Virgin Media Web Safe

[watercooled]

Upon signing in to the account page on Virgin's website, I was redirected to their 'Web Safe' page where there were options for 'Child Safe' which was off by default and 'Virus Safe' which was on by default.

Well, we all pretty much know what Child Safe is, although the wording of the small print at the bottom comes across as slightly sinister IMO:

Web Safe: Web Safe is currently available to all new Virgin Media broadband customers signing up from 27th February 2014. Web Safe will not be automatically be set to on. Users can choose and change their settings at any time in My Virgin Media. Once you interact with your settings via the My Virgin Media logged in overview page you will be automatically registered with Web Safe and subject to the global white list. Web Safe does not block all unsafe or inappropriate online content and is intended only to assist parents with keeping their family safe online. Virgin Media accepts no responsibility for personal online activity.

'Once you interact with your settings...you will be automatically registered...and subjected to the global white list'. So... presumably by 'interact' the actually mean 'switch on', right? And 'global whitelist'? I thought it was meant to be a blacklist?

Also of interest is the Virus Filter, which claims to prevent access to scam/phishing sites and viruses on the net (with the help of F-Secure apparently), but doesn't get remotely technical about how exactly that's meant to work. I wonder if it's just a IP/domain blacklist, as some sort of proxy scanning would presumably be impossibly resource-intensive? Not to mention it would be utterly useless with any form of encryption protecting the traffic. Maybe it's useful as some sort of first line protection against some simpler attacks, but I'd like to know more about how it works TBH.

[Apex]

Bit sneaky of them tbh and quiet frankly am anoyed that by logging in it then registers you.

As for the virus safe feature am using OpenDNS and when i get round to installing the package for my router i will be using their dnscrypt feature to get round dns blocks / hijacks

[scicrazy]

The Virus protection probably amounts to much the same blacklist as the F-Secure browsing protection.

These ratings are based on the latest information from, among other sources, our cloud-based detection systems, evaluation from our Web Reputation Analysts and feedback provided by other Browsing Protection users.

VM said they'd not turn on "Child safe" for existing customers, having somewhat objected to attempts to force ISPs to filter content. So likely, yes, you have to click it to on. Hopefully whitelist means it'll always allow specific sites, and in some way rate others to decide if they are allowed. That way it doesn't do what the official censor did and block Wikipedia by accident. Even if it is a rather slippery slope method to a "child safe" filter.

[Apex]

The Virus protection probably amounts to much the same blacklist as the F-Secure browsing protection.


VM said they'd not turn on "Child safe" for existing customers, having somewhat objected to attempts to force ISPs to filter content. So likely, yes, you have to click it to on. Hopefully whitelist means it'll always allow specific sites, and in some way rate others to decide if they are allowed. That way it doesn't do what the official censor did and block Wikipedia by accident. Even if it is a rather slippery slope method to a "child safe" filter.

If you havn't logged in for a while the next time you do it pops up the menu for the web safe and while the feature is turned off by default the virus safe one isn't. Without knowing the ins and outs of this feature i can not see what the implcations are.