ASIC Attempts to block Fraud Websites
Thursday 6 June 2013 @ 3.02 p.m. | Corporate & Regulatory
As mentioned yesterday in the news report by TimeBase, ASIC has has admitted to inadvertently blocking access to about 250,000 innocuous websites in addition to the 1200 it had already accidentally censored through its actions yesterday under the Telecommunications Act 1979 (Cth).
In a Senate hearing on Tuesday night, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the largest number of sites censored when attempting to block one particular site ASIC believed was defrauding Australians was 250,000. Of these, ASIC said about 1000, or 0.4 per cent, were active sites. It said the 249,000 other sites hosted "no substantive content" or offered their domain name up for sale, rather than hosting a fully-fledged active site.
ASIC asked internet service providers (ISPs) to block sites it believed were defrauding Australians by IP address (such as 203.56.34.11) instead of domain name (such as sitedefraudingaustralians.com). This meant thousands of other sites were blocked in the process, as many sites are often hosted on one shared IP address.
ASIC told senate estimates in its opening statement that it was now examining how it could ensure only a site's specific domain name was blocked and ways it could alert the public to a site being blocked via a pop up page. It was also examining ways such a page could indicate why access was blocked and to whom queries could be made to dispute a block.
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