TorrentFreak Is Blocked as a Pirate Site and Hacking Resource

https://torrentfreak.com/torrentfreak-is-blocked-as-a-pirate-site-and-hacking-resource-180825/

by DiabloD3 • 8 years ago

112 34 8 years ago

torrentfreak.com

mirimir2• 8 years ago

Damn. Bloody idiots.

And well, that's why we have VPN services.

klez• 8 years ago

Please, keep it civil.

mirimir2• 8 years ago

TorrentFreak is not a "pirate site". I don't recall seeing any links to pirated content. And it's hardly a "hacking resource". So maybe they're not idiots, just dishonest.

chii• 8 years ago

Blocking sites should be illegal, unless the ISP in question has the list in the contract so that you can review it before buying the service.

oopsman88• 8 years ago

Court-ordered things are legal.

crtasm• 8 years ago

In this case it was not a court order, as explained in the article.

happytoexplain• 8 years ago

I can't see how this relates to the parent post's opinion.

svantana• 8 years ago

I agree, but this was about free/complimentary wifi services, so in these cases you are not really buying anything. I think most of them are also blocking porn sites, etc.

dewey2• 8 years ago

Isn’t that probably just some string matching on torrent instead of targeted blocking?

oelmekki• 8 years ago

That was my first thought as well, but the blocking reason reads : "This URL has been categorized under : Criminal Skills / Hacking news".

This sounds targeted : I guess a torrent domain name wildcard would have read something like "pirate downloading".

EDIT : btw, if "hacking news" is a reason enough for blocking a website, I fear for the security skills of future generations of developers.

setzer22• 8 years ago

Not to mention this very site

Dylan168072• 8 years ago

Hacking comma news. Which makes it sound like it's in two categories. "Criminal Skills/Hacking" and "News".

some_account• 8 years ago

Who is surprised?

We are going in the direction of idiocrazy (great movie) as a society and people are caring less and less about anyone else. So that makes it easy to spy on people or block sites, specially since Google is still seen as a positive force in tech. :/

andrepd• 8 years ago

The message is, anyone who advocates for different ideas or pushes for an alternative is blocked and censored. What free speech.

bcaa7f3a8bbc• 8 years ago

Create a Tor v3 hidden service as a backup then.

dewey2• 8 years ago

I think the 0.5% of technical users willing to browse with Tor will also be able to use a VPN.

toyg4• 8 years ago

It's currently working fine on my Virgin residential line and my Virgin mobile phone.

I guess the hotel opted-in (or never opted-out, which I had to) the government-mandated "pornwall" that all UK ISPs are supposed to "voluntarily" implement.

Grollicus• 8 years ago

Why would a government-mandated "pornwall" block torrentfreak?

toyg4• 8 years ago

Because it's a slippery slope: the filter is loosely defined for "adult content"; there is no law, it's all voluntary. When in doubt, what would you do as an ISP, to avoid problems? Ban. Most people opt out anyway on their residential accounts, and who's likely to look at "bad" stuff in a public place like a school or library and then complain that it doesn't work? So you ban first and ask questions later.

Hotels are prime candidates for keeping the pornwall up, since they'd really like to sell you their own expensive porn channels as in the good ol' times.

DanBC3• 8 years ago

It wouldn't, it doesn't. This is a company buying in web-filtering from another company. There's no legislation forcing them to do this.

taf2• 8 years ago

I wonder if they are blocking by known ips or just dns?

DanBC3• 8 years ago

The company doing the blocking has a helpful notice asking you to call them if you think the block is a mistake.

Has anyone called the Virgin WiFi telephone number listed on the notice to tell them that this block is a mistake?

+44 (0)330 6601028

dghughes• 8 years ago

Even better, post the link on Twitter or LinkedIn directed at Richard Branson. He strikes me as a reasonable guy and he's always on social media so I'd say he will see it and respond.

Otherwise you'll be stuck at "your call is important to us..." forever.

gok• 8 years ago

Hmmm maybe because it is? This is like High Times taking offense that they’re treated like a drugs magazine.

Dylan168072• 8 years ago

The word 'magazine' is the difference. It would be ridiculous to treat the High Times as if they were actual drugs, right?

pR0Ps• 8 years ago

I'm unfortunately familiar with similar systems. What has probably happened is that a crowdsourced process has (incorrectly) categorized the website as 2 things: "Criminal skills/Hacking", and "News". The hotel has subscribed to this categorization service and configured their settings to block any pages in the "Criminal skills/Hacking" section because it sounds scary.

Same goes for the "Piracy and Copyright infringement".

There's no conspiracy here, just the normal incompetence. Calling the number listed on the page will probably allow you to petition to reclassify the site properly, making less likely to be blocked.

Of course, filtering in general sucks, but it's not like this is an ISP, it's a hotel.

kyledrake• 8 years ago

What are these categorization services called? I want to read more about them. Do they do things like block sites known to contain or support hate speech too?

meowface• 8 years ago

They're called HTTP proxies or web gateways. Blue Coat (now owned by Symantec), a big proxy vendor, has a list of site categories here: https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/category-descriptions

Administrators can choose to allow, block, or warn (user must confirm they want to view the page) for each category. The proxy vendor doesn't choose what is or isn't blocked; they leave it to the customer to decide what they want to block.

Hate speech is usually a category for proxy appliances/services, yes. Blue Coat categorizes it as "Violence/Hate/Racism".

untangle• 8 years ago

If you'd like to know how this comes about, point your fav search tool at "web content filter" (WCF).

A WCF can be implemented anywhere along the chain from web site (content) to browser. Most commonly, it is a part of a DNS service or a firewall/router.

Think of a WCF as a gun pointed at unwanted web content (porn, hate, gambling, etc.). Like a gun, the WCF needs bullets and a shooter.

The most commonly used "bullets" for the WCF are publicly-available blacklists of sites, categorized by content type. Most commonly, these lists are community-driven and then triaged by admins. So it's easy for a site like TorrentFreak to make it onto one or more of these lists. It takes work to then get off the list, but it's doable.

Lastly, the "shooter" in this analogy is any entity -- ISP, wifi vendor, hotel, etc. -- that thinks it's a good policy to filter the web. You can see where a hotel may filter to reduce bandwidth consumption and/or reduce complaints from parents.

Historically, WCFs have been deployed on corporate LANs, in schools, and in homes. But we are seeing increasing deployment in public-facing networks -- even at the national level. And this smacks of censorship.

I hope that I didn't stretch my weapon analogy too far and good luck to TF in getting off the lists. (The Wikipedia entry for "breast" has the same challenge.)

TorrentFreak Is Blocked as a Pirate Site and Hacking Resource

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