Wi-Fi fascists

[Undercover]

Having started my new hobby, I had been looking forward to a bit of internet browsing, reading up, research, etc., in the evenings when stuck in a hotel away from home. I then find out that the place where I usually stay in London prohibits access to alcohol and tobacco websites via their Wi-Fi! Is this commonplace?

[PeeJay]

I bet you can still look at porn drool.jpeg

[cigarmo]

I find that in alot of places just get a vpn app, simples

[Simon G]

That is absolutely ridiculous! Yet I'm sure they sell alcohol?
Crazy...

[Undercover]

I bet you can still look at porn [ATTACH=CONFIG]19221[/ATTACH]

More than likely! It's all serving or ex-servicemen, so I can't imagine many of them being offended or terrified by a fleeting image of a bottle of whisky.

Beginning to get the feeling that I'll be fine with cigars and it's technology which is going to get the better of me

[Sean]

Strange that your obvisouly a grown up checking into a hotel so why would they block it

[judders]

That'd be me calling down to reception (or whoever) and having a rant immediately.

I don't think it's commonplace BTW.

[tommy]

Yeah fuck the censors! Seriously, get the app Mo told you about. Mo is it like a proxy type affair? I know my favourite entertainment site has loads of proxy addresses[emoji12]

[panda23]

If you have a smartphone you can use its data connection and tether it to the device to get internet access

[Undercover]

Thanks for the suggestions. Checked out VPN - now confused. I thought that was what tethering was! I can do tethering - felt like Einstein after I'd done that for the first time. Anyhow, I'll figure it out and I'm now working in Manchester for the next 3 weeks, so I've got a bit of time before I'm back in town.

Just seems a really odd thing to block in a place which never seems to have anyone staying who's under the age of 44, but there you go. Perhaps I don't look grown-up enough ...

[mattyhall22]

Download Opera web browser to your laptop and then enable "Turbo" it allows the program to run faster on poor connections, with the added bonus of bypassing ISP filtering systems!

Or try website services that hide your IP address this should again bypass the hotel filters, such as http://www.hidemyass.com

[butternutsquashpie]

X2 on opera turbo

Packetix + Opera 12.15 on turbo mode = the safest browsing anywhere, anytime.

Sent by the Enigma on BlackBerry.

[peanutpete]

does seem odd, what if you work in alcohol or Tabaco

[Simon-JG-hr]

I've had this happen in caf?s and on Virgin Trains (wrote an angry email to them about it). Does seem particularly over the top in a hotel though.

[cigarmo]

It is actually very common, BT mobile also block access to UkCF because it is a tobacco related site. The reason why many hotels block tobacco sites, is because the person that installed it used opendns as a firewall /security block filtering service.

@undercover no tethering is not the same as vpn, vpn express is easy to use on apple devices.
@ tommy technically no
@ matty hiding your ip address wont bypass your local router, which is where the block is active