Scunthorpe problem

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 with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.

Origin and history

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's dirty-word filter prevented residents of 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.^[1]

• Residents of Penistone, South Yorkshire, experienced problems because the town's name includes the substring penis.
• Lightwater in Surrey suffered similarly because its name contains the substring twat.
• Residents of Clitheroe (Lancashire, England) have been repeatedly inconvenienced because their town's name includes the substring clit, which (among other meanings) is a slang for "clitoris".

Other examples

Mistaken decisions by obscenity filters include:

Refused web domain names and email addresses

• In April 1998, Jeff Gold attempted to register the domain name shitakemushrooms.com, but was blocked by an InterNIC filter prohibiting the "seven dirty words" which was active between 1996 and the transfer of control to ICANN.^[2] (Shitake is from the Japanese name for the edible fungus Lentinula edodes.)
• In February 2004, in Scotland, Craig Cockburn reported that he was unable to use his surname (pronounced "Coburn") with Hotmail. Separately he had problems with his workplace email due to the string cialis within his job title of software specialist. He was told by Hotmail to spell his name C0ckburn (with a zero instead of the letter "o"); Hotmail later reversed the ban.^[3] In 2010 he had a similar problem registering on the BBC site where again the first four characters of his surname caused a problem for the content filter.^[4]
• 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.^[5]
• 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."^[6]
• In 2000, a Canadian television news story on web filtering software found that the website for the Montreal Urban Community (Communauté urbaine de Montréal, in French) was entirely blocked because its domain name was its French acronym CUM (www.cum.qc.ca)^[7]; "cum" (among other meanings) is slang for "semen".

Blocked web searches

• 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]
• Gareth Roelofse, the designer of the website http://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]
• In July 2011, web searches in China on the name Jiang were blocked following claims on the Sina Weibo microblogging site that former president Jiang Zemin had died. Since the word "Jiang" also means "river" in Chinese, searches related to rivers including the Yangtze (Cháng Jiāng) produced the message "According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the results of this search cannot be displayed."^[9]

Blocked emails

• 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.^[10]
• Problems can occur with the words socialism, socialist, and specialist because they contain the substring Cialis, the brand name for an erectile dysfunction medication commonly advertised in spam e-mails. Blocking of the word specialist is liable to block emailed resumes and curricula vitarum and other material including job descriptions.^[11]
• In the UK, the ISP Orange blocks the word Scunthorpe in email subjects.

Blocked for word with two meanings

• 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.^[12]
• 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, sometimes used as slang for penis.^[13]
• In February 2003, members of Parliament at the British House of Commons found that a new spam filter was blocking e-mails to them. It blocked e-mails containing references to the Sexual Offences Bill then under debate, and some messages relating to a Liberal Democrat consultation paper on censorship.^[14] It also blocked e-mails sent in Welsh because it did not recognise the language. ^[15]
• Resumes of magna cum laude graduates have been blocked by spam filters due to inclusion of the word cum, which here is Latin for with but in English is sometimes used as slang for semen.^[16]
• Blocked e-mails and web searches relating to The Beaver (based in Winnipeg) caused the publisher to change its name to Canada's History after 89 years of publication.^[17] Deborah Morrison, publisher of the magazine, commented: "Back in 1920, The Beaver was a perfectly appropriate name. And while its other meaning is nothing new, its ambiguity began to pose a whole new challenge with the advance of the Internet. The name became an impediment to our growth."^[18]
• A councillor in Dudley found an email flagged for profanity by his council's security software after mentioning the Black Country dish faggots ^[19]

News articles damaged

• 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".^[20]
• The word "ass" may be replaced by "butt", resulting in "clbuttic" for "classic" and "buttbuttinate" for "assassinate".^[21]

See also

• Detecting spam
• Censorship by Google
• Cupertino effect
• Medireview – arose as a false automatic euphemism for "medieval"
• Swear filter

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Declan McCullagh (23 April 2004). "Google's chastity belt too tight". http://news.cnet.com/2100-1032_3-5198125.html. 
2. ^ Paul Festa (27 April 1998). "Food domain found "obscene"". News.com. http://www.news.com/2100-1023-210566.html. 
3. ^ Barker, Garry (February 26, 2004). "How Mr C0ckburn fought spam". Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004/02/26/1077676867921.html. Retrieved 2011-02-24. 
4. ^ Cockburn, Craig (9 March, 2010). "BBC fail – my correct name is not permitted". blog.siliconglen.com. http://blog.siliconglen.com/2010/03/bbc-fail-my-correct-name-is-not.html#/. Retrieved 2011-02-24. 
5. ^ "Is Yahoo Banning Allah?". Kallahar's Place. http://kallahar.com/stories/2005-Yahoo/yahoo.php. Retrieved 2011-02-24. 
6. ^ "When your name gets turned against you". Archived from the original on August 5, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080805004344/http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/26089374.html. Retrieved 3 August 2008. 
7. ^ "Foire aux questions". www.radio-canada.ca. http://www.radio-canada.ca/branche/v6/faq.html. Retrieved 2011-02-24. 
8. ^ "F-Word Town's Name Gets Censored By Internet Filter". http://www.switched.com/2008/08/01/town-censors-its-name/. Retrieved 27 July 2011. 
9. ^ Chin, Josh (6 July 2011). "Following Jiang Death Rumors, China’s Rivers Go Missing". The Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/07/06/following-jiang-death-rumors-chinas-rivers-go-missing/. Retrieved 7 July 2011. 
10. ^ Kwintner, Adrian (5 October 2004). "Name of museum is confused with porn". News Shopper. http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/lewgreen/533121.name_of_museum_is_confused_with_porn/. Retrieved 2011-02-24. 
11. ^ "Comment headaches". The Peking Duck. November 21, 2004. http://www.pekingduck.org/2004/11/comment-headaches/. Retrieved 2011-02-24. 
12. ^ BBC E-mail filter blocks 'erection' 30 May 2006
13. ^ Sam Jones Panto email falls foul of filth filter The Guardian 14 October 2004
14. ^ BBC E-mail vetting blocks MPs' sex debate 4 February 2003
15. ^ BBC Software blocks MPs' Welsh e-mail 5 February 2003
16. ^ Maher, Kris. "Don't Let Spam Filters Snatch Your Resume". Career Journal. http://www.collegejournal.com/jobhunting/resumeadvice/20040426-maher.html. Retrieved 11 February 2008. 
17. ^ "Canada's The Beaver magazine renamed to end porn mix-up". Agence France-Presse. 2010-01-12. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hJrLjBHj_y8G7OFPAZZmOhUL10Bw. Retrieved 2010-01-12. 
18. ^ Sheerin, Jude (29 March 2010). "How spam filters dictated Canadian magazine's fate". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8528672.stm. Retrieved 29 March 2010. 
19. ^ "Black Country Councillor Caught up in Faggots Farce". Birmingham Mail. 24 February 2011. http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2011/02/24/black-country-councillor-caught-up-in-faggots-farce-97319-28224762/#ixzz1Es5bBN8F. Retrieved 24 February 2011. 
20. ^ Frauenfelder, Mark (30 June 2008). "Homophobic news site changes athlete Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual". BoingBoing. http://boingboing.net/2008/06/30/homophobic-news-site.html. Retrieved 22 December 2008. 
21. ^ Moore, Matthew (2 September 2008). "The Clbuttic Mistake: When obscenity filters go wrong". London: Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2667634/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-When-obscenity-filters-go-wrong.html. Retrieved 4 April 2010. 

External links

• Article on autocorrecting from The Guardian