Are ISPs blocking WordPress pages AGAIN?
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I thought I’d better educate myself regarding this present issue and contacted the Internet Watch Foundation by telephone this morning. I was able to speak to an advisor who was helpful and informative.
The IWF have been dealing with one URL to remove images of child pornography, and it seems very likely that the problems that some of us have been experiencing are associated with this. As jackiedana told us yesterday, WordPress was informed by IWF last evening that the images had been removed.
I asked whether other blogging platforms are affected in the same way as WordPress when IWF identifies inappropriate material (ie the problems individual bloggers have detailed here) and the advisor told me that, as far as he was aware, WordPress was the only platform affected in this way.
This raises one question: is there an issue with WordPress that is contributing to these phenomena?
jackiedana, can you please advise me of whom I would contact at a senior level at WordPress to discuss the issues raised here?
Thank you
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Thanks @rexMarriot for this info – I’m still blogging from a friend’s computer and really hope this will be resolved soon!
As mentioned I’ve signed into my computer as a new user but it makes no difference, not sure if the proxy would work but will give it a try
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Mine is accessible to me again. Interestingly, there were no visitors on 16-17 May but otherwise my figures seem about normal.
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Mine is back too, but yes, traffic plummeted! I post every day and it really shows in visitor numbers when I’m not able to keep up the standard
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jackiedana, before this thread is closed could you please advise me how I go about discussing the issue with senior staff at WordPress?
Thank you.
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I am so glad to read this as I thought I was going mad. I have only just been able to access this page today, and for the past 6 days I have only been able to access my own blog, or friends’ blogs, sporadically and not all pages were loading.
I am in England and using TalkTalk and I had tried resetting and updating IE and Chrome and was still having problems. TalkTalk did not want to know yesterday, and passed me from pillar to post and wasted my time.
I had suspected ISP issues and had googled, but only found previous instances (two last year and one in March), not anything happening this past week. At least now I have confirmation of the issue. Just hope something can be done to prevent it in future.
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@rexmarriott and others:
We share your frustration with this situation. We’re confident that it’s not due to any issue on our end and we’re continuing to work with IWF and the individual ISPs to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
We share IWF’s goal of eradicating child abuse from the internet – but the issue seems to be that if the IWF locates images it deems unacceptable anywhere on WordPress.com, it does not notify us about the problem until after it adds one of our URLs to its list of blocked sites.
Once a WordPress.com URL is on the list of blocked sites, it is up to the individual ISPs in the UK to implement blocking on their network. Some do this efficiently, and some, like Talktalk, seem to enable their blocking by blocking ALL of WordPress.com. Whether this is different for any other sites or not, we don’t know – but the problem may be exacerbated by the fact that WordPress.com hosts millions of blogs on its subdomains, whereas most sites on the IWF’s list are individually hosted.
Rest assured that we’re working very hard to ensure this doesn’t happen again – it’s terrible for you and our other users in the UK. Will keep you posted – hope to have resolution soon.
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Many thanks for the update Jackiedana. I’m glad it’s resolved and if anyone has ideas about writing en masse to Talk Talk or whoever, then I’d be glad to add my opinion
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Thanks for this update Jackie and for all engineers’ assistance. Just a couple of thoughts:
Couldn’t WP use the same algorithm/filtering or whatever IWF has to avoid a repetition of this hassle, and it would enable you to ensure all WO sites are abiding by your T&C?
TalkTalk has ‘Kids Safe’ facility for broadband and I think I read on previous thread one user found could ‘white list’ his WP site and thus got around the blocking. I’ve not set it up as my blogging slots are at a premium to avoid being unsocialable at home :-)
(Incidentally, have been with TT for years since they were 1st to introduce free b/band with cheap calls bundle – and the b/band is relatively fast.) -
First, thank you for your response, jackiedana. I still have questions, but if the structure of WordPress makes it impossible for me to investigate this issue further with management, so be it. I can’t see that there is any more that you could have done, and being kept informed of developments will be appreciated.
rjaybee, your comment is interesting. Perhaps there is something about my set up with TalkTalk that makes me more vulnerable. I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do about this.
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@rexmarriot, your concerns (as well as those of others) have been discussed internally with developers and legal staff. My response represents WordPress.com’s position as a whole.
@rjaybee, the issue ultimately comes down to how strict filtering should be. All automated filtering introduces the possibility of generating false positives, which can lead to taking down good sites along with the bad. It’s all about finding a good balance. How the IWF determines safe/unsafe content may ultimately be stricter than how we do it, which means they may catch more unsafe content, but at what cost?
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@jackiedana, Thanks for all your help and positive feedback. I am much better informed as a result.
@rosestrang, I’m all in favour of a group approach to TalkTalk, who appear to be backwards in coming forwards on this issue. All we need is someone to step up to the plate and take the first step with them. Any volunteers out there? -
I’ve been suspicious this time ’round because when we had similar problems in March I felt WordPress did not handle the communication side very effectively and was left with the impression, rightly or wrongly, that issues were being swept under the carpet. jackiedana, I feel that you’ve done a much better job in responding and explaining this time. Thank you for that.
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@ remarriott – I didn’t hear from anybody. I guess the sense of urgency may have passed!
@ Any affected TalkTalk user – get in touch with details of your experience (off-forum if preferred – my email is (email visible only to moderators and staff)) and I will take the lead in contacting TT. -
Hi Martin, your email isn’t included in your comment, I think it’s automatically removed.
I’m happy to email my experience, and will also just explain it here:
I use my blog http://rosestrangartworks.wordpress.com/ on a daily basis. Particularly at the moment as I’m posting a painting every day as part of my current project.
This is also one of my main income streams. If I have to repeatedly tell viewers and buyers that my site is down, it looks unprofessional, not only that, I lose visitors and income.
My stats crashed down to almost nothing during the 5 or so days that I couldn’t post. I was able to post some content from a friend’s house, but obviously couldn’t spend the time there that I would at home. Not to mention lack of access to all my data.
Visitors to my blog are now back to normal. But this delayed my project and my plans.
In effect, wordpress offered a service that they did not deliver, even though only temporarily. I’m not sure about the legalities of that, but it’s extremely poor that wordpress users weren’t kept properly informed, but had to ask in this forum.
Compare that to Ebay who recently sent an email to all users advising them to change their passwords due to some security issues. I think people expect this level of service from one of the main blog template providers
Rose Strang
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Martin/Rose
Further to my email yesterday, I contacted TalkTalk today, and they have no idea what I’m talking about. On the basis of rjaybee’s comment above (May 22; 10.03am), I asked TalkTalk about ‘Kid’s Safe’ and white listing. TalkTalk suggested I disable ‘Kid’s Safe’ via My Account, which I have done.
Rex
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Please note that this issue had nothing to do with WordPress being unable to provide service, but certain ISPs decisions to use the IWF’s filtering mechanism to block access to all of WordPress.com. Because we do not keep track of users’ ISPs, there’s simply no way of proactively contacting affected users about this issue.
TalkTalk support may not be aware of the issue directly because the ISP didn’t add WordPress.com to a list, but instead were using the one from the IWF.
Like our users, those of us at WordPress.com find the whole situation unacceptable. At this time we are investigating permanent solutions to the issue.
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