Websense blocked my site
March 1st, 2006 // 8:03 pm @ Amar
Recently I was unable to access my blog from work as Websense classified it as Adult content. I was pretty surprised by this and tried to find out what happened, as this will essentially block my site from all my readers who are using Websense.
I submitted my site using their Suggest a URL Category Change link and they replied after 24 hours saying that my request has been processed. According to Websense, as my website in on a shared host ( Yahoo Hosting), one of the sites on that IP had been categorized as Adult Content and so all websites from that IP had been blocked. They also mentioned that the new category will be updated in the next database refresh.
I was not sure when this refresh will happen, and was getting worried if this will happen after a month or so, but thankfully, after 2 days, I was able to access my site from my office, hence indicating that the database refresh had taken place. I did find them a bit late in replying to mails, but overall impressed by their turnover time.
The thing which worries me is that why would Yahoo Hosting host my site on the same IP as an adult content site? Ideally they should have been hosting seperately as they are bound to get other sites blocked or blacklisted. If yahoo is not doing so, then I believe Websense algorithm is in a bit paranoid mode, and classifying all new sites it finds as adult to be safe till someone reviews it. Which is not a good thing to do.
Anyways all’s well that ends well. My site is accessible again so no complaints. But am a bit worried about other web filtering companies which I am not aware of and may be blocking my site from many potentials readers. And there is no way for me to find out till someone mails me or till I access my site from those systems.
Category : General
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5 years ago
I have wondered about this a lot lately as it seems that the military is blocking two of my websites. The page used to say blocked by websense, but now they just don’t come up. Anyway, I really wish that there was an easy way to check to see what filtering software is filtering my site. I have come across a ton of websites that Websense has marked wrong, kind of gives doubt to their claim of every site being reviewed by a human.
Brittany
5 years ago
Websense has blocked everything from us. Sometimes it is literally everything. A lot of times you can’t go to any website! If you have a project most of the time you can’t get your information becuase it is blocked. We can’t play any game but falling sands which gets really old!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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5 years ago
I hate websense, they are everything that the web is against, censorship! I use a proxy program on my site so I can surf uninterrupted from work. Every once in awhile websense finds it and blocks the proxy. But I just go to another domain from the dozens I have and I am up and surfing again in a matter of minutes! To hell with websense.
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3 years ago
God man, i can honestly say that ive been trying to get past websense since september 23rd, its now march 5th and im in no luck….. go i wish i could blow up there building or something but i know i cant… heh, if you ever get around websense lemme know… Jimmydablade@aol.com
tee
2 years ago
wow,, that sux!!
laoukoura
1 year ago
Hi,
Do you need to be a customer to fill the request form? My site is also blocked.
Thanks.
Amar
1 year ago
No. You don’t need to be a customer.
Andrew
1 year ago
Does anyone know websense’s IP address, or caught its user-agent?
I would like to block them from my website…
David Martin
11 months ago
I was recently at a hospital in North Carolina visiting a stroke victim. The visitors’ room in his ward had a computer with Internet access. I used it to contact some people through my Yahoo webmail account and later decided to go to my web site, http://www.dcdave.com, as a quick way to visit some of my links of interest. I discovered that it was blocked by Websense with an accompanying message that the computer was for official use only. That explanation clearly held no water because it was in the visitors’ room and you could see almost anything on it that the Web offers. I wasn’t able to get at it for a couple of hours because some Hispanic fellow was watching what looked to be a Mexican soap opera. I suspected that the political content of my site might have been at fault, but then I noticed that the very cutting edge controversial sites, Rense.com, WhatReallyHappened.com, and Infowars.com were not blocked. Then again, savethemales.ca is strangely blocked by SurfControl as a “hate and intolerance” site was also blocked by the hospital’s Websense. Surfcontrol, which is owned by Websense, lists my site only as an innocuous blog.