Over in this thread, at least three people have reported that their work web-filters are rejecting links to images on my webserver. This has never happened before, and I’m wondering why.
samarm says that it specifically says “You have attempted to access a site containg offensive material…” There’s nothing offensive on my webpage.
The links are hard links direct to images, using my IP address (too cheap to register a domain name.) I thought that this might be the problem, but I’ve done this hundreds of times before without causing any grief for anyone.
How does most filtering software work? I guess I always just imagined a proxy server with a database of “no-no” URLs. Do some use more sophisticated logical arguments?
For example, is it possible that, as far as the filter is concerned, a link which has no URL, AND is to a folder named “pics”, AND has a referring page which contains the term “homosexual” is simply too dodgy to risk?
How can I prevent this from happening? Do I have to cough up the dough to register “OhforchrissakesImnotapronographer.com”?
Not that it’s practical in this case, but if such sloppy profiling is taking place, what recourse does someone have? (I mean, besides locating the distributor of the offending software and giving them a good beating with a bar of soap in a sock.)