[wilhelmtux-discussion] p0rn banners at www.msn.ch

[Claude Almansi]

Hello Zäme e gentile signora Simoneschi-Cortesi

Last Thursday I got the usual "Today on MSN" thing from staff at msn.com  .
When clicked on the Jobs link, I got to www.msn.ch/stellen . On top, there
was an explicit porn banner. Weird from the former partner of our
Parliament, I thought. I clicked on it and got to
http://www.msn.ch/disclaimers/   that said "Die folgenden Seiten sind für
Kinder und Jugendliche unter 16 Jahren nicht  geeignet !" with a "weiter"
link,  and then
"- Achtung -
Sie verlassen die Webseiten von Microsoft und werden auf Ihren Wunsch hin
auf die Seiten eines Drittanbieters geleitet. Diese Webseiten werden
technisch und redaktionell ausschliesslich von dem jeweiligen Drittanbieter
verwaltet. Microsoft übernimmt für die Inhalte dieser Webseiten daher keine
Haftung.".

I didn't touch the "weiter" link but was taken after a few secs to a
hardcore page. I wrote to abuse at hotmail.com asking them to stop
staff at hotmail.com from linking to pages with explicit p0rn banners, and to
abuse at msn.com asking them to stop www.msn.ch from putting up explicit p0rn
banners.

On Sunday they answered, playing idiots: abuse at hotmail.com said that
staff at hotmail.com was a spoofed adress, abuse at msn.com regretted that they
could do nothing because I hadn't sent them the full header of the
staff at hotmail.com e-mail. I disliked their bad faith and reported
www.msn.ch/stellen using the page of the Ticino Cantonal Police, waited for
the automatic receipt with the text I'd put in, which I copypasted in my
answert to both abuse services, adding "the matter now rests with the
police, put the thing in babelfish if you don't know Italian, the law
article I quoted concerns p0rn0graphy and children in Switzerland." and
translating only that.

For about 24 hours, the page only showed Microsoft and E-bay banners. I
thought they had taken the warning. Foolishly, I wrote back to the police
saying that MSN seemed to have removed the p0rn banners. My foot.

Yesterday evening, the p0rn banners reappeared. I checked the other
www.msn.ch pages. Same for all.

Apparently, what happened is that  www.msn.ch have 2 ad servers, a msnads
one for Microsoft and e-bay stuff, and a http://as1.falkag.de  one for p0rn.
After I forwarded the police receipt to abuse at msn.com  , they stoped the
porn one for a while, but reactivated it later . The problem is that even if
you take a screenshot while the p0rn ad server is on, it only saves what is
on the non p0rn server. So I also saved the pages as full pages (with the
folders for the gifs, which included the p0rn ones). Yesterday the page you
were taken to automatically from the www.mwn.ch/disclaimer page was
http://www.xxx-huren.de/05/?pid=cs-11144&layout=cs1&name=&load=download&wc=

One of my US correspondants said she'd try to save a screenshot with the
p0rn banner for me. She's a web-designer and so she might get better results
than I did.

The French version of www.msn.ch doesn't seem to have a p0rn ad server. Or I
didn't wait long enough.

The p0rn banners were deemed really shocking by US correspondants on a
mailing list, who are no prudes, but have strong feelings about what is and
what is not appropriate in a public page reachable by kids. And remember
that all hotmail users, including kids, got the "Today on MSN" e-mail that
drew my attention to the issue. The real problem is the "sliding"
www.msn.ch/disclaimer page where you don't have to click on "weiter" to be
taken to the hardcore page.

Should I write again to the Ticino police explaining that I'm an idiot who
was fooled by the temporary block of the p0rn ad server?

I'm not worried about what I saved on my computer: the ad gifs were explicit
but not hardcore. There must be a few hardcore pages in my temp files
because I tried to count the seconds it took to be taken from the disclaimer
to them (the time varied). Anyway, I never went beyond the "table of
contents" hardcore page.

The real issue is,  whether it is right that a p0rn-monger should be the
main software provider for schools and local administrations.

cheers

Claude

Claude Almansi
claude.almansi at bluewin.ch
www.adisi.ch