"Taking the initiative following the British government’s interest in bringing forward the Investigatory Powers Bill, Sky has announced that it will be introducing its filtering system automatically for all new customers (it won’t even ask first) and will even go so far as to instigate a watershed-like system. Before 9PM, no new Sky customers will be able to access websites that are considered too racy for a PG rating."
I wonder how many customers it will lose, or moreso how many people have no choice but to use that service.
no porn for UK bros before 9PM, though I'd imagine there's probably a way around the filters no?
Surely you would be able to opt-out? If not then they will haemorrhage customers and money.
A VPN is a way around the filtering system if you aren't the bill payer for your connection. I can't think of any instance where a VPN to a more liberal country wouldn't be able to navigate around the restrictions of ISPs.
If you were to give the article a quick read you would see "The block on content not child friendly will be dropped after 9PM, but pornography will still not be accessible. For that, users will need to log-in to their Sky account and manually disable the “feature”."
i think plusnet used to do something like that becuase i couldnt accees pornhub but there are a ton more sites to go on so i dont see it as a problem becuase they wont beable to block them all
This is fear mongering... It is a simple opt in out feature that customers will have. It already exisits on most mobile networks and home broadband systems, its either a router check box or sign in to the account page and again, tick/untick a box. I have had to do it with Virgin Media, O2 and EE so it's nothing new.
I use Sky, they already have this that you can opt into. It's very easy to enable or disable. We leave it enabled as the kids use a laptop downstairs. I use a VPN on my own machine and it can't do anything about VPN traffic.
In short it's nothing to worry about and I very much doubt they will lose any customers.
I have been to England. PG there is like xxx here in the states. They will most likely restrict offensive sites like Mike Savage and Rush Limbaugh and www.thereligionofpeace.com After having a kid I totally get 3 months on the Mayflower.
The filters Sky already have in place will block most websites that have any adult or firearms related. I just tried to access a US based gunstore from the family machine and get the following:
This isn't the defualt behaviour at the moment, but it sounds like it will. It's dead simple to change so the only people who need to use a VPN to getr around it are those who do not control the account e.g. teenage kids and husbands whose wives are the account holder :-)
I thought you might like to know a couple of nuggets I have just discovered with my Sky broadband - remember I have elected to enable their filtering as I have yougsters in the house who are free to use a PC & laptop...
...Anyway, I have recently rebuily my Gaming partition and went to have a go on BF4 which I have not played in ages. Strangely the battlefield web portal would not open - no 'this is blocked' message as per my screenshot above, just a timeout.
I thought this was a bit weird and then remembered I have not set up my PrivateVPN connection. No doubt Sky would block such a website as it includes guns and violence etc. Just strange that they don't tell you they are blocking it.
Anyhow, I thought I'd go and download the latest VPN .exe from PrivateInternetAccess to get that set up. What do I discover? The www.provateinternetaccess.com website suffers from the same problem - no message just a timeout.
Now this is a PIA if you don't already have the .exe available as you'll need to disable the Sky filtering or add a rule. It just strikes me as a little odd that Sky would block a VPN providers site on the sly. I can guess why they would do it. But I would prefer them to tell you rather than making wonder if a site is down!
An alternative to using the Sky filtering will be to set up the machines the kids use with the OpenDNS Family Shield DNS servers. It will probably work better and won't affect the grown ups machines!
