Scunthorpe problem Test Legalized Prostitution and Illegalized Prostition

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The Scunthorpe problem is the unintentional blocking of websites, e-mails,
forum posts or search results by a spam filter or search engine because
their text contains a string of letters that appear to have an obscene or
otherwise unacceptable meaning. Names, abbreviations, and technical terms
are most often cited as being affected by the issue.

The problem arises since computers can easily identify strings of text
within a document, but interpreting words of this kind requires considerable
ability to interpret a wide range of contexts, possibly across many
cultures, which is an extremely difficult task. As a result, broad blocking
rules may result in false positives affecting innocent phrases.


Contents
1 Origin and history
2 Other examples
2.1 Refused web domain names and account registrations
2.2 Blocked web searches
2.3 Blocked emails
2.3.1 Blocked for words with two meanings
2.4 News articles damaged
2.5 Other
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Origin and history
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's profanity
filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire,
England, from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains
the substring "cunt".[1] In the early 2000s Google's opt-in SafeSearch
filters apparently made the same mistake, preventing people from searching
for local businesses or URLs that included Scunthorpe in their names.[2]

Other examples
Mistaken decisions by obscenity filters include:

Refused web domain names and account registrations
In April 1998, Jeff Gold attempted to register the domain name
shitakemushrooms.com, but due to the substring shit he was blocked by an
InterNIC filter prohibiting the "seven dirty words" which was active between
1996 and the transfer of control to ICANN in 1998.[3] (Shitake is from the
Japanese name for the edible fungus Lentinula edodes.)
In 2000, a Canadian television news story on web filtering software found
that the website for the Montreal Urban Community (Communauté urbaine de
Montréal, in French) was entirely blocked because its domain name was its
French acronym CUM (www.cum.qc.ca);[4] "cum" (among other meanings) is
English-language slang for semen.
In February 2004 in Scotland, Craig Cockburn reported that he was unable to
use his surname (pronounced "Coburn") with Hotmail. Separately he had
problems with his workplace email because his job title, software
specialist, contained the substring Cialis, an erectile dysfunction
medication commonly included in spam e-mails. Hotmail initially told him to
spell his name C0ckburn (with a zero instead of the letter "o"), but later
reversed the ban.[5] In 2010 he had a similar problem registering on the BBC
website, where again the first four characters of his surname caused a
problem for the content filter.[6]
In February 2006, Linda Callahan was initially prevented from registering
her name with Yahoo! as an e-mail address as it contained the substring
Allah. Yahoo! later reversed the ban.[7]
In July 2008, Dr. Herman I. Libshitz could not register an e-mail address
containing his name from Verizon because his surname contained the substring
shit, and Verizon initially rejected his request for an exception. In a
subsequent statement, a Verizon spokeswoman apologized for not approving his
desired e-mail address.[8]
In August 2018, Natalie Weiner reported on social media that she was unable
to create an account for herself on a website, because her last name is also
a word used as slang for penis. It was reported that "hundreds" of people
replied saying this affected them as well. Names of those replying included
Ben Schmuck (last name is a Yiddish word for "penis"), and Arun Dikshit
(last name is Sanskrit for one who teaches or provides knowledge, containing
the substring shit).[9][10][11] Articles covering this stated that it was a
common and extremely difficult technical problem for which no robust
solution was currently available.[9]
Blocked web searches
In the months leading up to January 1996, some web searches for Super Bowl
XXX were being filtered, because the Roman numeral for the game and the site
(XXX) is also used to identify pornography.[12]
Gareth Roelofse, the web designer for RomansInSussex.com, noted in 2004, "We
found many library Net stations, school networks and Internet cafes block
sites with the word 'sex' in the domain name. This was a challenge for
RomansInSussex.co.uk because its target audience is school children."[2]
In 2008, the filter of the free wireless service of the town of Whakatane in
New Zealand blocked searches involving the town's own name because the
filter's phonetic analysis deemed the "whak" to sound like fuck; the town
name is in Maori, and in the Maori language "wh" is most commonly pronounced
as "f". The town subsequently put the town name on the filter's
whitelist.[13]
In July 2011, web searches in China on the name Jiang were blocked following
claims on the Sina Weibo microblogging site that former Chinese Communist
Party general secretary Jiang Zemin had died. Since the word "Jiang" meaning
"river" is written with the same Chinese character (江), searches related to
rivers including the Yangtze (Cháng Jiāng) produced the message "According
to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the results of this search
