Online Safety and Content Policy

Introduction

ISPreview is a personally owned (not a company) and pro-consumer focused news and information website (blog) that covers issues related to UK telecoms, broadband and mobile connectivity. We aim for this site and its free services to be accessible to users of all age groups, within reason, and so adopt a strict content policy in order to help tackle and prevent any posting of "harmful" adult or illegal content.

The following policy has been informed and structured to support the UK government's new Online Safety Act (OSA), which was introduced during 2024-25 and is overseen by Ofcom. The OSA imposes new legal duties on websites, such as ours, that host "user-to-user" services (i.e. systems that allow visitors/users to post or 'generate' their own content and engage with other visitors on the same site).

ISPreview's Services (User Generated Content)

➤ News Comments (Anonymous posting)

➤ Discussion Forum (Members-only posting - 23,000 members, with c.200-400 active per day)

➤ Reader Reviews (Members-only posting - 4,000 members)

Due to its relatively small size, ISPreview is not currently classified as a Categorised Service under the OSA (i.e. it falls below the thresholds for Category 1-2 services), which means that the heaviest rules and requirements do not apply to these pages. But we are still required to follow the core rules, reporting requirements and ensure that users of related services do not abuse our services to post illegal or "harmful" adult content online.

In addition, ISPreview has a responsibility to protect both its own legal liability and that of its users, where appropriate, from making mistakes that may expose their own liability to action. The following document thus explains our approach to user generated content on this website and how it's moderated. Please note that each user-to-user system may attract different rules and regulations, which will be addressed in this document.

Site visitors agree, through your use of these services, that you will NOT use our platform(s) to post any form of media that breaches the rules of this policy. We reserve the right to delete any media for any or no reason whatsoever. You remain solely responsible for the content of your media, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless ISPreview, and their agents with respect to any claim based upon your media.

Defining Harmful Content

ISPreview aims for this website to be both a polite and accessible place for people of almost all age groups, which means that we automatically filter out many offensive words (swearing) and forbid the posting of any content deemed "illegal" under UK law or of an adult sexual or "harmful" nature. Content that breaches these rules, once confirmed, will be removed as soon as identified or reported to us (see the 'moderation policy' section).

The Online Safety Act lists various "priority offences", and we are required to assess and mitigate the risk of these occurring on our platform (i.e. posts that encourage or promote related harms will also be removed). The priority offences can be split into the following categories (click to see Ofcom's definitions):

1. Terrorism
2. Child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA)
   1. Grooming
   2. Image-based child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
   3. Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) URLs
3. Hate
4. Harassment, stalking, threats and abuse offences
5. Controlling or coercive behaviour
6. Intimate image abuse
7. Extreme pornography offence
8. Sexual exploitation of adults
9. Human trafficking
10. Unlawful immigration
11. Fraud and financial services offences
12. Proceeds of crime
13. Drugs and psychoactive substances
14. Firearms, knives and other weapons
15. Encouraging or assisting suicide (or attempted suicide)
16. Foreign interference offence
17. Animal cruelty

In addition, ISPreview does not allow toxic commentary, which can sometimes unwittingly descend into areas of content that are deemed illegal under UK law (e.g. harassment, stalking, threats and abuse, hate / racism etc.). This rule may also catch comments / posts that promote harmful conspiracy theories, are defamatory (slanderous or libellous) or which contain any of the following - personal abuse, trolling, misogyny, sexism, swearing, obscene, profane, sexually orientated, threatening or which invade a person's privacy.

We will sometimes take pre-emptive action to close off discussions that might pull in viewpoints that are at risk of turning toxic. Such debates are not relevant to ISPreview's content and focus (this site is not 'reddit', it's focused on technology and telecoms - please keep discussions polite and to those topics).

Furthermore, we also forbid the posting of any content and links to websites that distribute or promote the distribution of illegal material, or which may otherwise encourage breaking the law. Please note that any attempt to work around the technicalities these rules will not be tolerated by moderators and could result in the removal of related content or an account ban.

