Scunthorpe problem
The Scunthorpe problem is the unintentional blocking of websites, e-mails, forum posts or search results by a spam filter or search engine because their text contains a string of letters that appear to have an obscene or otherwise unacceptable meaning. Names, abbreviations, and technical terms are most often cited as being affected by the issue.
The problem arises since computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, but interpreting words of this kind requires considerable ability to interpret a wide range of contexts, possibly across many cultures, which is an extremely difficult task. As a result, broad blocking rules may result in false positives affecting innocent phrases.
Origin and history
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's profanity 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". In the early 2000s Google's opt-in SafeSearch filters apparently made the same mistake, preventing people from searching for local businesses or URLs that included Scunthorpe in their names.Other examples
Mistaken decisions by obscenity filters include:Censored voice search results
- In 2010, it was reported that terms such as 'lolita', 'lolicon', 'incest', and 'whorehouse' had the offending words replaced with '####' on Google's voice search feature. Although the aforementioned terms were hashed on voice search, it was reported that 'bestiality' and Lady Chatterley's Lover were left uncensored.
Refused web domain names and account registrations
- In April 1998, Jeff Gold attempted to register the domain name
shitakemushrooms.com, but due to the substring shit he was blocked by an InterNIC filter prohibiting the "seven dirty words" which was active between 1996 and the transfer of control to ICANN in 1998. - In 2000, a Canadian television news story on web filtering software found that the website for the Montreal Urban Community was entirely blocked because its domain name was its French acronym CUM ; "" is English-language slang for semen.
- In February 2004 in Scotland, Craig Cockburn reported that he was unable to use his surname with Hotmail. Separately he had problems with his workplace email because his job title, software specialist, contained the substring Cialis, an erectile dysfunction medication commonly included in spam e-mails. Hotmail initially told him to spell his name C0ckburn, but later reversed the ban. In 2010 he had a similar problem registering on the BBC website, where again the first four characters of his surname caused a problem for the content filter.
- In February 2006, Linda Callahan 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.
- In July 2008, Dr. Herman I. Libshitz could not register an e-mail address containing his name from Verizon because his surname contained the substring shit, and Verizon initially rejected his request for an exception. In a subsequent statement, a Verizon spokeswoman apologized for not approving his desired e-mail address.
- In August 2018, Natalie Weiner reported on social media that she was unable to create an account for herself on a website, because her last name is also for penis. It was reported that "hundreds" of people replied saying this also affected them as well. Names of those replying included Ben Schmuck, and Arun Dikshit. Articles covering this stated that it was a common and extremely difficult technical problem for which no robust solution was currently available.
Blocked web searches
- In the months leading up to January 1996, some web searches for Super Bowl XXX were being filtered, because the Roman numeral for the game and the site is also used to identify pornography.
- Gareth Roelofse, the web designer for RomansInSussex.com, noted in 2004, "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."
- In 2008, 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 filter's phonetic analysis deemed the "whak" to sound like fuck; the town name is in Maori, and in the Maori language "wh" is most commonly pronounced as "f". The town subsequently put the town name on the filter's whitelist.
- 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" meaning "river" is written with the same Chinese character, searches related to rivers including the Yangtze produced the message "According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the results of this search cannot be displayed."
- In February 2018, web searches on Google's shopping platform were blocked for items such as glue guns, Guns N%27 Roses, and Burgundy after Google hastily patched its search system that was displaying results for weapons and accessories that violated Google's stated policies.
Blocked emails
- In 2001, Yahoo! Mail introduced an email filter which automatically replaced JavaScript-related strings with alternative versions, to prevent the possibility of JavaScript viruses in HTML email. The filter would hyphenate the terms "Javascript", "Jscript", "Vbscript" and "Livescript"; and replaced "eval", "mocha" and "expression" with the similar but not quite synonymous JavaScript terms "review", "espresso" and "statement", respectively. Assumptions were involved in the writing of the filters: no attempts were made to limit these string replacements to
scriptsections and attributes, or to respect word boundaries, in case this would leave some loopholes open. This resulted in such errors as medireview in place of medieval. - 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, as well as some messages relating to a Liberal Democrat consultation paper on censorship. It also blocked e-mails sent in Welsh because it did not recognise the language.
- In October 2004, it was reported that the Horniman Museum in London was failing to receive some of its e-mail because filters mistakenly treated its name as a version of the words horny man. Horny is a common slang term for sexual arousal.
- Problems can occur with the words socialism, socialist, and specialist because they contain the substring Cialis. Blocking of the word specialist is liable to block emailed résumés and curricula vitarum and other material including job descriptions.
Blocked for words with two meanings
- In October 2004, e-mails advertising the pantomime Dick Whittington sent by a teacher from Norwich in the UK were blocked by school computers because of the use of the name Dick, sometimes used as slang for penis.
- In May 2006, a man in Manchester in the UK found that e-mails he wrote to his local council to complain about a planning application had been blocked as they contained the word erection when referring to a structure.
- Blocked e-mails and web searches relating to The Beaver, a magazine based in Winnipeg, caused the publisher to change its name to Canada's History in 2010, after 89 years of publication. Publisher Deborah Morrison 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". - In June 2010, Twitter blocked a user from Luxembourg 29 minutes after he had opened his account and posted his first tweet. The tweet read ‘Finally! A pair of great tits has moved into my birdhouse!’. Despite including the Latin name to point out that the tweet was about birds, any attempts to unblock the account were in vain.
- In 2011, a councillor in Dudley found an email flagged for profanity by his council's security software after mentioning the Black Country dish, faggots.
- Residents of Penistone in South Yorkshire have had e-mails blocked because the town's name includes the substring penis.
- Lightwater in Surrey suffered similarly because its name contains the substring twat.
- Residents of Clitheroe have been repeatedly inconvenienced because their town's name includes the substring clit, which is short for "clitoris".
- Résumés of magna cum laude graduates have been blocked by spam filters because of inclusion of the word cum, which is Latin for with, but is sometimes used as slang for semen in English usage.
News articles damaged
- In June 2008, a news site run by the American Family Association filtered an Associated Press article on sprinter Tyson Gay, replacing instances of "gay" with "homosexual", thus rendering his name as "Tyson Homosexual".
- The word or string "ass" may be replaced by "butt", resulting in "clbuttic" for "classic" and "buttbuttinate" for "assassinate".
Other
- In November 2013, British Facebook temporarily blocked users for using the word faggot in reference to the dish.
- In January 2014, files used in the online game League of Legends were reported as being blocked by some UK ISP filters due to the names 'VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj' and 'XerathMageChainsExtended.luaobj' containing the letters used in the word "sex".
- In May 2018, the website of the grocery store Publix would not allow a cake to be ordered containing the Latin phrase summa cum laude. The customer attempted to rectify the problem by including special instructions but still ended up with a cake reading "Summa --- Laude".
- In May 2020, despite extensive media scrutiny, some hashtags directly referring to British political advisor Dominic Cummings were unable to trend on Twitter because the substring cum in Cummings' surname triggered Twitter's anti-porn filter.