@%$& content filtering! (mild rant)

[Dark-Star]

Long story short, sister showed dad a fun internet game she was playing. Dad got worried about 'other things' going on at the site (like malicious ads) and did a thorough security check on the whole machine.

15 minutes later Mount St. Dad exploded. :burneyes:

He went to see what programs had ever asked for 'net access. And pop saw a lot of odd stuff! GIMP was a very bad offender - 5 entries starting with A alone had asked for internet permissions. (wth?) Called me and siblings in to identify (and be yelled at for) obscure programs of all sorts.

In fairness some programs had permissions that shouldn't. But a ton of it was things that had just asked at one time or another, others were stuff that I ran from a flash drive - like utorrent to get a linux ISO - and just got recorded.

So now pop is on one of his 'security binges'. Programs are prolly locked down 7 ways from Sunday, and oh yes, let's not forget the wonderful content filtering... Flickr.com is classified as "Hacking / Proxy Avoidance Systems." A VERY innocent nostalgia site I visit is blocked as "Glamour/Lifestyle" :rolleyes: :banghead: And these are just 2 of the best examples. *sighs* At least I have public library and college computers to access from, and at those I know I can evade those stupid blocks. http://www.mazeguy.net/silly/neenerneener.gif

I won't go much of anyplace now on the 'net from home. I'm all but certain every monitoring and tracking tool dad has at his disposal is now active. Pop is more steamed then a hot teakettle. :burnup: And all because of one tame, fun game that was shown with the utmost innocence.

Stupid filtering. Stupid bad sites that companies make $ blocking. Stupid security risks. Gah! I hate the world today.

[Bright_Star]

Who does the computer belong to?

[Dark-Star]

Him.

...and thus he has the right. It's just the whole thing happened in a flurry of heated tempers and yelling. And he's gonna be mad as hell for a while. (won't do anything wrong, but he's frakking SCARY when he's po'd.)

[Jaden]

Back when my dad used to have content filtering on my computer, one website got blocked for "Real Estate" :wtf: I had no idea what a great sin real estate is! My dad turned down the content filtering a bit after that since he realized how ridiculous that was.

Anyways, I don't really know what to tell you about this, other than give him a chance to cool his jets.

[gbm85]

I would guess that since you know about uTorrent and you are downloading Linux ISO's, you most likely have the knowledge to run Knoppix or some other live CD on there. Unless he has the BIOS locked down to where it won't boot off the optical drive. That's what I would do in your situation.

Also, if you have a hosted site somewhere that runs PHP, I can link you to a nice piece of code that lets you visit sites through your host. So any computer that can access your website will have access to any site you want. I use it from work now and again when the great IT gods think they know what's inappropriate for me to look at :p

[Anriana]

My father put blocks on the computer for about a day... until I couldn't pull up a website on Cassidy from Pokemon (I was like ten!)

That stuff is crazy, I feel bad for you.

[Seshat]

My husband used to work for a company which developed content filtering (and other services) for schools. For legal reasons, the company itself only produced the filtering software - it was for the education department and the teachers to determine what to block.

Filtering is really, really difficult. One of his favourites was bismuth.