Outchurched

I wrote to Websense regarding Outchurched being falsely blocked by Websense’s heavy-handed thought-police filtering software, and I actually got a response.

From: Rev. Dan
To: Websense.com
Date: Sep 15, 2006 7:42 PM
Subject: Falsely Blocked Site - Outchurched.com

Dear Websense,

It has recently come to my attention that one of my web properties is being blocked by your filtering software. As the attached screen capture shows, the reason given is that “The Websense category ’sex’ is filtered.”

I am perplexed as to why my web property is being filtered, and especially perplexed as to why it’d be blocked for that particular reason. I don’t recall ever posting illicit images or content of a sexual nature, nor have my site’s visitors ever commented (or complained) that they’ve found such materials.

I’m writing to request that you remove my site’s URL from your filters (please unblock my site) and explain to me how/why my site has been blacklisted. I’m very interested in understanding what content at Outchurched.com triggered this response from Websense, and would like to review the content Websense views as being illicit.

I’d also like to encourage Websense to include a prominent link/feedback mechanism on websense.com so that those who have been negatively impacted by your filtering technology might be able to easily request that their site(s) be removed from your software’s blacklist.

I’m looking forward to your prompt response, and thank you in advance for correcting this error.

Regards,

- Dan

I received a response within two business days (not all that bad, really):

Thank you for writing to Websense.

The site you submitted has been reviewed. We have made an update to the following URL(s) in our master database to address this issue:

http://Outchurched.com/ - Traditional Religions

Categorization updates should be available in the next scheduled publication of the database. A new database is published every business day, five days a week, Pacific Standard Time. You should notice any updates referred to in this message within 72 hours.

Thank you for your assistance,

The Websense Database Services Staff
A.P.C.

While they didn’t bother to explain why Outchurched was blocked, made no comment about simplifying requests from falsely blocked sites, and have likely miscategorized Outchurched again (at least it’s a category that’s more sensible than ’sex’), I’m of the impression that Outchurched may have become unblocked, or will be unblocked soon. I’ll ask a couple of the folks who mentioned the blockage to double-check for me.

While Websense might indeed be craptastic software at least their customer service is tolerable. I think my preference would be to not be categorized, included, or affected by their thought-police software, but at least this is a step in the “right” direction.

This entry was posted by Rev. Dan on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 3:15 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.