'Teen' triggers email filter

By KATIE CHAPMAN - The Dominion Post

The pornographic connotations of the word "teen" are stopping emails from reaching the government department responsible for youth issues.

The Social Development Ministry is blocking any emails with the word – or its plural, "teens" – from getting through, because it is often associated with advertising for online pornography.

But Labour deputy leader Annette King has labelled the filter ridiculous, and called for the problem to be fixed.

The word is on a blacklist of terms blocked by the ministry, meaning that only email addresses on a "white list" can receive messages containing those words.

The Child, Youth and Family contact centre is included on the white list, but the ministry says people should not be emailing through concerns about at-risk young people.

Other departments that fall under the ministry's responsibility include Family and Community Services, and the Youth Development Ministry.

An email sent to the ministry by The Dominion Post, asking about a "home for pregnant teens", was not received because it contained the word. No reply alerting the sender came through. The message remained mired in cyberspace until a follow-up phone call revealed the communication slip.

Social Development Ministry chief information officer David Habershon said the word teen was blocked because it was often used in advertising for "adult websites".

"We base our parameters in terms of the words that are on the blacklist based on best practice."

He would not say what other words were blocked.

The ministry was "continually refining" its list, but had to seriously consider which words were acceptable, he said. "When we find examples of particular words which are legitimately used within certain business units we amend our systems accordingly. But in doing so, we have to weigh up the impact of removing a particular word against the benefits."

The CYF media address emailed by The Dominion Post had now been added to the "white list", he said. "This will mean those addresses are at risk of being spammed."

Social Development and Youth Affairs Minister Paula Bennett would not comment. A spokeswoman said it was an operational issue, best handled by the ministry.

But Ms King called on the minister to "get real". "Do you want to help unemployed teenagers or not? Fix the problem."

Liam Brady, who owns Wellington company IT Workz, said most organisations had a spam checker to filter out inappropriate emails. But he was surprised a word like "teen" would be blocked.

While it was common practice to have a blacklist of blocked words, most were of a different nature, he said.

"You've got your general porno terms, swear words, and things like that ... If you're going to block `teen', you might as well block `girl' or `girls'."

Mr Habershon said the ministry used "best practice anti-spam technology and processes" to filter the 70,000 emails received each day.

Of those, about 60 per cent were unsolicited bulk email, or spam.

But people should not rely on email for urgent matters, especially in relation to young people, he said.

"Email is an inherently unreliable means of communication ... and we do not encourage email as a means of reporting any concerns about children."

Instead people should be using the ministry's freephone number (0508 326 459) to report child abuse or neglect, he said.

FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD

An email firewall works by flagging words to filter content. Most systems have both black and white lists set by the company or organisation.

Black lists are words that can't get through – usually swear words, or pornographic terms.

The white list is words that must get through. These will usually be words associated with the core function of a business or organisation.

In 2007 web designer Gay Hamilton found herself on the wrong side of a spam checker when she emailed Telecom's helpdesk. Her email was deemed "inappropriate for business-like communication" because it had the word "gay" – her name.

In the same year, Rowena Gay had a similar issue when she was told to "enter a proper name" after trying to sign up for social-networking website Facebook.