Vote for Katz! When the election comes, you may as well vote for Katz!

How does Websense suck? Let me count the ways!

I've never been a big fan of web filtering technology. I like my porn and pirated software.

I first ran into issues with Websense back when I was working at a former employer who used it. I wanted to view @alecmuffett's blog and couldn't get through. Alec was kind enough to chronicle his conversations with Websense over how he was classified as "hacking" (evil) vs. "security research" (legit.) In fact, they misclassified him both in March and December of 2004.

So today I went to read @Av8rDan's latest blog entry. For some reason Websense has him classified as "sex."

I know that aviation-talk can be a valid substitute for sex for many of us pilot and pilot wannabes out there, but I don't think that is Websense's intention with this incorrect classification.

So I went back to websense.com to try and make sense of this and to see how we can get Dan's site fixed. He runs an advertising firm dedicated to serving the aviation community, and potentially this could hinder clients from reaching him and his blog. Incorrect categorization is common, and Websense even has a publicly-accessible knowledge-base article on the subject.

The problem is with Websense's process for submission of a recategorization. Back when Alec had to deal with it, a web-form led to an e-mail exchange (I think.) Now, 5 years later, you must register for a support account with Websense to search for the URL and then suggest that it is incorrectly categorized. That in and of itself doesn't seem to be a big deal. The problem comes from the fact that in order to register for Websense support you need a valid product key. That means you have to be a paying customer (or perform an additional registration for an evaluation kit) to sign up to flag a URL as being improperly categorized. Plus, once you submit to the support portal with a valid product key, having your support account added is a manual process that takes up to 24 hours. So you must wait an additional day before being able to submit a miscategorized URL.

Editors note: As we later found out via twitter there is an e-mail address to submit to for reclassification. However, at least when I looked at it, this e-mail address is not published anywhere. I wound up getting the info via twitter from someone who (I think) works for Marketing/PR at Websense. suggest{spam.trap}@websense.com .... of course, take out the {spam.trap} (I'm trying to be nice so spiders won't pick it up.)