Here's an article, by MSN no less, that explains the problems with broad filtering. A fellow named Herman Libshitz can't get an email account from Verizon because his name contains "shit". Residents of Scunthorpe in the UK apparently have similar problems. God only knows what the residents of Testiclebreastpenisvaginaville can do...
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'Tisn't the first time something like that has happened (and gotten media attention), and I doubt it'll be the last.
Google `babpenis' and laugh/cry/whatever.
Unfuckingbelievable.
That would be this?
But that's the least of their problems, living in Scunthorpe is bad enough. It's such an awful place, even the football team moved out.
Guess where I grew up. :-)
In the meantime, the filtering programme at my university is still blocking Julia Anderson's gardening blog We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot because it has decided for some unknown reason that it's a porn site. Julia and I were trying to work this one out - the only thing I can think of is that may be the offending word is "bigger"...
I bet it would have accepted Peter North.
Try "Dick Cummings" or hell, how about "Richard Head"?
Hahaha. Too funny!
What about all those people who live in Black Butte, Montana?
If you're a Scuny lad Bob you should definitely read Mike Pearson's In come I, which amongst other things is about the natural history of and growing up in North Lincolnshire. It's a wonderful book that I highly recommend.
I hesitate to think what the residents of Fucking, Austria will make of this.
@#5:
Yep, that's the one I was thinking of.
(Holy crap, 2000? I'm too young to be remembering things from that long ago.)
Scowl at the unsophisticated ruffians in Balltitschlongtwatburgh?
Well, Mr. #3, a link at the link (BlackPlanet.com) that would not let Ms. Babcock register her filthy name, has among other things on its front page: "Daddy's little girls" (not necessarily a reference to one's father's cute little kids), members with names that include "pimp", and a link to "The Best Video Game Sex Scenes of 2008". Clearly a very, very high class hangout.
#11:
That can only mean one thing - overeager censorware is a first step in the slide into debauchery! Let that be a lesson to overeager internet filterers everywhere!
(Well, either that or the domain got taken over by somebody with lower standards at some point in the past eight years...)
Having no expertise in codewriting, I am at a loss to understand why this problem exists.
Why can't they just ban the undesired letter sequences only where they appear as stand-alone words -- i.e., following and followed by spaces or other non-alphabetic characters?
Of course, that would still be a problem for people whose last is name is Fuck....