Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The situation where a
spam filter orsearch engine blocks or modifies content because the text contains astring ofletters shared with anobscene word.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Named after the erroneous censorship of the word Scunthorpe (a UK town) by Internet service AOL, because it contained the substring cunt.
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Examples
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deinonychus commented on the word Scunthorpe problem
"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.
The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's dirty-word filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring cunt." (Wikipedia)
January 5, 2013