Three internet censoring

[blaz]

I just moved to a new apartment and don't have broadband setup yet, so I decided to dust off my 3 SIM, buy a €10 top up voucher and avail of their mobile internet offer.

I connected my laptop to my phone with the 3 SIM and was on the internet a short while later. I tried to view a forum related to hacking (no, there is no illegal stuff on that website) and was greeted with a nice message from 3 that I'm not allowed to view that content. Just for the heck of it I tried to visit the website of a very popular men's magazine and got the same message. Had a boring night ahead of me and with all that spare time said "what the heck" and called 3.

Maybe it might be due to age verification that those sites are being blocked (although I don't see how access to a hacking web site could have anything to do with age). I was told 3 no longer does age verification and that I would be transferred to a "technical guy" who would solve the issue with my phone (I didn't mention I was tethering my laptop, cause that would make things worse).

I explained my situation to him and after a while the technical support person came back with an interesting piece of information: 3 is blocking all sites that are on the "Internet Watch Foundation" blacklist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation

Now this is rather interesting. This is a UK based company censoring sites for a subscriber in Ireland. I have not requested any sites to be blocked. I have not done anything illegal. I can view those same sites from my Vodafone account just fine. I was told that "the government is blocking" those sites. Trying to explain to the poor Indian fella that Ireland is a (mostly) free country was futile, so I requested to speak to a supervisor.

The supervisor explained that yes they are blocking certain sites. I said that I bought "Mobile Internet" service and not "Mobile part-of-Internet" service and that I don't see their advertising mentioning anywhere that their service is actually filtered. I told her that this would then be false advertising. She explained that this is part of their terms and conditions. I challenged her to find the specific clause in the T&C and after about 10 minutes of searching she came back with a clause that in no way ever mentions any filtering. I read the clause to her and asked her to tell me where it says they will be filtering my service. She just repeated the same thing over and over again. I was really curious who actually makes the decision on which sites to filter.

I asked her to give me a written statement, explaining who is filtering my Mobile Internet service, and why they are doing it. She promised to email it to me.

Obviously I don't expect a reply. If you don't have plenty of them already, here is another reason not to buy anything from 3. Ever.

[Walkman]

Change your handset to a modem through my3, this will open up the internet to all sites. Also there is no problem using your phone as a modem with 3 and there is a thread on the midband forum about O2 doing the exact same thing

[blaz]

Originally Posted by Walkman

Change your handset to a modem through my3, this will open up the internet to all sites. Also there is no problem using your phone as a modem with 3 and there is a thread on the midband forum about O2 doing the exact same thing

I tried this: changed my handset to a Huawei dongle on My3. Disconnected my internet connection and reconnected. Tried to view the blocked sites. The sites are still blocked.

I know that technically there is no problem using my phone as a modem, but trying to explain this to the 3 customer support would probably confuse the whole situation even more. And the fact that I'm tethering has nothing to do with the fact that 3 is blocking certain sites without telling the customer which sites they are blocking and why they are blocking them.

Have not checked out the O2 forum, but I tried to use my Speakeasy SIM card to do the same (tethering) and failed - got the message "Subscribe to packet data" on my phone. Browsing pages through the phone itself worked just fine. I am quite sure my settings were correct (O2's are quite easy, the APN is simply "internet") so I believe O2 might be doing something sneaky here and detecting that I'm tethering and blocking it, while allowing browsing from the handset itself. But that's for another thread.

[drunkmonkey]

Blaz they have to filter sites as under 18's could be using the phone to access adult content, not a situation 3 or o2 would like to make the headlines over, you can get around it on your phone by using 3rd party browsers such as skyfire and opera, i think, not sure on this one but when you get the €20 mobile interent add on you have full internet..
Depending on your internet settings you computer (anti virus etc) could be blocking the sites and not the telco, worth having a look at that as well...

[blaz]

It is 3 blocking the sites. When visiting one of the blocked sites, my web browser gets redirected to a web page on mobile.3ireland.ie which says: "This web page is unavailable to view." and below that is a menu generated by 3.

I have also received an email from 3 confirming that they are blocking those sites. I know for a fact that f.e. Vodafone is not blocking those same sites. This means that 3 is doing false advertising, because they are claiming to offer "Mobile Internet" access, but instead they are offering "Mobile part-of-the-Internet" access. I know very well how to get around those blocks, but that is not my point. My point is that censoring content in a free country is an extremely questionable practice.

The sites they block are rather arbitrary and they are NOT only sites that would have adult content. Also they offer no way to opt out of this blocking. This is censorship at its worst and yes, it is false advertising.

[flodis79]

I have spoken to a person working for Three in Ireland, and she says they take the 'open internet' approach seriously. No blocking voip, torrents, pron, etc etc.

So this sounds strange. I thought the age verif thingy was gone, at least i never had to do it last year when i bought a 3pay modem and the sim was automatically age verified.

Pm me for more details.

[Rsaeire]

As far as I'm aware, all the mobile operators filter web traffic over their WAP, or equivalent, APNs and do not filter web traffic over their ISP and broadband, or equivalent, APNs.

