Microsoft Family Safety Filter Blocks Google 332
mike.rimov writes "I saw that part of the brand new Windows Live package is the Family Safety Filter, so I decided to give it a spin. Turned it on, set it to 'basic filtering' (their lowest level), and went to Google ... oops, it blocks Google! So I logged into the settings and added Google as an exception. Google still wouldn't come up. Just in case, I turned off the family filter: voila, Google. As we all know, 'Don't be evil' is not part of Microsoft's motto! Oh yeah — and with the filter on, Microsoft's own search engine, live.com comes up." Anomaly?
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cause you can google to find you way around it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a classic filter issue, and a prime example of why using filters like this is a retarded waste of time.
A simply Google search probably will tell you how to work around the filter completely, as such Google is a banned website.
This isn't anything new, all of the filters out there do this sort of thing, this one just seems evil since its Microsoft blocking Google, but it happens with all of them.
The real solution is to realize that the person you're trying to prevent from seeing stuff on the Internet is going to find a way to look at it anyway. If you're doing this to stop kids from looking at something then you better keep them locked in a basement cause they'll just go somewhere else to find what they want. You can bet one of their friends doesn't have a porn blocker.
The solution to these problems for parents is to actually be a parent and remember that YOU are responsible for your children. Not Microsoft, not the computer, not your ISP, not the Internet, YOU. You can spend an entire lifetime trying to stop them from doing something and they'll spend their entire lifetime showing you how you can't. Unless of course you just ignore anything they do when you aren't watching them. Perhaps you should try a little education instead.
This is a really biased summary. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably intentional (Score:5, Insightful)
That does make a lot of sense, it is probably the most likely explanation next to "Oops, we made a typo."
It doesn't make sense that whitelisting Google still results in it being blocked, as the summary said.
I'd be very surprised if they block other search engines out of competitive reasons, because they've been getting hammered by the EU for various anti-compition violations over the past few years. In IE7, the startup wizard gave the user an easy way to select something besides Windows Live search as their default search engine if desired, so its not like these concerns are foreign to Microsoft.
Re:Probably intentional (Score:5, Insightful)
Other search engines not owned by Microsoft don't support this integration, so the filter blocks them as they would otherwise be a trivial way around the filter.
This seems reasonable. So it wasn't a devious attempt to block a competitor, just a very rigid safety feature that is unmotivated to integrate competitive products. Unfortunately, this will very likely drive a large chunk of people away from using it, and will make a lot of users think that MS is just being a dick.
Unfortunately, some parents may just turn it on for their kids without testing it thoroughly and not realize what their safety filter is locking their kids into.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that hard to believe. Microsoft has been spending a lot of money because they have a very small share of the search engine market [howtonotma...online.com].
They haven't been able to do that. Their search and crawling seems to be as bad as it's ever been. Their crawling especially.
If you can't crawl properly, why would people bother to use the search?
There's a small chance it's not intentional, but given their history of using their monopoly on the desktop to further other products, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Re:It's the Os (Score:5, Insightful)
Yuck. If she bent over, she'd resemble a cow with hanging udders. Blech. Give me natural As or Bs anyday rather than fakies.
Re:This is a really biased summary. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, sir! *This* is perfectly valid... (Score:1, Insightful)
not so sinister (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Probably intentional (Score:3, Insightful)
> This seems reasonable. So it wasn't a devious attempt to block a competitor, just a very
> rigid safety feature that is unmotivated to integrate competitive products.
Yes, it's always best to have a plausible cover story, isn't it?
Re:Cause you can google to find you way around it (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm always interested in folks who share your opinion (waste of time, always a work around). I think that this is true in the case of a poorly implemented filter, but I can certainly establish a filter that you can not get around without physical access to the wiring closet. A very simple forced transparent proxy with DPI and whitelists makes it pretty trivial to completely control what you do and do not have access to. Even if I go the blacklist route, a good weighted phrase engine (DG) does an outstanding job. Anyway, I'm sure your much to smart to be stopped by such a setup...you and your '1337 skillz' and whatnot.
Re:First Post! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not surprised it was blocked.. Think about it, Google has so many tracking methods. I personally block a ton of Google click and track methods. Matter of fact, I block almost all of them. Right now when WEB surfing, going to Facebook, etc there are always advertising AD's, trackers that come up saying Blocked. Its all over the WEB and not really specific to any one site either.
Re:Probably intentional (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd be very surprised if they block other search engines out of competitive reasons, because they've been getting hammered by the EU for various anti-compition[sic] violations over the past few years.
Yeah, but few of those have been effective at stopping MS from continuing said antitrust actions and MS has committed numerous new, unaddressed violations of the law. They're still making more money breaking the law and paying fines, than complying. Why do you think they'd comply now?
Re:Cause you can google to find you way around it (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>If you're doing this to stop kids from looking at something
I don't understand the big deal. So kids see nudity? So what? The human body is nothing to be ashamed of. Although I don't want my kids to see porn (sex), if they did would it be so horrible? By the time they're 13 they'll know what sex is anyway, and even if you shelter them completely, they'd better have SOME idea what they're supposed to do on their wedding night else I'll never get grandchildren! ;-)
American society seems to be built on the notion of keeping kids ignorant ("innocent") which is exactly the opposite of what our jobs as parents is meant to do. We're supposed to be teaching children about the world and preparing them to deal with it, not hiding it from them.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe that's because the people you blanket label as "MS apologists" aren't actually apologists, but reasonable & rational people that actually evaluate MS products on their merits. It seems at /. you're deemed an apologist if you ever defend MS on anything.
