Banned in Boston City Hall: Here’s what you can’t do on the city’s public WiFi

Regardless of the town labeling its WiFi as “Depraved Free,” there are literally fairly a number of restrictions — so don’t count on to have the ability to get your cryptomining, “grownup materials” or “weapons/bombs” data.

The “Depraved Free WiFi” is the general public wi-fi web entry in Boston Metropolis Corridor — a spot whose staff didn’t have answering machines till the Walsh administration — and the encompassing Authorities Middle space, in order that’s how staff and guests to the often-maligned brutalist lump downtown use wi-fi web.

Whereas the standard of the publicly offered and passwordless service varies by the place in or across the thick concrete construction you might be, the city-imposed restrict on what you possibly can view stays.

Town mentioned there’s no particular checklist of URLs which might be banned. Fairly, the town chooses “classes” of web site which might be banned, and a third-party vendor then makes use of these to filter out websites in bulk. For a very G-rated instance, the town bans “Sports activities,” which is a class underneath the category of “Productiveness Loss,” so something the filter has marked as sports activities can’t make it by way of, resembling NBA.com or ESPN.com.

A city-provided spreadsheet fortunately shines some lights on the often-bizarre particulars.

Along with “Productiveness Loss,” broad class courses embrace: “Superior Safety Danger,” “Privateness Danger,” “Authorized Legal responsibility,” “Common Browsing,” “Enterprise Use” and “Bandwidth Loss.”

The primary of these, the safety dangers, embrace many common sense bans together with adware or malware, spam, “suspicious content material” and “malicious content material.” Sadly for the Bitcoin followers in Metropolis Corridor, it additionally contains “Cryptomining and Blockchain,” a class it defines as “Websites that enable cryptocurrency mining community site visitors and scripts.”

The place issues get bizarre is among the many “Common Browsing,” “Productiveness Loss” and, notably, “Authorized Legal responsibility” courses.

Among the many latter of these are the place the “superclasses” of “Grownup Materials,” “Medication,” “Playing” and — ominously — the “Unlawful or Questionable” come house to roost. As one may count on, there’s a class merely referred to as “Pornography,” which is outlined as “Websites associated to soft- and/or hard-core pornography, no matter medium.” So no “Intercourse.com,” for instance.

There’s additionally the class of “Sexuality” which seems, counterintuitively, to focus on tattoos. After which there’s the class of “Social Networking Grownup” — relationship websites, for which the town affords up the instance of “ashleymadison.com,” a relationship web site for folks trying to have affairs.

Additionally underneath “Grownup Materials” is “Grownup Intercourse Schooling,” “Ok-12 Intercourse Schooling,” “Nudity” (“Websites that present both inventive or non-artistic nude photographs”), “Lingerie/Bikini” and “Grownup Themes,” which is described as a catch-all consisting of “for instance, penile enlargement, erectile dysfunction, grownup leisure, and so forth.”

Extra dangerous information for the denizens of Metropolis Corridor: “Marijuana” and “Different Medication” are each banned underneath “Medication.”

Below “Unlawful or Questionable” are fairly a number of issues that definitely aren’t the previous, together with proxy websites that assist folks get round web site blockers like this one, plus “Mature Humor” and “Profanity.” The instance choices from the town on that final class embrace the extremely named babyfight.com and blowwboston.com, the latter of which doesn’t presently exist and the previous of which is only a weblog.

Below the “Questionable” class are “Websites which might be typically associated to unlawful actions however don’t fall underneath a extra particular class,” for which the town provides the examples churchofsatan.org and satanicchurch.com, neither of that are unlawful.

Different classes underneath “Authorized Legal responsibility” embrace “Militancy/Hate and Extremism,” “Tasteless,” “Violence” and “Weapons/Bombs.” Below tasteless, one instance is “gore2gasm.com”, one other eye-catchingly named web site that not less than presently doesn’t exist.