Out to lunch

oops it's "Out to lunch"

this is more you

we have one with Sky..I think all the providers have to do it now...I have my filters off because it blocks all sorts 

you're nuts 

I only have that particular album, so can't call myself a fan. 

I have read that it can block sites which are perfectly fine to visit.

Sorry can't help you...just came in to praise the classic Eric Dolphy album sleeve...

it does...for no reason at all EC, we've switched it off  I've not been on a porn site in my life, but it switches of random sites for no apparent reason 

The problem is that although they've been dubbed "porn filters", they filter out a lot more than pornography sites.
Virgin's "Child Safe" (which is what we're talking about here), covers 8 categories:

Pornography, Crime, Violence, Self-Harm, Hate, Drugs, Hacking and Suicide.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/ind...ltering-service.html

Some of those categories are extremely vague, so there's a lot of opportunity for "innocent" sites to be blocked. But even some of the other categories could pose problems: one of the traditional complaints about filters is that blocking, say, "drugs" will prevent access to drugs education and help sites, as well as category "creep" such as blocking pharmacutical (i.e. legal "drug") sites.

I suspect that a lot of parents - after discovering that they can't download some movie because it's blocked as "crime" and "violence" - will quietly drop the filters after a week or two...

Just noticed in the BBC story linked-to in the OP that:

"Virgin is still working on a more flexible system that will let customers exercise more choice over which sites customers can and cannot reach."

Which is nice, but it would have been nicer if they'd developed a more flexible system before rolling it out...

They were probably being pressed to 'get something out', and ask questions later.

Well quite. Ultimately it's all down to the Government, who want to be seen to be doing something, but don't want to be held responsible for the specifics. They've therefore forced the ISPs to come up with a solution and implement it, regardless of how practical or sensible it is...

to be perfectly honest i think this is all waaaayyyy too much too late!

I know of a child who had access to hard core porn at the age of 10 (Not my own i will add) The reason this child even knew about such things was someone at school told them to google it and their parents were not internet savvy at all.

So 5/6 years ago this would have been a fantastic tool/guard.... Now though? i think it's stupid as even those parents who are not pc knowledgeable know that there are big risks online and they (hopefully) take care of their kids online.....  hopefully... meh its reeaaallly late

I agree with both of you. I think they were pushed by HM Gov to get it out and will have to make it more user friendly later.

My opinion has always been that if you give your children unsupervised access to the internet, you might as well keep hard core porn on the DVD shelves in the living room next to the Harry Potter DVDs. 

Or in this case 'Hairy Potter' DVD's !!