One of every five websites is blocked by the UK, including many legitimate websites.
According to the Open Rights Group, who tried access 100,000 websites with default filter settings – or “normal” filtering with nothing set as a default, it found that almost 20,000 were blocked, it reported.
As a result, the lobby and digital freedom group has relaunched the website www.blocked.org.uk project, which allows any web users to check to see if a website has been blocked by filters.
“Our tool checks the submitted URL for blocks across the main internet networks on both broadband and phone. We have test lines from 3, Andrews & Arnold, BT, Everything Everywhere, O2, Plusnet, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Vodafone,” it said.
The Open Rights Group said that the problem of overblocking is not going away as different ISPs are blocking different sites, and the result is that many people, from businesses to bloggers, are being affected because people can’t access their websites.
