Sky Broadband’s parental control filters blocked the ‘JQuery’ plugin, which is critical to the operation of thousands of websites, by inadvertently classifying the domain in the ‘malware and phishing’ category this weekend.
The ‘Jquery’ plugin is a Javascript library used by over three-quarters of the top ten-thousand websites that facilitates developing responsive websites.
However, Sky directed its consumers to access the website by disabling the filter, or turning off the ‘phishing/malware’ category.
Sky said in a statement that JQuery was temporary blocked having been misclassified.
"Our review process kicked in shortly afterwards and the site was unblocked just over an hour later," the UK ISP said.
In addition, reports added that the malware label disabled the network access for users even after selecting ’18+’ on Sky’s content filters, while only users opting out completely were able to use the fully working internet.
Currently, Sky Broadband Shield’s main filter blocks sites identified as ‘dating’, ‘cyber bullying’ and ‘anonymisers, filesharing and hacking’, while BT’s parental controls allow parents to block ‘sex education’ and ‘social networking’ categories.
The UK Prime Minister David Cameron is urging all ISP’s to block content related to online child sexual abuse.
GCHQ will be ordered to crack down on online child abuse images being shared across the internet, the UK prime minister has said.
