Clients of South African internet service provider Internet Solutions (IS) are worried that the internet service provider either has been hacked or is choosing to censor its users, ITWeb reported on Monday.
ITWeb received complaints from IS users who have been unable to access adult-related websites and chat rooms, although they are unsure of the reasons behind this.
Suggestions range from hackers having accessed IS’s server and blocked access to adult sites for surfers to the company itself deciding which sites its users may visit.
ITWeb quoted a user as saying: “They are ducking and diving and their abuse department will not respond to mail. Is this deliberate or have they been hacked? Either way, it’s time for them to start coming up with the answers.”
Michelle Branco, product marketing manager at IS, told ITWeb the company does not block or deny content.
“I think that before throwing such wild accusations around, the complainants should establish whether their ISP or the administrator from their corporate LAN [local-area network] or WAN [wide-area network] is blocking their access,” she said.
“The network provider does not block any type of content, and we have not had any alerts in terms of hacking, so that theory is also false.”
Branco said that as far as she is aware, no internet service providers block content on behalf of users, although subscribers can choose to set up content-filtering by category.
“It sounds as though it is an internal administrator that is blocking access, as many corporates set up filtering systems that block access to sites that have words like ‘erotica’ or ‘sex’ in the address,” Branco told ITWeb. “What I can categorically state is that IS has absolutely nothing to do with blocking their access.”