If you want to see group think in action, look at your own post, and the posts that show up when anyone dare criticize linux.
Re:Probably intentional (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is Microsoft didn't want to risk Google accidentally returning adult material web pages in the search list, and hence it's blocked.
So they keep silently blocking google even after you've whitelisted it? I'm not accusing Microsoft of malfeasance just yet, but it's very shoddy worksmanship that they'd implement a "we'll block google by default" thing, then either silently override whiltelisting of it "because it can work around the filter", or botch the whitelisting implementation altogether. On top of that, such a bug/feature/whatever still had to make it past QA.
Filters are stupid anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Intentional or not is not the issue and problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Works for Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Probably intentional (Score:4, Insightful)
When Microsoft never stops doing said thing, that's to be expected.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
The GP - which is probably a troll - does betray the kind of thinking that has become dangerously infectious in the US today: utter partisanship. They think that you must either be a loyal defender of a thing, or its relentless enemy. We see it too often in politics (and yes, it's an American thing, at least to the extent you see in political blogs.)
MS is probably doing something dodgy here, something that should set off anti-trust alarms. It's just too convenient that their biggest rival happens to get caught in the filter. But I've been critiqued as being a Microsoft apologist for, for example, saying good things about Office.
Re:It's the Os (Score:2, Insightful)
Yuck. If she bent over, she'd resemble a cow with hanging udders. Blech. Give me natural As or Bs anyday rather than fakies.
If you had actually seen natural ones at some point, you'd likely recognize that Bea Flora's breasts are anything but fake :P
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
The GP - which is probably a troll - does betray the kind of thinking that has become dangerously infectious in the US today: utter partisanship. They think that you must either be a loyal defender of a thing, or its relentless enemy. We see it too often in politics (and yes, it's an American thing, at least to the extent you see in political blogs.)
MS is probably doing something dodgy here, something that should set off anti-trust alarms. It's just too convenient that their biggest rival happens to get caught in the filter. But I've been critiqued as being a Microsoft apologist for, for example, saying good things about Office.
That's actually exactly what I was speaking against. If you ever wonder why that problem of partisanship doesn't just go away in spite of all its glaring and obvious flaws, this is why. It's difficult or impossible to point it out and speak against it without the assumption (and that's what it is, a baseless assumption) being made that there are only two possible "sides", so if you speak against one side you must be a member of the other side. Therefore, in the minds of several people who have responded to me, I spoke against the more religious MS advocates; therefore, I must be a religious Linux/other advocate and there is no other position I could be coming from. That's more of the linear, one-dimensional, two-points-and-a-line spectrum thinking that you see in politics (something I have repeatedly spoken against for some years now, by the way). Subscribing to that type of thinking amounts to self-limitation. Aren't false dichotomies great? Check my response (in this thread) to plague3106 for a more thorough response to this.
Now, I suppose you could say that I could have done a better job explaining how I felt. However, I have been on Slashdot and other public forums for some years now and I have found that if people want to make assumptions about you, in the absence of evidence, they are almost always going to do it no matter what you say. As a matter of fact, anyone who had perused my posting history or otherwise tried to learn the slightest thing about me would have found something quite the opposite of what you have described. I used to make the mistake of trying to word my posts in such a way as to make them more resistant to this sort of demagoguing. Then I realized that not only was it ineffective, it also amounted to me assuming the burden of someone else's self-imposed limitations.
That is, people tend to believe what they want to believe. That's why it's foolish to care too much about how you appear in the eyes of others. The only way to avoid catching flak once in a while is to never say anything remotely controversial; that price is too high.
Re:First Post! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet we use the site. Is that because the reputation is perhaps not so much embedded in the top-down editorial process as in the bottom-up moderation process? I came to this story trusting that I would find, within the first few top-rated comments, something indicating whether this anecdote was factually verified, and then plenty of discussion on the usefulness of filters and somewhere below a meta-discussion about the place of authority (Microsoft) in filtering. I did not, however, open up slashdot expecting to see nothing but stories whose summaries I could read and trust to be factually correct at first glance, the way I might (incorrectly) with hard news sites.
Re:First Post! (Score:3, Insightful)
False dichotomy. I vote for none of them. In fact I do not play the game of voting, set-up by you, at all.
You do not *need* any search engine. You need food, water, shelter, other humans, and something fun to do. Everything else is optional and replaceable fluff.
Re:First Post! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm suprised that nobody has pointed out the obvious: If I were a Microsoft marketing drone, I would post this sort of viral story on Slashdot, knowing that a large portion of the curious, tech savy crowd would immediatly run out, install said application, and test it. Great way to virally market the product, and then get a reversal on the negitive view point to some positive reaction.
Re:First Post! (Score:1, Insightful)
Which, well, it is.
Re:First Post! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First Post! (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting.
I simply make sure the tools my daughters need are in their head, namely the ability to use common sense and a STRONG sense of self-preservation.
It just seems to me that giving them a tool to make them safe makes more sense then taking tools away to prevent harm.