In reference to www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30896813:

Sky's Broadband Shield is designed to filter out content deemed to be unsuitable for children aged under 13. It has been offered as default to new customers for a year.

But now the firm has decided to also offer it to all its existing customers, some 5.3 million in total.

That bit's wrong, it was rolled out to all customers, new and existing, at around the same time. Off by default though, so many existing customers may not have realised it was added to their control panel.

Correct it is clear when using a web browser. but consider an app on a tablet or xbox?

While it was available to them all, only really made obvious to those signing up as new customers.

It is following on from requests from Prime Minister, so company doing what they have been asked to do.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Correct it is clear when using a web browser. but consider an app on a tablet or xbox?

Both those devices have web browsers too, and would display the same page.

Edit: I was really only considering the pornography sites, but if the block will include Facebook and Twitter too then yeah, I can see that might break apps.

Edited by Oliver341 (Wed 21-Jan-15 10:39:02)

In reply to a post by Fibre:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30896813

I was wrong, its only those who havn't activated it already, or told them they aren't going to use it, as i already have told them, im unaffected


From Sky :-

In the next few weeks Sky customers who have not chosen to either activate or disable its Broadband Shield would be emailed "giving them the opportunity to make a decision one way or the other"

Edited by deleted (Wed 21-Jan-15 21:41:47)

Yes, and when I clicked on the button to say I did not wish to use the shield it reminded me that I had already told them that.... (which I did when the shield was first launched a year or so ago).

Don't the filters block any other DNS beyond Sky's? If so it will break Chromecast, as it uses Google's DNS and it can't be changed as far as I know.

Have a Chromecast on a Sky connection and filters were set to malware only ages ago and works with no issues.

Deliberately avoiding changing anything to see if they somehow switch them back on.

In reply to a post by _Resonance_:

Don't the filters block any other DNS beyond Sky's? If so it will break Chromecast, as it uses Google's DNS and it can't be changed as far as I know.

They would be more likely to transparently proxy DNS queries to their own server, I think BT might be doing that now?

But yeah, changing a client's DNS servers bypasses Sky's filter, which is why setting an outgoing firewall rule blocking DNS is a good idea.

So i read this and thought it could not be that easy to bypass, and yes it is on the sky service. just altered dns servers to google 8.8.8.8 and bobs your uncle, up pops the adult sites. To say i am dissapointed is an understatement.