Anonymizer free trial blocks pages with "young" or "old" in the URL (??)
Bennett Haselton
http://www.anonymizer.com/ and typing the desired URL into the box
labeled "Free Anonymous Websurfing") allows access to certain pages.
However, if you try to access some pages including
http://www.hotmail.com/
http://www.playboy.com/
http://www.stormfront.org/
you get redirected to:
http://www.anonymizer.com/upgrade/blockpage.html
which says that certain pages, including gambling and adult sites, are
restricted under the free trial.
What I've also found is that under the free trial, pages that have
certain words in the URL -- including "sex", "fuck", "gay", "breast",
"bush", "live", and for some reason, "young" and "old" -- are blocked,
unless they're located in one of the domains that are apparently
whitelisted for keyword filtering, including yahoo.com and cnn.com.
All of the following URLs take you to the "block" page (none of these
pages actually exist, except for http://www.eff.org/old/ ):
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.eff.org/old/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/old/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.peacefire.org/old/
even though the top-level sites are all accessible:
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.eff.org/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.peacefire.org/
Yahoo and CNN are apparently "keyword-whitelisted", so that none of
these are blocked:
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.yahoo.com/old/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.cnn.com/old/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.yahoo.com/fuck/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.cnn.com/fuck/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.yahoo.com/sex
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.cnn.com/sex/
A partial word match will cause the URL to be blocked, so, for
example, because the word "ass" is on the block list, this Web site
for Grants Pass, Oregon, is inaccessible:
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.rogueweb.com/gpass/
even though the top-level domain is accessible:
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.rogueweb.com/
You can do further experimentation to find out which words are
"trigger" words that cause Anonymizer to block them:
BLOCKED:
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/breast/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/porn/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/penis/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/young/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/old/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/bush/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/oral/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/ass/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/live/
NOT BLOCKED:
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/apple/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/ball/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/child/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/new/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/gore/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/bomb/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/nigger/
http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.aclu.org/nazi/
Even though the keyword filter that Anonymizer is using is apparently
much cruder than the ones used by commercial porn-blocking programs,
the block page at
http://www.anonymizer.com/upgrade/blockpage.html
comes right out and says "Other sites may be restricted at random as
well," so they should not be held to the same standard as, say, Cyber
Patrol. (Cyber Patrol also restricts other sites pretty much at
random -- see http://peacefire.org/censorware/Cyber_Patrol/jan-2002-blocks.shtml
-- but they claim not to; Anonymizer never promised to provide access
to anything and can do whatever they want.) Plus, it the more sites
Anonymizer allows access to, the more money the free service costs
them to provide, so it makes some sense to err on the side of blocking
adult pages, even if blocking the word "live" seems a little paranoid.
I am, however, curious as to why they block pages with the words "old"
and "young" in the URL. I'll email Anonymizer tech support and see
what they say.
-Bennett
Kozlovia
> The free version of Anonymizer (which you can access just by going to
> http://www.anonymizer.com/ and typing the desired URL into the box
> labeled "Free Anonymous Websurfing") allows access to certain pages.
> However, if you try to access some pages including
>
>
.
>
> I am, however, curious as to why they block pages with the words "old"
> and "young" in the URL. I'll email Anonymizer tech support and see
> what they say.
>
> -Bennett
Try this REALLY free service;
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