Scunthorpe Problem

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The Scunthorpe Problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine accidentally blocks e-mails or search results due to the inclusion of a string of letters in the text which is mistaken for an obscene word.

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which America Online's dirty-word filter prevented residents from the town of Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom from signing up for AOL, due to the town's name containing the substring cunt. Google's filters apparently made the same mistake, even when residents searched for local businesses with Scunthorpe in the name. Residents of Penistone, South Yorkshire experienced problems due to the town's inclusion of the substring penis, while Lightwater in Surrey caused a similar issue due to the substring twat .

Pornography-filtering programs intended to protect children also fail to descriminate between sites that have sex in their titles because they carry explicit content and those like RomansInSussex.org, which is a site for school children to learn about the history of Sussex. Even a business like ArkansasExtermination.com will be blocked in this way.

Recently it has become impossible to mention the words Socialism or Socialist on the Salon.com message boards or blogs because those words contain the substring Cialis, the brand name for an erectile dysfunction medication commonly advertised in spam. A similar problem can occur involving the word specialist, typically blocking mailed résumés and other material including job descriptions.

Other examples of mistaken decisions by computer e-mail filters include:

In February 2006 Linda Callahan, a resident of Ashfield, Massachusetts was initially prevented from registering her name with Yahoo! as an e-mail address as it contained the substring Allah. Yahoo! later reversed the ban. ^[1]

In October 2004, it was reported that the Horniman Museum in London was failing to receive some of its e-mail due to filters mistakenly deciding that its name was a version of the words horny man. ^[2] ^[3]

A reader of the Daily Mail newspaper reported that e-mails mentioning the ice skater Irina Slutskaya were often blocked due to the inclusion of the substring slut.^{[citation needed]}

Additionally there can be cases of whole word filtering, showing that computer obscenity filters may fail to take into account the context in which a word appears:

In May 2006 Ray Kennedy from Manchester in the UK found that e-mails that he had written to his local council to complain about a planning application had been blocked as they contained the word erection when referring to a structure. ^[4]

In October 2004, e-mails advertising the pantomime Dick Whittington sent by a teacher from Norwich in the UK were blocked by school computers due to the use of the word Dick. ^[5]

In February 2003 MPs at the British House of Commons found that a new spam filter was blocking emails containing references to the Sexual Offences Bill then under debate, as well as some messages relating to a discussion about censorship. ^[6]