GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - Dear Playboy (and you too??) your sites are blocked by Trend Micro on millions of PCs

Brad Mitchell · 03-08-2009, 02:18 AM

Trend Micro uses entirely proprietary methods to determine URLs to globally block and blacklist. Their blocks are not based upon network, etc and what I speak of was not a parental filter for adult content.

Just to clarify, I think the internet is a hostile place. I don't fault them or any other vendor for honest efforts to protect the world from true threats. We all appreciate the complexity and importance of this work to be done.

My issue is that there is not a timely, fair, accessible or judicious review process with which to remove innocent sites from global blacklist on all mediums such as browser, email, firewall, and router.

The first time I knew of the existence of this kind of browser filtering was really the first boot-up of this fresh Dell PC from Best Buy...... I couldn't load GFY. I fixed that and didn't think much of it.

On another day I was surfing a free porn site of one of my customers (I don't grant myself access to client servers) and noticed that an includes advertisement on the right of the page had the error (which basically displays similar to a 404). I brought this up to my client and they changed the advertisements to not pull from that advertiser's URLs. So, that problem was fixed.

It really got my attention on some subsequent Friday or Saturday night when I thought to surf the site of a client who just completed a move to our service. I had gotten this email saying boy things are fast and wanted to see how fast was fast. LOL Well, come to find out, this URL was blocked by Trend Micro (and ultimately many more) - for no reason and at this point nobody knew for how long.

I subsequently instructed Corey to handle the situation for our client on our tab due to it's unique nature, wanting to learn from it and because it was affecting a smaller sized customer without perhaps the budget to take this fight on themselves. As a result of some complex and time consuming efforts, it did in fact get completely resolved.

Unfortunately, there is still no timely or judicious process publicly available. There is no ability to query their system to even find out what is affected or report false positives and know they will be corrected. I saw value as a host/ISP in perhaps get credentialed, maybe even subscribing to a service allowing us access to query their data source so that we could police our network for false positives and help our clients pro-actively. No response to that suggestion, unfortunately.

My only solace in this situation is my confidence that Corey's firm can resolve this situation for righteous site owners experiencing a loss in revenue due to Trend's errors, especially now that he has previous experience with this entity.

Cheers,

Brad

03-08-2009, 02:18 AM
Brad Mitchell Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Southfield, MI Posts: 9,812	Trend Micro uses entirely proprietary methods to determine URLs to globally block and blacklist. Their blocks are not based upon network, etc and what I speak of was not a parental filter for adult content. Just to clarify, I think the internet is a hostile place. I don't fault them or any other vendor for honest efforts to protect the world from true threats. We all appreciate the complexity and importance of this work to be done. My issue is that there is not a timely, fair, accessible or judicious review process with which to remove innocent sites from global blacklist on all mediums such as browser, email, firewall, and router. The first time I knew of the existence of this kind of browser filtering was really the first boot-up of this fresh Dell PC from Best Buy...... I couldn't load GFY. I fixed that and didn't think much of it. On another day I was surfing a free porn site of one of my customers (I don't grant myself access to client servers) and noticed that an includes advertisement on the right of the page had the error (which basically displays similar to a 404). I brought this up to my client and they changed the advertisements to not pull from that advertiser's URLs. So, that problem was fixed. It really got my attention on some subsequent Friday or Saturday night when I thought to surf the site of a client who just completed a move to our service. I had gotten this email saying boy things are fast and wanted to see how fast was fast. LOL Well, come to find out, this URL was blocked by Trend Micro (and ultimately many more) - for no reason and at this point nobody knew for how long. I subsequently instructed Corey to handle the situation for our client on our tab due to it's unique nature, wanting to learn from it and because it was affecting a smaller sized customer without perhaps the budget to take this fight on themselves. As a result of some complex and time consuming efforts, it did in fact get completely resolved. Unfortunately, there is still no timely or judicious process publicly available. There is no ability to query their system to even find out what is affected or report false positives and know they will be corrected. I saw value as a host/ISP in perhaps get credentialed, maybe even subscribing to a service allowing us access to query their data source so that we could police our network for false positives and help our clients pro-actively. No response to that suggestion, unfortunately. My only solace in this situation is my confidence that Corey's firm can resolve this situation for righteous site owners experiencing a loss in revenue due to Trend's errors, especially now that he has previous experience with this entity. Cheers, Brad __________________ President at MojoHost \| brad at mojohost dot com \| Skype MojoHostBrad 71 industry awards for hosting and professional excellence since 1999 Last edited by Brad Mitchell; 03-08-2009 at 02:21 AM..