Comment by toomuchtodo
2 months ago
Great work! Perhaps not the appropriate OSI layer, but would be cool if this could pull the imgur blob from the wayback machine if unavailable on imgur proper. You'd still need this networking setup, as archive.org is blocked as well in the UK per ground truth from others on HN.
> as archive.org is blocked as well in the UK per ground truth from others on HN
I am in the UK.
archive.org is not blocked — not the Library or the Wayback Machine.
ETA: I just checked re: the comment toomuchtodo linked to, and it actually is blocked by default on my mobile phone as adult content, because I've never bothered to disable the adult content lock on that device. I get redirected to a page operated by my mobile network where I can undo the lock by giving them info; I might do that one day, might not.
For non-UK users: UK mobile phone providers all block adult content by default at the account level as a simple parental control measure, and have done for some time, largely because PAYG data is really rather cheap here.
Interesting but not particularly bothersome. Apparently this decision is about eleven years old.
It seems to differ by provider. When I was with Three it was an irritating process of having to either call up or visit a shop in person and say "I want to look at the naughty pages, please". Another provider (I can't remember which) had a method where you had to supply a credit card number.
I'm with "1p Mobile" now who are a virtual network on EE, and their adult content block is just a toggle in your online account, with no faffing around required - you can just hit the toggle. I presume the idea is that you don't give little Timmy the password to his own account portal, but I don't know what's to stop him getting his own SIM by himself.
With Three, I found the adult content block caused other problems with SSH connections dropping, various random stuff getting blocked and so on, which all went away as soon as I had it disabled, so it's worth doing even for non porn fans.
> I presume the idea is that you don't give little Timmy the password to his own account portal, but I don't know what's to stop him getting his own SIM by himself.
Well — perhaps the toggle is only available if the account has been topped up with a credit card?
One thing that distinguishes you getting a SIM and Little Timmy getting a SIM is that you're over the age of majority and can enter into credit contracts, whereas Little Timmy can only get a debit card.
This fact is actually central to one of Ofcom's recommended age verification techniques, though the adult block on mobile phone networks is much older than these recent measures.
> archive.org is blocked as well in the UK
it isn't
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-archive-...
I'm in the UK and we use 'mobile broadband' for our domestic Internet connection. So a mains powered router box that connects to the local G4 (or G5) mobile data network and provides wifi and a few cat 5 sockets. We don't need to subscribe to a phone line (e.g. last mile supplied by Openreach/BT or fibre from Virgin or whoever). I pay a single flat fee monthly by credit card. It is reasonably fast and meets our modest needs. There is no hard data cap. We average 150 Gb per quarter or so.
archive.org is blocked (along with other nsfw type sites), but as the last post in your link to an earlier discussion says, I could get it unblocked by filling in a declaration that I'm over 18. Paying by credit card isn't enough to unblock automatically for this particular package.
I've chosen not to unblock for no particular reason. The block sort of makes sense to me because archive.org records a lot of Web sites, some of which may have what is regarded as adult content, and it is unreasonable to expect archive.org to label individual records of sites according to the criteria the UK uses (each country probably has its own set of criteria e.g. gambling Web sites of certain kinds in the US).
archive.org is easily accessible in the UK from most wifi connections in cafes, libraries and, hilariously, colleges (where people under 18 gather in large numbers), and also from domestic adsl or fibre Internet connections.
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The op in the thread is wrong, it's not blocked.
Source: am British, on phone.