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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared by an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules will result in a false positive, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.

Contents 1 Origin and history 2 Other examples 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Origin and history

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which America Online's dirty-word filter prevented residents from the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring cunt. Years later, Google's filters apparently made the same mistake, preventing residents from searching for local businesses that included Scunthorpe in their names. Residents of Penistone, South Yorkshire, experienced problems because the town's name includes the substring penis, while Lightwater in Surrey suffered similarly because its name contains the substring twat. Gareth Roelofse, the designer of the website RomansInSussex.co.uk, noted: "We found many library Net stations, school networks and Internet cafes block sites with the word 'sex' in" the domain name. This was a challenge for RomansInSussex.co.uk because its target audience is school children." ^[1]

Problems can also occur with the words socialism or socialist because they contain the substring Cialis, the brand name for an erectile dysfunction medication commonly advertised in spam e-mails. A similar problem can occur with the word specialist, typically blocking mailed résumés and other material including job descriptions.^[2]

[edit] Other examples

Mistaken decisions by obscenity filters include:

• In April 1998 Jeff Gold attempted to register the domain name shitakemushrooms.com, but was blocked by a InterNIC filter prohibiting the "seven dirty words" which was active between 1996 and the transfer of control to ICANN.^[3]
• 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.^[4][5]
• In February 2004, Craig Cockburn of Scotland reported that he was unable to use his surname (pronounced "Coburn") with Hotmail, Yahoo! or his workplace computers. He discovered that his e-mails would be delivered if he spelled his name C0ckburn (with a zero instead of the letter "o").^[6]
• Web searches on the Nigerian-born footballer Nwankwo Kanu may be blocked due the substring wank in his name.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^[7]
• The filter of the free wireless service of the town of Whakatane in New Zealand blocked searches involving the town's own name, because the phonetic analysis used by the filter deemed the "whak" to sound like fuck.^[8]
• In July 2008, Dr. Herman I. Libshitz was initially unable to get the e-mail address he wanted from Verizon because it contained the substring "shit". A spokesperson commented: "As a general rule (since 2005) Verizon doesn't allow questionable language in e-mail addresses, but we can, and do, make exceptions based on reasonable requests. The one from Dr. and Mrs. Libshitz certainly is reasonable and we regret the inconvenience and frustration they've been caused." ^[9]

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.^[10]
• 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.^[11]
• In February 2003 Members of Parliament at the British House of Commons found that a new spam filter was blocking e-mails containing references to the Sexual Offences Bill then under debate, as well as some messages relating to a discussion about censorship.^[12]
• Résumés of magna cum laude graduates have been blocked by spam filters due to inclusion of the word cum.^[13]
• In June 2008, a news site run by the American Family Association censored an Associated Press article on sprinter Tyson Gay, replacing instances of "gay" with homosexual, thus rendering his name as "Tyson Homosexual".^[14]

[edit] See also

• Censorship by Google
• Medireview
• Regular expression examples
• Swear filter

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Article on autocorrecting from The Guardian
• Comment Headaches: article from pekingduck.org