Additional Site Rules

The following reflects a set of general rules (not part of the OSA or Ofcom's related regulation) that apply to several of our systems, which are in addition to the safety and content policy. All users of these systems must abide by these rules and we ask that users do not post any sensitive personal or financial data in public (e.g. personal home / IP / email addresses or phone numbers), either for themselves or another individual.

➤ Discussion Forum

1. Post topics and information in the most appropriate forum category and do not duplicate the same topic into additional forums.
2. Please do not post abuse towards other forum members and take special care to avoid making any kind of personal attack upon others; such posts should be reported.
3. Trolling is not allowed (someone who intentionally posts controversial or contrary messages with the intention of baiting users into an argumentative response).
4. Respect the site's moderators and admins, if you feel any have acted out of tone then please 'Contact' the websites owner privately to discuss your concerns.
5. Try to make constructive posts and topics.
6. Members representing an Internet Service Provider (ISP Reps) or related company and registering on the site must immediately identify themselves to this websites owner before posting ('Contact'). This allows us to identify these users to the community with a simple status upgrade.
7. ISP Representatives should avoid posting in forums that specifically belong to other providers unless it's of a courteous or helpful nature. These forums are not to be used as a commercial battleground or for spamming.
8. The forum does not allow third-party advertising from its members, we do not tolerate SPAM (junk/marketing messages). But signature links to private (personal) or not-for-profit (uncompetitive with ISPr) websites are allowed. ISP Representatives' are also allowed to include links to their own services, albeit not excessively.
9. It is recommended that people avoid making usernames that use special characters and spaces; these can cause problems with other systems and may be deleted.
10. Please avoid posting large images as part of your signature or on the forum in general, they may slow loading for others and distort the site. Likewise signature images should also have small file sizes.
11. Concerns that regard missing (deleted/vanished) topics should only be raised in private with the site's admin. Usually such things occur as part of routine maintenance, server problems or because somebody has posted material that breaches our rules.
12. Members must only register one username (account) per person, having multiple identities can lead to abuse of the website and is not allowed.
13. Members must not post the same text in multiple forums (cross posting).

➤ Reader Reviews

1. Try to post reviews that offer some constructive background to your experiences - reviews that contain little or no written opinions (i.e. ratings by themselves) may be erased at our discretion.
2. We may remove any review that we deem unacceptable, such as those that contain abuse or following a justified complaint. Note: Complaints may only be investigated if they are posted within 60 days of a review being made, after this time it may become difficult to pursue the reviewer (contact details may have changed etc.) and 60 days is usually more than enough grace.
3. Please make no more than one review per ISP, any member found to be making several reviews for a single provider via multiple registered usernames is likely to be removed and their reviews erased.
4. Making lots of reviews within a short space of time may look suspicious, please try to review only those providers that you have used most recently.
5. ISP Representatives' may NOT review other providers, including their own, as this is considered abuse of the system.
6. Try to keep your review updated to reflect any changing experiences; this may also help to prevent the review from being erased.
7. Older reviews may be removed as part of occasional maintenance cycles (two yearly); although this is dependant upon website activity (lots of old / stale reviews for a particular provider are more likely to be cleaned up).
8. Please only try to review ISPs that you an existing member of.
9. ISPs are not allowed to promote the posting of reviews to 'selected' (private) customers as this may produce an unnatural bias in the ratings. However, a public link (via website) to the system and general (impartial) message is perfectly acceptable (if promoted via email then we recommend linking to an easily discoverable public page on your site, which can then link back to ISPreview, thus avoiding concern over self-selected customer samples).
10. ISPreview.co.uk reserves the right to remove any review if we are not confident that the poster has been an active customer of the reviewed ISP. Removals of this kind are more likely where a member has posted the review from behind an anonymous proxy, VPN and or email service, which makes it harder to validate your status as a customer of the ISP.
11. Please try to review honestly.
12. ISPreview.co.uk reserves the right to remove or NOT to add a new ISP to our review or listings system if those involved in its management or ownership have previously presided over other ISP(s) that caused harm to consumers through collapse or other poor practices.
13. We often leave a 1-2 year gap between adding new ISPs to our ISP Listings and the Reviews system, which allows time for the provider to establish themselves and prove their credentials.

