Three of the four UK’s major internet service providers (ISPs) have been found to be failing to block pornographic images, easily exposing kids to explicit content, a new report added.
According to tests carried out by Mediawatch-UK, researchers gained access to porn through the search term ‘porn’ on networks filtered by BT Parental Controls, Sky Broadband Shield and TalkTalk’s HomeSafe via Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Researchers also added that the search results offered them easy access to the most popular pornographic sites, though they were not able to click through to these sites as network filter produced a flash page avoiding access to the sites.
Mediawatch-UK director Vivienne Pattison told the Telegraph the industry is working to help parents to protect their children but more needs to done to provide parents with adequate tools to enable them to parent effectively.
"Clearly the main ISPs network level filters are failing to provide adequate protection for children," Pattison said.
"We cannot rely on a voluntary code but need the law to change to ensure that children are protected online to the same extent that they are offline."
In addition, researchers were able to view a gallery of hardcore pornographic images by just searching images for the word ‘porn’, signifying that a curious kid in search of ‘porn’ could find over enough content via a basic image search itself.
