TalkTalk and Virgin Media Block Penny Mordaunt’s “unsuitable” Website UPDATE2

The endless debate over the UK government’s bloated and incoherent Online Safety Bill (OSB) took another twist today after the Open Rights Group (ORG) pointed out that two of the largest broadband ISPs, Virgin Media (VMO2) and TalkTalk, were blocking access to MP Penny Mordaunt’s website as “unsuitable for children“.

At present, all of the market’s major ISPs are required, as part of a semi-voluntary agreement with the Government, to adopt network-level filtering systems (aka – Active Choice Plus), which are usually enabled by default (you can optionally disable this). The intention is to prevent children from seeing unsavoury online content, while customers may also be given options to filter by age, time and across different content categories.

However, it’s no secret that such filters can be inaccurate and may block harmless websites (overblocking), which is something we’ve seen occur many times before. Often the owner of the associated websites won’t even know this is happening, unless one of their end-users points it out, or they’re keeping a very.. close eye on network traffic (even then it might not be obvious). Getting unblocked can also take a bit of time.

The OSB is likely to result in a lot more blocking, so it’s with a heavy sense of irony that one of the bill’s biggest backers, and a front-runner in the race to become the next Prime Minister, Penny Mordaunt MP, has had her website (http://pm4pm.com) blocked by TalkTalk and Virgin Media’s network-level filtering (Parental Control) systems.

ORG Statement

The Online Safety Bill will create industrial-scale systems to remove content deemed unsafe.

Systems introduced by broadband providers after pressure from David Cameron’s government are today blocking Penny Mordaunt’s website as unsafe for children on TalkTalk and Virgin Media, illustrating the kinds of problems the Online Safety Bill will create.

The blocks can be verified using Open Rights Groups blocked.org.uk tool for monitoring online censorship.

At present, it’s unclear precisely why the ISPs have blocked the website, although Virgin Media’s related block page states: “We think this site may contain material that’s unsuitable for children, so it’s been blocked by your account’s Web Safe settings” – [Insert various puns here about UK politicians being deemed unsafe for children].

The blocking systems and lists are often managed by third-party commercial firms, although some years ago we were told that critical sites may be white listed to avoid precisely this sort of thing happening, which clearly hasn’t worked in this case.

We should point out that ORG’s blocking monitor appears to report that the encrypted (HTTPS://) version of Mordaunt’s website does work, despite incorrectly listing it as having an “SSL Error“. We did some checks and couldn’t see any problems with the site’s Cloudflare SSL certificate. But ISP customers report that the HTTPS:// version of the site is still blocked when filters are enabled, it’s just that ORG’s monitoring system struggles with encrypted domains (they acknowledge this and say it’s best to check against HTTP:// as it’s more “accurate“).

As we always say, it’s impossible for ISPs to completely block websites that exist on remote internet servers. Such blocking is thus merely a placebo, the equivalent of leaving a door wide open with the words “do not enter” stuck outside. This is not the fault of ISPs and reflects how the internet works. Anybody who wants to access such content will easily be able to circumvent the blocks by using VPNs, Proxy Servers,and so forth – depending upon the method of blocking employed.

Naturally, we have asked both TalkTalk and Virgin Media to explain why they’re blocking the website of a democratically elected minster of Parliament. We will update when they respond, not that Virgin is taking it all that seriously (here).

UPDATED 2:54pm

A spokesperson for VMO2 has confirmed that the site is no longer being blocked, although no explanation has been provided as to why it was blocked in the first place.

UPDATE 3:30pm

VMO2 informs that the site was merely miscategorised.