TinyURL.com Blocked by Panera Bread

Could someone help me understand this one?

I can understand Panera choosing to block porn sites, since it could be disturbing for customers to glance over to see a neighboring table watching porn while they're trying to enjoy some bread bowl chowder.

But why is TinyURL.com banned? Why not just block inappropriate sites that people may be trying to access after being redirected from TinyURL.com?

For example, I tried to visit a perfectly legitimate news linked in Twitter via a TinyURL. This was inaccessible to me.

Additionally, I couldn't create TinyURLs for inclusion in emails I was trying to send.

Any theories on why this is on the blocked list?

Listen to this article posted by Ed Kohler on April 15, 2008 8:54 PM | Permalink
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Caribou blocks YouTube and others. The way around it is to use a proxy. Not sure if it will work for TinyURL but it's worth a shot.
Browser-Based Proxies: www.ctunnel.com www.dtunnel.com

This post from Tinotopia three years ago lists sites that we blocked by Panera. My blog, Ian's Messy Desk was blocked as pornography, which it has never been.

It may be a mistake or it may be that the proxy cannot predict the redirect and therefore (to be conservative) it assumes that some tiny url's will be inappropriate.

When I first started using Tiny URL, I used it to send some nasty pics to co-workers as a joke. Blocking it makes sure that doesn't happen.

This is a default block made by SonicWall... I know it well since we use the SonicWall at my office and I have the same TinyURL issues. Other URL translations work. Somewhere along the line somebody at SonicWall must have decided that people would use TinyURL to route around their content filtering and added it to a default block list. It can be fixed if the network admin whitelists TinyURL.com.

Just wanted to clarify that my previous comment is an assumption as I am not the network admin and have not actually made or requested that TinyURL be white listed.

Its official "Panera Bread Hates Rick-Rolling!"

didn't you get the memo?

The message you've received is from a network firewall device from Sonicwall (www.sonicwall.com), which Panera purchased and put in place on their network.

It may be that Sonicwall's Content Filter (which is what they call their website blocking software) has chosen to block TinyURL, or it may be that Panera's network administrator chose to do it.

I'm inclined to believe that Sonicwall did it. You should contact their content filter software team and find out why, and persuade them to unblock it. (It would be even better to persuade Panera to contact Sonicwall, as they are likely a larger customer to whom Sonicwall might pay a little bit of attention.)

Sonicwall is in the U.S. at 888.777.1476.

If you like TinyURL, you might also want to check out http://traceurl.com

TraceURL shortens any URL plus it tracks traffic to the page through the TraceURL shortened web site address, showing where the traffic originated. Count accesses and have the origin of the visitor displayed on a Google Map.

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