Found via BingThere are a lot of things not like about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, but children getting access to porn through its video preview shouldn’t be on the list.
The fact is, every filter (read: porn blocker) is going to have loopholes or workarounds, or else it will signal so many false positives as to make the Internet useless. Blame it on pornography’s subjective nature. Blame it on how big and complex the Internet is. But all this logic seems to get thrown out the window as soon as someone whispers “But think of the children,” and soon you have not only TechCrunch issuing warnings about Bing’s video porn preview (they should know better), but also CBS News (“<a href=”http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/02/scitech/pcanswer/main5057629.shtml?source=RSSattr=SciTech_5057629” targe”_blank”>Parents Beware</a>” the headline warns) and, inevitably, Fox News.
Please. Microsoft has too much riding on this to let it stay a black eye for long, and indeed, shortly after the Bing porn previews became public knowledge, Microsoft offered one way to close the porn hack, and then another.
Most telling, however, has been the response on an educational IT listserve I’m on. One administrator issued a challenge: “For those that have really good filters, try logging on as a student then BING and go to video - search porn - then put the cursor on one of the videos. Preview time.”
Not so fast, one respondent who, you know, actually did this:
Our filter, Web Gateway by McAfee (formerly Webwasher by Secure Computing) appropriately blocks the content. Web Gateway enforces "safe search" and students are not able to change the option to turn off safe search. Additionally, searching porn related terms resulted in content that stopped the pages from being displayed.
And then three other school administrators, all using different filters, reported similar blocking success. One had to tweak some manual settings, but the other two worked fine blocking errant Bing queries out of box.
If school IT administrators aren’t worried about Bing porn when it’s their job to stop this stuff, why the hell are Fox and CBS News in an outright, end-of-days panic?
Oh, right. Ratings.