Can You Believe it?
I couldn't believe my eyes. I was in the Mexico City airport in one of those exclusive lounges managed by a big company, and I signed on to my laptop wanting to check to see if my latest blog had been uploaded yet on Cigar Aficionado. I waited about 10 seconds, and suddenly, one of those alert notices filled my computer screen saying that I had been denied access to the site because it was about "tobacco."
What!? I immediately fired off an email to the site demanding to know what was going on. I said the magazine was a men's lifestyle magazine with cigar in the title, but it was not just about tobacco. I waited. Nothing.
I'd like to know if anything similar has happened to you. Censorship is censorship, and while I can perhaps accept an argument that public spaces might want to limit access to sites that are potentially offensive to other people in the same place—like violent pornography—simply blocking anything to do with tobacco seems a bit far-fetched. And unreasonable.
I hope if anything similar happens to you, you complain about it. In the end, after I had already arrived at my destination about eight hours later, I got an email from Fortiguard Web Filtering Service saying the site had been "reviewed and updated." It said the magazine was being moved into an entertainment category, and out of the tobacco category.
I won't make it back to the lounge for a couple more months, but I'll be checking then to see if in fact they were telling the truth. The Fortiguard people tried to blame it on the lounge, but they seemed to be in charge of "reviewing and updating." So, who is really to blame?
In the meantime, any time you run into weird stuff like I did, complain. At least there may be the appearance of getting satisfaction, or they are just counting on me forgetting and not checking the next time I'm in an airport lounge.
