Update – Since this was posted, Max Allan and Damion Yates have investigated further and found that BT are intercepting DNS queries and replying with doctored DNS results, which I didn’t notice when originally researching this article. The title is therefore not entirely accurate, and BT are most probably doing this without any special treatment from Google, but the point that Google is facilitating this (by performing http redirects) stands. Please keep this in mind as you read :)
–Alex 25/11/2014
As I’m currently in temporary accommodation I have found myself without a permanent internet connection. 3G service in the area is pretty spotty, so I bit the bullet and ended up purchasing a single month BT Wifi pass, effectively piggy-backing a neighbours connection. I’m guessing they see very little of the £39 I paid.
It is well-known that BT has filtering in place, supposedly for the protection of children, as required by the UK government. I don’t agree with this policy, but accept that many do.
However when it starts to affect privacy, I feel that BT’s meddling of my internet connection has gone too far.
Case in point, when using Google on BT Wifi I happened to notice a new message on the side:
SSL search is off
This network has turned off SSL search, so you cannot see personalised results.
The security features of SSL search are not available. Content filtering may be in place.
Learn More | Dismiss
After digging into it, I’ve found that statement to be demonstrably false. In actual fact what it should say is; “We have disabled SSL search on behalf of your network provider.”
To which I say, thank you for giving me another reason to use duckduckgo.