Site Blocking: More Data

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Update: If you’ve been blocked trying to access Gates of Vienna, please send a screen cap image of the message you received at the moment you were blocked to unspiek (at) chromatism (dot) net. That may help us identify what the issue is.

Over the past few days I’ve posted several times (see here, here,
and here) about the possibility that this site is being blocked by some ISPs, with a special focus in the UK. I asked readers to help crowd-source the data for a research project on the topic, and we have received forty-seven responses so far via email and the comments. A small dataset, but large enough to be of interest.

I’ve reached no definite conclusions yet, so people are welcome to continue providing data. However, the trend seems to indicate that there is no widespread systematic blocking of Gates of Vienna. There were only seven instances of at least partial blocking, and those seem mostly to be of the “You must be 18 years old to enter” variety. Annoying, but still allowing access.

Strangely enough, there are no reports of blocking by the British ISP Sky, despite the fact that blocked.org.uk identifies Sky as blocking us.

And the biggest surprise is that GoV is accessible from Turkey — the Turkish government used to block us.

A full table of the data is below the jump:

Country   Local   ISP   Browser   Blocked?
Bahrain               No
Denmark       3.dk       No
Denmark       fullrate.dk       No
Denmark       tdc.dk       No
France       Free       No
Kenya   Nairobi   Zuku       No
Malaysia               No
Netherlands   Eindhoven   KPN-NL   Chrome/IE/Win7   No
Netherlands       Telefort       No
New Zealand   Wellington   CachedNet LLC       No
Romania       Romtelecom       No
Singapore       Netblk-Softlayer-Apnic       No
South Africa               No
Sweden               No
Sweden   Stockholm   Interconnects       No
Switzerland       UPC-Cablecom       No
Turkey   Istanbul   Istanbul Datacenter       No
Turkey   Izmir   TTNet       No
UK   Greater London   Sky   Firefox   No
UK   London   London Trust Media       No
UK   London   O2       Yes
UK   London   Sky       No
UK   London   Sky       No
UK   London   Virgin Media       No
UK       BT       No
UK       BT   Firefox   No
UK       EE-phone   Firefox   Yes
UK               No
UK       PlusNet   Chrome   No
UK       Sky   Chrome/IE   No
UK       TalkTalk       No
UK       THREE-cellular       Yes
UK       THREE-mobile   Chrome/Windows 7   No
UK       T-mobile       Yes
UK       Virgin Media       No
UK       Virgin Media       Yes
UK   NW   TalkTalk       No
UK   Scotland           No
UK   Sheffield   O2   Chrome   No
UK   Southampton   Hosting Services       No
UK   W. London   BTinternet   Firefox   No
UK   W. Yorkshire   Virgin Media       No
UAE               Yes
USA   Maryland           No
USA   Missouri   Mediacom       No
USA   Schenectady, NY   Time Warner       Yes
USA   TN   ATT       No
 

11 thoughts on “Site Blocking: More Data”

  2. You are also aware, I am sure, that many corporations block access to GoV via their “net nanny” filtering. Are you also interested in collecting incident reports on that?

    For example, where I work, I get this message:

    Reason: The category of Streaming Video has been soft blocked by your Security Administrator
    This web resource https://gatesofvienna.net/2015/12/site-blocking-more-data/ has been identified as having content or functionality that is controlled to prevent adverse impact to …

    I would guess those sorts of black (and grey) lists are shared among the various blocking services and probably also used by the ISP’s that you are documenting. I doubt that individual ISPs are making those decisions on their own.

    • Thank you, but we don’t need to collect data for that. First of all, we dealt with that almost 10 years ago when the DOI’s filtering service blocked us (and many other sites) — we had a lot of posts about that.

      Secondly, there would simply be too much data. We and many other sites are being blocked by LOTS of corporate and government website filters. I know that for a fact.

    • Then again – at my workplace, Facebook is also blocked. Along with sites such as youtube… workplaces have the right to be a little more restrictive than general ISPs.

  4. And accessing successfully now on Poland’s Orange mobile network. (Orange is France telecom – which in Britain part-owns the EE network, along with Deutsche Telecom, otherwise known as T-mobile.)

  6. I was the one who originally raised this issue. I have just had another go. I removed GoV from my whitelist of allowed sites. This has caused the block to be reinstated.

    Browser: Firefox
    Location: United Kingdom
    ISP: Sky
    ISP provides blocking under voluntary agreement with UK govt.: Yes
    Blocking switched on by default: Yes
    Account holder can disable blocking to view site: Yes

    I will re-enable the block and send a screen cap to that email address.

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