cannot be displayed."[14]
In February 2018, web searches on Google's shopping platform were blocked
for items such as glue guns, Guns N' Roses, and Burgundy after Google
hastily patched its search system that was displaying results for weapons
and accessories that violated Google's stated policies.[15]
Blocked emails
In 2001, Yahoo! Mail introduced an email filter which automatically replaced
JavaScript-related strings with alternative versions, to prevent the
possibility of JavaScript viruses in HTML email. The filter would hyphenate
the terms "Javascript", "Jscript", "Vbscript" and "Livescript"; and replaced
"eval", "mocha" and "expression" with the similar but not quite synonymous
terms "review", "espresso" and "statement", respectively. Assumptions were
involved in the writing of the filters: no attempts were made to limit these
string replacements to script sections and attributes, or to respect word
boundaries, in case this would leave some loopholes open. This resulted in
such errors as medireview in place of medieval.[16][17][18]
In February 2003, Members of Parliament at the British House of Commons
found that a new spam filter was blocking e-mails to them. It blocked
e-mails containing references to the Sexual Offences Bill then under debate,
as well as some messages relating to a Liberal Democrat consultation paper
on censorship.[19] It also blocked e-mails sent in Welsh because it did not
recognise the language.[20]
In October 2004, it was reported that the Horniman Museum in London was
failing to receive some of its e-mail because filters mistakenly treated its
name as a version of the words horny man. Horny is a common slang term for
sexual arousal.[21]
Problems can occur with the words socialism, socialist, and specialist
because they contain the substring Cialis. Blocking of the word specialist
is liable to block emailed résumés and curricula vitarum and other material
including job descriptions.[22]
Blocked for words with two meanings
In October 2004, e-mails advertising the pantomime Dick Whittington sent by
a teacher from Norwich in the UK were blocked by school computers because of
the use of the name Dick, sometimes used as slang for penis.[23]
In May 2006, a man in Manchester in the UK found that e-mails he wrote to
his local council to complain about a planning application had been blocked
as they contained the word erection when referring to a structure.[24]
Blocked e-mails and web searches relating to The Beaver, a magazine based in
Winnipeg, caused the publisher to change its name to Canada's History in
2010, after 89 years of publication.[25] Publisher Deborah Morrison
commented: "Back in 1920, The Beaver was a perfectly appropriate name. And
while its other meaning [vulva] is nothing new, its ambiguity began to pose
a whole new challenge with the advance of the Internet. The name became an
impediment to our growth".[26]
In June 2010, Twitter blocked a user from Luxembourg 29 minutes after he had
opened his account and posted his first tweet. The tweet read 'Finally! A
pair of great tits (Parus major) has moved into my birdhouse!’. Despite
including the Latin name to point out that the tweet was about birds, any
attempts to unblock the account were in vain.[27]
In 2011, a councillor in Dudley found an email flagged for profanity by his
council's security software after mentioning the Black Country dish, faggots
(a type of meatball, but also a derogatory term for a homosexual).[28]
Residents of Penistone in South Yorkshire have had e-mails blocked because
the town's name includes the substring penis.[29]
Lightwater in Surrey suffered similarly because its name contains the
substring twat.
Residents of Clitheroe (Lancashire, England) have been repeatedly
inconvenienced because their town's name includes the substring clit, which
is short for "clitoris".[30]
Résumés of magna cum laude graduates have been blocked by spam filters
because of inclusion of the word cum, which is Latin for with (in this
usage), but is sometimes used as slang for semen in English usage.[31]
News articles damaged
In June 2008, a news site run by the American Family Association filtered an
Associated Press article on sprinter Tyson Gay, replacing instances of "gay"
with "homosexual", thus rendering his name as "Tyson Homosexual".[32]
The word or string "ass" may be replaced by "butt", resulting in "clbuttic"
for "classic" and "buttbuttinate" for "assassinate".[33]
Other
In November 2013, British Facebook temporarily blocked users for using the
word faggot in reference to the dish faggot.[34]
In January 2014, files used in the online game League of Legends were
reported as being blocked by some UK ISP filters due to the names
'VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj' and 'XerathMageChainsExtended.luaobj'
containing the letters used in the word "sex".[35]
In May 2018, the website of the grocery store Publix would not allow a cake
to be ordered containing the Latin phrase summa cum laude. The customer
attempted to rectify the problem by including special instructions but still
ended up with a cake reading "Summa --- Laude".[36][37]
In May 2020, despite extensive media scrutiny, some hashtags directly
referring to British political advisor Dominic Cummings were unable to trend
on Twitter because the substring cum in Cummings' surname triggered
Twitter's anti-porn filter.[38]
In October 2020 a profanity filter banned the word bone at a paleontology
conference.[39]