On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 09:29:52AM +0100, Tinsley, Chris wrote:
> Did any one see this article about the perils of monitoring for Swear
> words
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/30/uemail.x
> ml
>
> We have recently been told at WCC that ICT are now monitoring for
> "swear" words at the email gateway. At WCC we have a policy which
> allows limited private use of email as long as it is not offensive or
> inappropriate. Offensiveness and inappropriateness is in the eye of the
> beholder, words between friends will have differing appropriateness than
> words between customers and clients.
>
> The list of words which are block has not been published (probably to
> avoid offending staff).
>
> Do people think that a policy which automatically monitors and blocks
> private as well as business emails using a list of words considered
> inappropriate is a good idea?
As the article you cite illustrates, blocking on a list of words is
not a good idea whatever it is for. Before effective spam filtering
software was available, we tried a keyword and keyphrase filter (on a
purely opt-in basis). We had some success with phrases, but learnt that
there were very few single words that could be blocked safely.
There are problems words which can have innocuous meanings - erection
was mentioned, but there are plenty of others - eg box, member,
rimming, cock, screw, shag, etc. You can't sensibly block them, but if
you allow the words through, the filter isn't doing what you want.
There is also simple matter of false positives in people's names. We
had numerous complaints from people - for example a Dr Wank, a Dr
Cunther and a Richard Dick (I am not joking).
Ther other problem is of mis-spelt words getting through (there are
many variations for the F word - possibly one of the few words that it
is safe to block). We did try allowing for variations in spelling,
but this produced complaints from an engineer mailing about a Fokker
aircraft and physisists trying to discuss the Hartee-Fock theory.
We were only trying to reduce incoming spam. There are now more
effective methods that we deploy.
The whole idea of censoring mail by keywords illustrates the double
standards applied to written elecronic and paper based communications.
I doubt if many organisations open letters and screen them for swear
words.
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