School net search throws up porn
Children at a secondary school in Bradford got a little more than they bargained for when an innocent classroom search linked to pornography.
The teenagers were using the Ask Jeeves' UK-based search engine to look for information on the heart during a biology lesson.

The links to hardcore pornography appeared because of a matching error between the keyword and the results, said Ask Jeeves.

The fault has now been rectified.

Shocked

Ruth Whitehead, Head of Science at the Hanson Secondary School, was teaching a biology lesson to a group of sixth formers two weeks ago when the problem occurred.

"One of the girls called me over and we were both shocked at what we saw, explained Miss Whitehead.

"It was fortunate that it was a sixth-form group. If it had been a group of 11-year-olds it would not have been good," she said.

According to Ask Jeeves' director of product Tony Macklin the problem came about because of a new filtering system that the company has installed.

Porn star

The system identifies search terms that could lead to adult content, and triggers a warning page before the links appear.

One of the terms was the name of a porn star Tera Heart.

"It was only meant to identify the two words in combination but this one did slip through," said Mr Macklin

The system has been taken out of use while it is thoroughly tested, he said.

Filtering software installed by the school would have prevented the teenagers from accessing the sites but the list of contents was enough to make even the most knowledgeable of butlers blush.

"Basically the search term we put in has gone off on a tangent and brought up hardcore porn," explained the school's network administrator Matt Charlton.

"None of the other search engines produced such a result," he added.

The school has temporarily suspended access to ask.co.uk.

Safer web

Search engines such as Ask Jeeves are used extensively in schools as an integral part of the curriculum.

Inappropriate search results remain "an industry problem" according to Ask Jeeves.

"We are the most pro-active search engine, working on ways to limit exposure to such content," said Mr Macklin.

As well as displaying a warning page when queries trigger adult content, the search engine has recently added a new "your settings" features designed to help users guard against inappropriate content.

Making sure children are not exposed to inappropriate content at home or school is a concern of government.

It has launched the Web safe initiative, of which Ask Jeeves is a member, to provide a safe environment for children on the web.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/3719742.stm

i hate how you cant look up anything with out porn....google image search "d" with out filtering and you get porn

I agree, they really need to crack down on the porn on the internet... you can type 'Foot' and get porn...you can type 'animal' and get porn on the internet...that's scary

I can't even begin to tell you what came up when I was searching "pump organs".
I just wanted to know how much mine was worth.


"Bear Hug" (my sister's rental cabin) was pretty astonishing too.

If this wasn't a family friendly forum I would be making such a wisecrack right now.

PM me baby.

ok!

The internet is filled with porn i alwasy stumbled into them. if i type a website address and missed a few letter it seems to go to a porno site or page cannot be displayed or some ad site.

who knows the site www.gamerevolution.com ?
it used to that if you add the s after game or s after revolution i can't remember which way is it you stumble to a porn site.

Google has it too I looked up something a while ago about 'Public bodies in policy making' .... guess which of those words Google decided to grab onto and ignore the others

Yeah working in IT at a primary school (ages 5 - 12 in australia) we get things like "We dont want kids to be able to get porn, but they must be able to use google".... Ummm....good luck.