Hi Michael, The Scunthorpe Problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine accidentally blocks e-mails or search results due to the inclusion of a string of letters in the text which is mistaken for an obscene word.
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which America Online's dirty-word filter prevented residents from the town of Scunthorpe from signing up for AOL, due to the town's name containing the substring "cunt". Google's filters apparently made the same mistake, even when residents searched for local businesses with "Scunthorpe" in the name. Residents of Penistone, South Yorkshire, suffered a similar problem because of the "penis" substring. Pornography-filtering programs intended to protect children also fail to descriminate between sites that have "sex" in their titles because they carry explicit content and those like "RomansInSussex.org", which is a site for school children to learn about the history of Sussex. Even a business like ArkansasExtermination.com will be blocked in this way. Recently it has become impossible to mention the words "Socialism" or "Socialist" on the Salon.com message boards or blogs because those words contain "Cialis", the brand name for an erectile dysfunction medication commonly advertised in spam. A similar problem can occur involving the word "specialist", typically blocking mailed resumes and other materials including job descriptions. Other examples of mistaken decisions by computer e-mail filters include: In February 2006 Linda Callahan, a resident of Ashfield, Massachusetts was initially prevented from registering her name with Yahoo! as an e-mail address as it contained the substring "Allah". Yahoo! later reversed the ban. [1] In October 2004, it was reported that the Horniman Museum in London was failing to receive some of its e-mail due to filters mistakenly deciding that its name was a version of the words "horny man". [2] [3] A reader of the Daily Mail newspaper reported that e-mails mentioning the ice skater Irina Slutskaya were often blocked due to the inclusion of the substring "slut". Additionally there can be cases of whole word filtering, showing that computer obscenity filters may fail to take into account the context in which a word appears: In May 2006 Ray Kennedy from Manchester in the UK found that e-mails that he had written to his local council to complain about a planning application had been blocked as they contained the word "erection" when referring to a structure. [4] In October 2004, e-mails advertising the pantomime Dick Whittington sent by a teacher from Norwich in the UK were blocked by school computers due to the use of the word "Dick". [5] In February 2003 MPs at the British House of Commons found that a new spam filter was blocking emails containing references to the Sexual Offences Bill then under debate, as well as some messages relating to a discussion about censorship. Cut from Wikipedia.... -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Madigan Sent: 14 December 2006 23:21 To: [email protected] Subject: [NF] Competition fuel denied email address Cablevision in NJ denied creating an email address of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Why? The word "tit" is in "compettition". Duh -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.15.18/586 - Release Date: 13/12/2006 18:13 _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