➤ Reader Reviews - Right to Reply for ISPs (RtR)

Internet providers have a right to include a response to any individual review made about their service, which we can faciliate via a special ISP Rep account. This is governed by several rules.

1. ISP's should try to keep their reply as short and to the point as possible (ideally no more than one normal sized paragraph), in recognition of the fact that the review system imposes a word / character limit upon content to avoid information attacks/floods and spam.
2. ISP's must remember that the review system is not a discussion forum and should form their response in such a way as to avoid asking questions or other remarks that would not suit this linear interaction content model.
3. ISP's must recognise that any RtR content must obey standard site rules and also avoid being antagonistic; RtR's are not a tool for making accusations.
4. ISPreview reserves the right not to publish any RtR content that we deem unfit or unsuitable. In most cases the RtR will only require a minor adjustment to resolve this.

Moderation Policy by System

The following section describes the three services (i.e. those featuring user generated content) that this website offers and our core moderation policy and rules toward each of them.

➤ News Comments

This service allows visitors to anonymously post below-the-line comments on news articles that have been published by ISPreview. News publishers' content on their websites is NOT in scope of the OSA regulation, and the law also includes an explicit exemption for below-the-line comments (here) - this applies to any comments on content published directly by ISPreview (e.g. daily news articles).

However, anonymous comments also have little to no protection in law, thus ISPreview will not hesitate to remove any comments - when identified (either by ourselves or through end-user reports) - that fail to adhere to the aforementioned content restrictions or which we find offensive, inappropriate or grossly off-topic. Commentors who frequently change their public handle (username) within the same thread may also be considered as abusing the system and related comments removed.

Before being posted, all comments go through a semi-automated filter to identify SPAM (checks against the Akismet blocklist) and swearing. Comment will also be given a cursory check by the site admin, or a moderator, before being made public. But the latter process isn't foolproof and bad content may sometimes be missed by a human skim-reading through masses of comments.

Please note that there is no effective way to appeal the removal of an anonymous news comment as, by definition, we often have no way of credibly identifying who is the owner of an appealed comment.

How to report a news comment?

In order to report a news comment, visitors should email the contact given at the bottom of this page under 'Contacts, Complaints and Appeals' and include the following details:

1. A direct link to the comment itself. This can be obtained by clicking the date & time line on each comment (e.g. "January 22, 2025 at 11:22 am"), which includes a direct comment link (URL) with the comment's ID number.

2. Public username of the comment poster and the date/time it was posted.

3. Reason for the complaint, including a paste of the offending remark. Please only complain about breaches of the rules above and do not make frivolous complaints.

➤ Discussion Forum

This service allows registered members of the site to engage directly with other members in public discussions of their own making. Members can also search for posts created by other members and send direct (private messages) to members of the forum. Posts made by members on this forum are within scope of the OSA's regulation. Members must thus fully comply with our content/safety policy and restrictions.

Upon receiving a report about a post or private message, the site admin or a volunteer moderator will investigate it as soon as they're able and, if necessary, take action. Posts or threads that are found to breach our content policy will be removed.

In the case of a relatively minor breach, we may - at our discretion - only remove the offending part of a post (not the post in its entirety) and / or issue a polite warning not to repeat the infraction. Serious or repeated breaches could, at ISPreview's discretion, result in responsible users being banned from the forum.

Moderation of sign-ups (new registrations)

Before being approved, all new (provisional) members of this forum will be automatically checked by a filter connected to the global StopForumSpam database, which is used to identify known SPAMMERS and malicious bots. All new member sign-ups are then manually checked by the site admin before approval and, at this time, the system will flag those that it suspects of being created by robotic spammers.

Once approved, members are free to post on the forum as they please, provided they do not break the rules of this policy. ISPreview reserves the right to reject or ban any new sign-ups (provisional members) or existing members if we suspect them of being a potential security threat, breaking our content/safety policy or being a source of SPAM. We also reserve the right to remove stale accounts that have been inactivity for two years or more.

