The Daily Mail is claiming it as a "victory" for its Block Online Porn campaign, but the truth is rather different. Although the ever-excitable newspaper claims"almost three-quarters of Sky's internet customers have opted to block online pornographic websites" the numbers don't add up.
The Daily Mail's story is based on figures from Sky, which six months ago switched on its Broadband Shield for all customers who hadn't previously made an active choice about whether to use the filters or not. According to Sky's press release, the "free internet filtering and safety tool is now active in over 70% of the homes in the roll-out to customers who had not previously made a choice".
In other words, it's not almost three quarters of Sky's customers - it's almost three quarters of the customers who hadn't previously made their mind up. All those who had already told Sky they don't want the filters switched on are excluded from the figures.
Even those who have left Sky's Broadband Shield in place aren't necessarily blocking adult websites, as the Daily Mail claims. Sky's filter offers anti-malware and phishing protection in addition to content filtering, and Sky's release says that only a "majority of families [are] keeping the parental controls".
We've asked Sky for clarity on the true number of its customers actually blocking adult content, but the company said it couldn't provide the figure at the time of publication. A Sky spokesperson told Expert Reviews that the figure was "in the millions", but that overall number of customers blocking adult websites "wasn't relevant to the news release" the company had issued.
In the meantime, the Daily Mail's claim that the "announcement will heap pressure on rivals BT, TalkTalk and Virgin to introduce similar measures" seems a little hollow. Still, perhaps if they Daily Mail does succeed in getting filters switched on across the board, the broadband providers might block sites encouraging readers to ogle paparazzi photographs of supermodels' breasts, such as... oh.
