Open Letter To SonicWALL: We Are Not Porn
UPDATE: Help us get delisted as porn.
• Submit a ratings review request here.
• Enter our URL: http://www.consumerist.com
• Select RATING REQUEST
• Enter URL again.
• Enter your email address.
• Under “How should this URL be categorized?” we suggest 33: “News/Media.”
• Suggested explanation: The Consumerist is a consumer affairs blog, not a porn site.
• Click Submit
Dear SonicWALL,
Recently several of our readers reported that SonicWALL has begun blocking The Consumerist http://www.consumerist.com as pornography. We are a consumer affairs blog, not a porn site. That multiple users, from multiple different companies, reported this within a few days of each other, indicates some change in the SonicWALL filter.
We contacted one of your reps yesterday who said the only way we could be blocked is if a sysadmin manually added us. After we reported this, one of our readers who uses SonicWALL and is a sysadmin also reported that his SonicWALL had started blocking us. He had not added us to the block list.
If there’s something you can do, either add us to a whitelist or change your algorithm so if a site simply mentions the word “pornography” it doesn’t get picked up as porn, that would be appreciated, by us and your customers.
Sincerely,
BEN POPKEN
EDITOR, THE CONSUMERIST
CONSUMERIST.COM
SonicWALL’s contact info and the sysadmin’s letter, inside..
SonicWALL Contact info:
Email here.
Khai T. Tran
Channel Account Manager
Toll Free: 888.557.6642 x 8725
T: 408.962.8725
F. 408.962.8748
Kttran@sonicwall.com
Peter Martincic
Channel Account Manager
Toll Free: 888.557.6642 x 7978
T: 408.752-7978
F. 408.962.8748
Pmartincic@sonicwall.com
SonicWALL
Corporate Offices
1143 Borregas Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1306 USA
P +1 888.557.6642
P +1 408.745.9600
F +1 408.745.9300
Jay writes:
- “Just wanted to let you know that Sonicwall’s response is bunk – I’m the sysadmin for a school district running a Sonicwall system and just last week it randomly began blocking the site. I assumed it was because of the verbiage used in the “How not to be a fat f***” article (I have our filter trained to block anything with that word in it), but after reading this story [which said The Consumerst was being blocked as porn] I know it’s horseshit.
I had to actually go in and allow the domain manually, so this is definitely something that was in their content filter list that you subscribe to as a Sonicwall customer. Kind of ironic that they would block this site when they have such terrible customer service in the first place. Might want to remind them of that.”
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