BYU blocking FMH

[Katya]

Is Feminist Mormon Housewives blocked from BYU's internet?

[mic0]

I think so, but now that I'm thinking about it I'm not sure. Pretty sure that it is, but I'll double check when I get there.

[mic0]

Yeah, it is.

[Katya]

Well that's dumb. Do they give a reason for it being blocked?

[mic0]

This is the message given:

"Based on your corporate access policies, this web site ( http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/ ) has been blocked because it has been determined by Web Reputation Filters to be a security threat to your computer or the corporate network. This web site has been associated with malware/spyware.

Threat Type: othermalware
Threat Reason: IP address is either verified as a bot or has misconfigured DNS."

Malware of the soul, maybe. (JK.)

[Marduk]

I think they just mispelled it. It should read

Threat Type: othermalcontents.

[Katya]

I think they just mispelled it. It should read

Threat Type: othermalcontents.

Heh.

[Portia]

Resurrecting an old thread to say it's not anymore. The formatting looks drastically different! I have not visited this site in a while.

I am at the Salt Lake Center, though, and as we all know, Salt Lake is better than Provo. B-) So someone should test this down south.

[Rifka]

I know this is an old thread, but I just thought I'd comment that I am currently on campus and I can access it without any problems.

[Katya]

Thanks for checking! I noticed a few weeks ago that it wasn't blocked any more, and for a variety of reasons I think it may have had to do with a robots.txt extension on the site that looked spammy to BYU's network.

[Tally M.]

It's not blocked anymore. Just checked.

[Laser Jock]

Thanks for checking! I noticed a few weeks ago that it wasn't blocked any more, and for a variety of reasons I think it may have had to do with a robots.txt extension on the site that looked spammy to BYU's network.

Speaking of which, what's up with their robots.txt? I hate how they block every single search engine from indexing them; it makes it impossible to find anything they've published on search engines, and their internal search is terrible, so it's really difficult to find things. Even searching directly for the name of their site (on Google) they weren't the first result, for me. I tried sending them an email asking about it, but they never responded. It's just such a terrible move for a website if you're hoping to attract attention to your cause, which I assume they are...

[Katya]

Thanks for checking! I noticed a few weeks ago that it wasn't blocked any more, and for a variety of reasons I think it may have had to do with a robots.txt extension on the site that looked spammy to BYU's network.

Speaking of which, what's up with their robots.txt? I hate how they block every single search engine from indexing them; it makes it impossible to find anything they've published on search engines, and their internal search is terrible, so it's really difficult to find things. Even searching directly for the name of their site (on Google) they weren't the first result, for me. I tried sending them an email asking about it, but they never responded. It's just such a terrible move for a website if you're hoping to attract attention to your cause, which I assume they are...

My guess is that they just happened to set it up that way at some point and it stayed that way (rather than it being part of some sort of long-term anti-SEO strategy), but I agree that it makes searching a pain.