problem - why don't you just block excite and be done with it ? simple solution really

[SYNACK]

I had loads of grief with excite and ended up talking to them direct and they just did not want to help resolve safe searching which sounds like you problem - why don't you just block excite and be done with it ? simple solution really

 

Or tell the managed provider that you are paying for service that you are not happy with to stick it and do it properly yourself. The only reason these managed monsters still exist is that schools are unwilling to simply tell them they are not up to it and they can die in a ditch somewhere. All of them stick with it and the mediocrity continues.

[Nodrog]

I'm not sure that telling anybody to 'die in a ditch' is a helpful comment here and your use of it does you no credit.

 

The managed service provider be that LGfL, Atomwide, BT, Virgin Media, NetSweeper or the UK Government cannot be held responsible for the content of the Internet. If a web site on the Internet pro-actively try's to make safe searching difficult or impossible to enforce then that’s good cause to block the whole site as it demonstrates the sites moral position and one has to wonder what other tricks they are up to. Google at least try and help with the dns methods that they publish and service providers should make these available to end users which LGfL do.

[Geoff]

The managed service provider be that LGfL, Atomwide, BT, Virgin Media, NetSweeper or the UK Government cannot be held responsible for the content of the Internet. If a web site on the Internet pro-actively try's to make safe searching difficult or impossible to enforce then that’s good cause to block the whole site as it demonstrates the sites moral position and one has to wonder what other tricks they are up to. Google at least try and help with the dns methods that they publish and service providers should make these available to end users which LGfL do.

 

Doesn't work like that. If your ISP offers anything other than an unfiltered connection they are responsible for the filtering system working as promised. However schools have differing requirements, eg primary vs secondary vs post 16 as basic examples of this (this is why a 'one size fits all' offsite filtering system is fundamentally flawed). So what they can deliver is only 'best effort' which is far below a lot of schools (unattainable) expectations. The only real solution when faced with this is to do filtering onsite and tailor it to your schools requirements. It's debatable what 'managed' service you would require once you've reached that point though.

 

Also, while we're at it, what about overfiltering? Has anyone considered the other side of this coin?

[SYNACK]

I'm not sure that telling anybody to 'die in a ditch' is a helpful comment here and your use of it does you no credit.

 

 

Who needs credit, reductus absurdium (or something like that) taking it back to its basic form and showing the abserdity of it. All filtering is best effort unless it is a whitelist, even then it is not full proof. The internet is vast and asking for perfection is deluded. As stated above though, managed providers are a sure path to mediocraty at best.

[ConradJones]

Who needs credit, reductus absurdium (or something like that) taking it back to its basic form and showing the abserdity of it. All filtering is best effort unless it is a whitelist, even then it is not full proof. The internet is vast and asking for perfection is deluded. As stated above though, managed providers are a sure path to mediocraty at best.

 

And the contracts are not negotiated by the schools who are using the service, so there is no motivation for the "service" provider to actually cater to the needs of the school

[rednight]

Is there some software we can install locally that "vets" the search strings before they are passed to the search engine? If so then it might be easier to create a list of words/phrases that the children might be searching on rather than trying to swot all the search returns!

[Alkaline]

Yahoo Images seems to be quite bad. I have had cases where someone has searched for something completly innocent and had a load of XXX material appear. Had to block yahoo images completely. Maybe this was a one off.

[AngryTechnician]

Yahoo search uses Bing as the backend, and Smoothwall have acknowledged that they currently can't do deep URL inspection on Bing images. The built-in SafeSearch is also not nearly as good as Google's.

[Disease]

Well I have just looked at this here SEGfL and Google is unfiltered if you sign in, reported it to the LEA, see what they do.