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4% take up in the ISP parental controls
TheTruth1983
Posts: 13,462 Forum Member
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http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/389926/those-parental-control-filters-as-few-as-4-are-signing-up
So that has been a roaring success.
Broadband customers are overwhelmingly choosing not to use parental-control systems foisted on ISPs by the government - with take-up in the single digits for three of the four major broadband providers.
Last year, the government pushed ISPs to roll out network-level filters, forcing new customers to make an "active" decision about whether or not they want to use them.
An Ofcom report has revealed that the vast majority of new customers are not opting for the filters.
Only 5% of new BT customers signed up, 8% opted in for Sky and 4% for Virgin Media. TalkTalk rolled out a parental-control system two years before the government required it and has had much better take-up of its offering, with 36% of customers signing up for it.
So that has been a roaring success.
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Compare that with the huge noise made in the media calling for its implementation and of Cameron's tub thumping crusade.
Take up by new customers who were offered it.
Talk Talk 36%
Sky 8%
BT 5%
Virgin Media 13% choose filtering (4.3% choose child safe filtering)
40% of UK households have children aged zero to under eighteen.
42% of households with children already have non ISP based parental controls of some kind in place.
(My network was there before the hub, so the hub was made to fit my network, not the other way round. IP assignments, gateways, etc, all wrong for my setup with the BT defaults)
Not that I need a false-positive-generating, over-reaching piece of software filtering my net, despite having two internet-using kids.
I wonder if Cameron and Con-Lab-Lib will get the message that people don't want this nanny state bullshit and mass censorship. I very much doubt it...........
er.... why?
even if you believe the scaremongering from the Daily Mail that porn is bad and corrupts teenagers (which it doesn't) it's a terribly crude way to filter the home internet. They only have to install this and they should be in luck. ;-)
http://goawaycameron.co.uk/
I've been on BT for a while now. The other month when I logged on the the BT site to view my bill I was asked to make a decision about filtering. I of course opted for none.
Compare this with the huge noise made on these forums saying how it would be the end of personal freedom and a fatal attack on human rights made by posters just like you...
Give it time. The next thing could be, that because not many are taking up the filtering that everyone will have to have it regardless of whether they want it or not. It really wouldn't surprise me.
We'll see I guess over the next few years. One thing is for sure there will be less and less internet freedom over time and more and more spying on the general public.
Why? Because it's another tool for parents to use. It's good that people have the option to turn it on or off and not on all the time (which would be bad). Its free to use and will give some parents more peace of mind. It will also help against bad parenting.
It's just one layer out of many.
What's the point when the filters can be got round in five minutes? Savvy teenagers probably in two minutes.
The main problem with is that it's on by default, you have to opt out. If parents want filtering they should switch it on.
It also gives a false sense of security to parents. Filters are never 100% and their kids will have bypassed them anyway, but parents will now think their kids connection is being filtered and are less likely to supervise them.
So now parenting has been outsourced to a filtering system that doesn't work and kids will likely be at more risk.
So the current system is fine then. Give people the option of the filter; maybe publicize it a bit better, if take up remains low then so be it.
As for the 'teenagers could get round that in seconds' argument, I reckon that as soon as someone is old enough to know how to avoid a porn filter they are old enough to look at porn
And what about preventing younger children using the internet stumbling onto unsuitable material?
And what tax payers money the ISP filters are not being paid for by the state. If people don't want these filters why were 42% of households with children using non-ISP based parental control systems before ISPs started offering them. and why were some ISPs offering ISP based filters as a service to their customers before the government raised the issue. Since the government target date of all ISPs having child filters as an option offered to all new customers, take up of the filters with some ISPs has been as high as 36%, only 40% of UK housholds have children.
And what mass censorship, it is censorship by the ISP account holder. The ISP account holder has control over if to use the filtering and with Talk Talk filter the ISP account holder has multiple setteings on what material to filter, and can permit or filter inidividual sites, and can turn the filtering on and off at will.
These days if you get sent a new Home Hub from BT (for example) when you connect to it the first time using default settings you're are simply asked if you would like to set up parental controls. Simply clicking 'No' is the last you'll see of it. This implementation seems totally fine to me. It's there if you want it and not imposed on those who don't want it.
That's incredibly naive.
When my cousin was 11 he was able to get around a block that my uncle had put on certain websites to stop him playing online games and from what some of his friends were talking about he wasn't the only pre-teen bypassing parents filters. Now my cousin wasn't yet interested in porn at the time but he could have been viewing absolutely anything he liked online once he worked out how to bypass the restrictions. Kids these days learn how to use computers at school from pretty much day one. There is no way you can block porn from children until they are 18. It's impossible unless you physically watch what they are doing online, which is what good parents would be doing anyway.
Talk Talk ISP filtering also notifies the account holder via email when settings are changed or the filter is turned off or on, so to deactivate it and tun it back on undeteced the child would need the ISP account holder password and the abilty to delete the ISP account holders emails. So a child would probably need to bypass the filter at the ISP somehow rather than simply learn the password and turn it off and on.
There's also a big chance that the magic fix also contains a trojan (50-50 if the AV spots it, the download site probably says to ignore the warning) so they get the double bonus of getting around a block *and* hosting a phishing site!
But before it can be forced you would need in place the necessary technology, you get that technology in place by saying... it'll all be a choice.
Job done! And people fall for it every time.
I was being a bit flippant, but i'm fairly liberal on the issue of pornography. I'm skeptical that it moderate exposure has negative effects on teenagers. I don't think I would allow someone under the age of 13 unsupervised access to the internet though.
It's a necessary idea. The problem is it's 10 years too late and they are making a pig's ear of it.
Perhaps if we had blocked porn in the early days, we wouldn't have tv shows on mainstream broadcasters that trivialise and sexualise rape. The rise in sexually charged media is not unrelated to the rise of easy access hardcore pornography. It isn't progressive, it's destructive and the sooner people wake up and realise this, the sooner civilisation can get back on track.
Some studies have shown that sexual imagery does increase aggression. As some studies have shown that video games do too. So we have age controls on difficult to get hold of video games, but not on easy access hardcore internet pornography?
Just because some will find ways to get around it doesn't mean we shouldn't try. In an ideal world, young people would get access to this stuff when they are mature enough to comprehend and understand the nastiness of it.
wxw.goawaypervs.co.uk
Lots of them are - lets look at the wifi on London Underground, using the Virgin Media filter.
You can go on Twitter and type porn in the search box and all the nudie people anyone could ever need comes up there. Meanwhile, all of Reddit was blocked for weeks, including say interviews with Barack Obama.
And it can't be turned off.
Public money, down the drain on a scheme that couldn't ever work and is damaging Britain's economy even now, concocted by idiots in parliament in all parties.