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IN A bizarre case of mistaken identity, cancer patients and researchers
trying to access the American Cancer Society鈥檚 website found themselves blocked
by Web-nanny software. It wasn鈥檛 the mention of breasts that was keeping them
out鈥攕omehow the Web filter had confused cancer.org with
chinesesex.net.

The site was blocked because of a 鈥渢echnical flaw鈥� in software called Cyber
Patrol, which has now been corrected, says Susan Getgood of SurfControl, the
company in Scotts Valley, California, that sells the filter. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very
谤补谤别.鈥�

But mistakes like this are common, says Bennett Haselton of Peacefire, an
online lobby group that campaigns against censorship on the Internet. He says
filtering programs block perfectly innocent sites all too often.

Cyber Patrol is used by parents, schools and employers to deny access to
sites with pornographic or otherwise objectionable content.

In the case of the American Cancer Society, Haselton first assumed that Cyber
Patrol blocked the site because of the keyword 鈥渂reast鈥濃�攊n the past, many
breast cancer sites have been blocked by filters. But Getgood says it鈥檚 more
complicated than that.

The Cancer Society apparently inherited an IP address鈥攊ts numerical
Internet address鈥攆rom an old site called chinesesex.net. Because of an
unusual technical error, Cyber Patrol kept blocking the IP address after the
change of owner.

But Haselton says that Web-nanny software routinely blocks many sites in
error, including the sites of human rights organisations, politicians and even
radiator service companies.