Since WAP is purpose built for Internet access directly from a handset, mobile operators are making it safe for anyone to use their network to access the Internet, without illegal content, age inappropriate content etc, from being viewed.

[flodis79]

Originally Posted by Rsaeire

As far as I'm aware, all the mobile operators filter web traffic over their WAP, or equivalent, APNs and do not filter web traffic over their ISP and broadband, or equivalent, APNs.

Since WAP is purpose built for Internet access directly from a handset, mobile operators are making it safe for anyone to use their network to access the Internet, without illegal content, age inappropriate content etc, from being viewed.

Wap is a different story.that is just a technique for programming web pages. So it is 'censored' in the sense that the wap pages are tailored for mobile screens.

[Rsaeire]

Originally Posted by flodis79

Wap is a different story.that is just a technique for programming web pages. So it is 'censored' in the sense that the wap pages are tailored for mobile screens.

When I referred to filtering over the mobile operators' WAP, or equivalent, APNs, I'm referring to how traffic is filtered over the APN itself; in this case, any traffic going over ports 80, 8080, etc, ports generally used for web browsing, is most likely being filtered. This is, again, most likely, why Internet access differs depending on what APN is being used.

[Solair]

I've found that I've had quite a few sites that I have refused to let me on because 'my system is infected with a virus'. It seems 3 are assigning the same IP address to lots of users. My system was definitely not infected with a virus, and the virus mentioned isn't even possible on my system - Mac OS X 10.6 browsing with Safari 4.0.3.

It's not really a proper internet connection, it's only suitable for a bit of web browsing when you're on the road.

[Rsaeire]

Originally Posted by Solair

I've found that I've had quite a few sites that I have refused to let me on because 'my system is infected with a virus'. It seems 3 are assigning the same IP address to lots of users. My system was definitely not infected with a virus, and the virus mentioned isn't even possible on my system - Mac OS X 10.6 browsing with Safari 4.0.3.

It's not really a proper internet connection, it's only suitable for a bit of web browsing when you're on the road.

Mobile networks generally use some form of proxy filtering on their basic Internet access APN(s), so I imagine this is what is causing your issue. Have you tried changing the APN you use to connect with to see if this makes a difference?

[blaz]

Originally Posted by Rsaeire

Mobile networks generally use some form of proxy filtering on their basic Internet access APN(s), so I imagine this is what is causing your issue. Have you tried changing the APN you use to connect with to see if this makes a difference?

Three only has a single APN called "3ireland.ie" and all traffic, including MMS, is going over that APN. They don't use a proxy and there is no difference between WAP and regular browsing as far as settings go.

Originally Posted by flodis79

I have spoken to a person working for Three in Ireland, and she says they take the 'open internet' approach seriously. No blocking voip, torrents, pron, etc etc.

So this sounds strange. I thought the age verif thingy was gone, at least i never had to do it last year when i bought a 3pay modem and the sim was automatically age verified.

At Three one person obviously doesn't know what the other is doing. I spoke to three different people who all confirmed that they are blocking "certain" sites. One of them even claimed it was "the government" that was doing the blocking (no kidding!). I have actually received a response from them by email and here is the verbatim contents:

Dear Blaz

I’m replying in writing as requested by you.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused as you are unable to access specific adult sites. ‘3’ filters out content which are restricted by IWF (Internet Watch Foundation). Also the problem could also be with the specific website that you are trying to access.

Should you require any further assistance, please feel free to call our customer service by dialing 1913 (free of charge). We’d be glad to assist you.

They obviously ignored the fact that the site I was trying to access had no adult content and they also ignored the fact the "by dialing 1913" I was just getting the same useless story over and over again...

Anyone who doesn't believe me, please visit www.binrev.com using a mobile phone with a 3pay SIM card. (Moderators: This is not an advertisement for this specific site. The site does not contain any sexual content or nudity, violence or any type of illegal content. If you feel referencing this site here is a problem, please remove the link and I'll PM it to anyone who wants to test this out).

[Rsaeire]

Originally Posted by blaz

Three only has a single APN called "3ireland.ie" and all traffic, including MMS, is going over that APN. They don't use a proxy and there is no difference between WAP and regular browsing as far as settings go.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

This really shows 3 in a bad light, not only for restricting users' Internet access, but by having one APN for all traffic on their network; something none of the other Irish networks do.

[flodis79]

Try the apn 3internet instead of 3ireland.ie, it is working as well.

[Solair]

Originally Posted by blaz

....
Anyone who doesn't believe me, please visit www.binrev.com using a mobile phone with a 3pay SIM card. (Moderators: This is not an advertisement for this specific site. The site does not contain any sexual content or nudity, violence or any type of illegal content. If you feel referencing this site here is a problem, please remove the link and I'll PM it to anyone who wants to test this out).

I just tried this with a pre-pay 3 data modem and it worked fine.
Not sure which settings it's whatever the default settings were with the USB stick data modem anyway.

I can't seem to see my modem settings since I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6, it's using a built-in driver instead of MobileConnect.

My major complaint is being bumped off servers because my IP address is blacklisted as someone's been spamming / has a virus and is also using 3 Broadband. They're either recycling the same very short list of IP addresses, or they're letting multiple users share a single IP address.