Moderation of content (posts)

The forum software automatically checks new posts for any markers that may indicate the presence of either SPAM or malicious bots, using the same method as mentioned directly above for sign-ups. Posts identified by this system as potentially containing such content will be held for manual checking by a moderator or the site admin before appearing in public (approval). Posts that contain robotic SPAM or malicious content will be removed and related accounts banned.

The forum system includes a filter that will remove common swear words from new posts. In addition, ISPreview will not hesitate to remove any posts - when identified (either by ourselves or through end-user reports) - that fail to adhere to the restrictions in this policy or which we deem offensive, inappropriate or grossly off-topic.

Moderation of private messages

Forum admins and moderators do not have access to view and check private messages between members, unless one of the members involved in the private communication 'reports' such a message through our system (see below) - this will make the message visible for moderation checks, as set out above.

How to report a forum post or message?

In order to report a forum post or private message for breaching our rules, members only need to click the "Report" button that can be found at the bottom of all messages/posts and fill out a short form.

➤ Reader Reviews

This service allows registered members to post consumer reviews and ratings of broadband and mobile providers (BT, Sky etc.). In this system, users can only interact with and post a review of companies (network providers) added by our system. The system does NOT allow normal users to directly interact with other users.

Review systems like this are currently exempt from the OSA and Ofcom's related regulations. Nevertheless, members who post a review are still expected to adhere to the aforementioned content and safety policy. Reviews that fail to adhere to these rules, or which we find offensive, inappropriate, false (fake), spamming or grossly off-topic, will - when identified (either by ourselves or through end-user reports) - be removed.

Please see the 'Additional Site Rules' section above for further details.

NOTE: The review system is on a separate member database from the forum.

How to report a review?

In order to report a member's review, visitors should email the contact given at the bottom of this page under 'Contacts, Complaints and Appeals' and include the following details:

1. A direct link to the review itself (obtainable by clicking the 'Title' of a review).

2. Username of the reviewer.

3. Reason for the complaint. Please only complain about breaches of the rules above and do not make frivolous complaints.

IMPORTANT: ISPreview is a free site (not a paid service) that is run by an individual on a small budget (it is not a big commercial business) - a human being that also has a right to sleep, family time, medical / sick leave and holidays - please be respectful of this fact. I am NOT a robot and cannot manually monitor these systems 24/7. ISPreview's approach is thus one of best efforts.

Most issues requiring moderation will thus be resolved within the space of a day, or often much less. But at the same time, it is not always possible to set a defined response time and delays may occur - particularly around traditional holiday periods. I will always endeavour to do as much as I am physically and mentally able to achieve without suffering self-harm, but there are limits. Please remember that you are a guest on this site too.

Contacts, Complaints and Appeals

The following sections include contact details for the above policy and related data.

➤ Accountable individual for this policy: Mark Jackson

➤ Date this policy was last updated: 25th January 2025

➤ Date of last OSA risk assessment: 25th January 2025

➤ Email contact for appeals: privacy.2018@ispreview.co.uk

Forum members have the right to appeal a ban or moderation decision. ISPreview will review the appeal at our discretion and decide an outcome, which may include making no changes to the original decision, un-banning a member or, where possible, re-adding a previously removed post. Appeals deemed frivolous (i.e. not having any serious purpose or value) or that are fundamentally incorrect may be rejected.

Users must include the word 'APPEAL' in the subject line of your email (otherwise it may not get to the right place) and add, within the body of the message, a copy of your original post, the date/time it was posted and a reason for your appeal.

➤ Email contact for complaints: privacy.2018@ispreview.co.uk

Any users of the above services may lodge a complaint, such as against statements or posts that have been made on the service by other users. Please note that ISPreview reserves the right, under the OSA, to disregard a relevant complaint (that is not an appeal) if we consider it to be "manifestly unfounded", such as if the complaint is deemed frivolous (i.e. not having any serious purpose or value) or fundamentally incorrect.

We will always endeavour to investigate any complaints that fall within the remit of this policy and respond as soon as we're able. Users must include the word 'COMPLAINT' in the subject line of your email (otherwise it may not get to the right place) and add, within the body of the message, a copy of your original post, the date/time it was posted and a reason for your complaint.

This policy set out in the above document will typically be reviewed once a year, usually during late January.