Kiwi town, Whakatane, censored online for sounding like 'F-word'!

Melbourne, Aug 3 : The pronunciation of New Zealand town, Whakatane, has been censored in cyberspace - due to its close proximity to the offensive 'F-word'.

The censorship was uncovered when a visiting tourist could not search for "Whakatane" on the district council's own online service, because the word was considered vulgar.

Visiting Auckland web developer John Henry used his laptop in the middle of the town to connect to the council's wireless service, called Freenet.

He was shocked to discover his Google searches for 'Whakatane' services were rejected by the content filter.

The Freenet website's explanation was: "The content is filtered so this service is for legitimate use."

Whakatane District Council spokesman Barney Dzowa said that the problem had been discovered and the name added to a list of words capable of overriding the content filter.

"The content filter is an American-based product, and it does a phonetic analysis of what has been typed in,'' News.com.au quoted him, as saying.

"Whakatane, to the system, sounds like an F-word," he added.

ANI