25 June 2012, 10:22

Microsoft filter blocks Free Software Foundation donation site

The FSF donation site is still showing as a "Gambling" site on Microsoft's database The Free Software Foundation's executive director John Sullivan has publicly complained that Microsoft's reputation database is listing the Foundation's donate.fsf.org as a gambling site. The Foundation was alerted by a Reddit posting where a user was unable to access the site from his place of work.

On closer examination, using Microsoft's online reputation checker, the site is listed in the "Shareware/Freeware", "Technical Information" and "Gambling" categories. The latter category is often blocked by users of Microsoft's Forefront Threat Management Gateway by policy. Sullivan says he has reported the incorrect classification to Microsoft and asked to have the site listed as "Non-Profit/Advocacy/NGO". He is awaiting a correction saying "We will avoid attributing this error to malice just yet" but at the time of writing, the site is still classified as a gambling site.

If you are blocked from accessing the FSF's donation site, you can go to the unblocked my.fsf.org/donate directly.

Update 26/06/12: Microsoft has now removed the "Gambling" category from the donate.fsf.org entry in their reputation database.

(djwm)

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