Mumsnet and Mc Donalds blocking websites which discuss atheism

[DebbieCultard77]

I must admit that I am rather liberal in my out look on life and can appreciate that some might raise concerns with websites which challenge young Christian Muslim children, but I feel that this is slightly inappropriate.

imgur.com/a/wWbmA

I would welcome your thoughts.

I'm appalled. This is a really good example of the dangers of web filtering (beyond what people choose to install and configure on their own machines, obviously)

This is interesting, from here: McDonald's WiFi access page will carry information on what material they restrict and why Can somebody who goes to McD have a look at their access page and see what it says about this?

This surely can't be what MN had in mind when they launched this programme.

My son is gay and tells me that he can literally not get on ANY gay website (community forums etc.) for gay teens while browsing from Mc Donalds.

I can understand banning porn and other such inappropriate content but when MD and MN start making judgements on what else is appropriate and inappropriate for our children I think we are entering dangerous territory.

Being tech savy myself - and knowing how tech savy kids are these days, I tried to see how long it would take to circumvent this and I had found an unblocked proxy website in a matter of minutes and so was able to overcome the filter. I am tempted to write to the Guardian about this to be honest because I actually find it rather offensive. MN should be ashamed to be associated with this and should politely ask Mc Donalds to remove MN affiliations if they are going to block these kinds of sites.

Have you notified MNHQ? If you click the Report Post button by your name it will bring thsi thread to their attention - I would love to hear their thoughts. I can't believe for a minute that this is what MNHQ had in mind.

Thanks Hassled, I had not thought of that (only just signed up so i'm new to MN).

I've reported it.

To be honest, it personally makes me feel a bit uncomfortable with the affiliation anyway as Mc Donalds are not exactly an ethical company anyway. I am not sure whether the filter scheme is something that MN put out there, and MD is just jumping on the band wagon to appear to be cosy with mums.

I have reservations about the whole filtering scheme as it is, but I don't think this is the place to air those grievances.

• Debbie

Hey PlentyOfPubeGardens,

The images I included in my original post included details of why that page appeared to be blocked.

i.imgur.com/suWzDh.png

It reads:

Access Denied (contentfilterdenied)

Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Alternative Spirituality / Belief; Newsgroups/Forum"

For assistance, contact your network support team.

Hello. We've just spotted this.

We'll make some enquiries and come back to you when we've found out more.

Thanks for raising this.

We'll move this thread to Site stuff now - as that's probably the better place for it.

Thanks so much for raising this it is really good to have thoughts from folks on this issue. Mumsnet Family Friendly Wi Fi is all about making sure that parents know whether any filters are in place and if they aren't, being in a position to decide whether or not to let their kids access public WiFi (as opposed to 3G access which you can still do anywhere set up to individual requirements) in that location. It definitely isn?t about blocking access to gay sites or atheist sites and if that is happening we would want to hear from Mumsnetters so that we can raise it with the Family Friendly WiFi member and get their response.

What we ask retailers to consider appropriate filters for their customers and if they want to carry Family Friendly WiFi status they need to block over 18 pornography just as we would ask retailers to put adult magazines on the top shelf. We know filtering isn't right in all places and we don't expect all places to want FF WiFi but we think that it helps parents to know whether filters are there or not. What is really hard for places to decide is exactly what to filter. Filters aren't perfect so sometimes they catch things that shouldn't be caught and miss stuff that you want to filter. We spent time with McDonalds to understand their system and their approach to filtering. It is incredibly carefully thought through and sophisticated with the ability to correct mistakes when something is blocked that shouldn't be. So if you feel there's a site they are currently blacklisting that should be whitelisted, you can get in touch and they'll consider it. We think it's a step forward for parents to be given the information to make an informed choice about public WiFi and as far as filtering goes we know it's really tricky but we still thought it was worth trying.

We've been in touch with MacDonalds and one of the key folks who worked in this with us is away but they plan to respond asap.

Thanks again for posting.

Hello. We've been in touch with McDonald's about this and they've asked us to post up this response from them:

'Thank you for your comments and for bringing this to our attention. We are sorry for any offence or confusion caused by this filtering error.

'At McDonald's, our customer experience is very important to us and we know that the free WiFi we offer in all 1,200 of our UK restaurants is an important part of this. McDonald's is a family-friendly restaurant and we use category filtering across our public internet service to ensure that we provide as appropriate an experience as possible, considering the broad range of customers who visit our restaurants.

'However, we are always looking to refine and improve this filtering process because, as we're sure you can imagine, it is not easy to correctly categorise every website that exists, and we do have to rely on computer systems to aid us with this. We are currently changing WiFi providers and a product of this transition will be a more intelligent filtering system that will help eliminate instances of inaccurate website categorisation such as this.

'We are halfway through this process which we hope, when completed, will improve the experience for all our customers, but, until then, please do continue contact us with any other examples of website filtering that you feel to be misguided, and we will be happy to look into them for you.'

Mumsnet, what are you doing?!

You withdrew support for ISP filtering - do you remember.

All the reasons against ISP filtering apply to this filtering too!

You cannot simply block websites that show over 18 porn. It just does not work like that. Macdonalds won't be able to tweak their filter to fix the issues, because they can't be fixed. Either they will block far too much, or not enough.

Head. Desk.

Thanks, MNHQ.

That response from McD is rubbish - the website wasn't inaccurately categorised, they just decided to filter the whole category Alternative Spirituality / Belief; Newsgroups/Forum

I wonder if they filter MN Philosophy/Religion/spirituality?

Just an update. The website is still blocked.

imgur.com/jhWHn

The category has been changed slightly - indicating it has been reviewed, but the block has not been lifted to this specific site.

I strongly feel as though MNHQ should distance itself from Mc Donald's over this and ask that the Mumsnet logo be removed from their website.

Really bizarre.
I hope that MN sorts this out soon.

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that we are on it! I have placed a call in to the person responsible for IT at McDonalds and as soon as he gets back to me I will post an update on the reason for them blocking that site. Please bear with me whilst I get to an answer

Hi Again - thanks for waiting :)

I have spoken to McDonalds and the position is that they are currently in the process of moving to a new WiFi provider. Under the previous provider, they were only able to block at category level pre set by the provider. Part of the reason for moving to a new provider was to give them the flexibility to block and unblock bespoke to McD's. It was this new service that impressed us so much because it gives them the ability to respond when sites are blocked that shouldn't be. (Their new provider is O2 another one of our FF members). Over 700 of their restaurants have already moved to O2 and if you try to access the site discussed in this thread you would find it wasn't blocked. However, because of the less sophisticated previous WI Fi offer, if you try to access it in a restaurant that hasn't migrated to the O2 WiFi you would find it was still blocked because McD's can't lift the filter at their end under the old provider (sorry this is getting a bit convoluted but you hopefully see where I'm coming from :) They are working as quickly as they can to migrate all their rest. to the new provider. I hope that clarifies. Please keep the feedback coming - part of the whole reason for the entire FF programme is to keep pushing providers, retailers, restaurants and the world at large to respond to what parents need. To get into the real detail of FFliness beyond the baby changing mats and primary colours (lovely though those are). It isn't straight forward but then we never thought it would be - any help from you guys is always mucho appreciated :) Thanks lots and have a lovely bank holiday weekend - rain or no rain! Vicki

Do I get fined for too many emoticons......I really I am looking a bit smiley in that post. Sorry!

and that should have said realise