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For testing antivirus we have EICAR, for SPAM, we have GTUBE.

Is there a standard site that is or should be included in blacklists that you can use for testing instead of going to your favorite porn site in front of your boss, the CEO, or someone else who feels that seeing such a site is an excuse for a sexual harassment suit?

Update

This is less about getting permission for me to test, though that answer is useful. I do have both permission and responsibility to actually make sure the filter is running. I am able test the filter is functioning with a netcat.

Instead, I am hoping there is a standard domain name that is blocked by most/all filters for testing. I need to be able to share this with my boss and users.

I need to be able to demonstrate what happens when someone go to a filtered page. I need to have a way to quickly prove to others that the filter is working without asking them to go to some site that will not cause grief if for some reason the filter is not working.

If there isn't already a good domain for this purpose I may simply have to register a domain myself, and then add the domain to all the filters I am responsible for.

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88% accept rate
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The irony being that some naive p*rn filters may actually prevent people from viewing this question ;-) – LeopardSkinPillBoxHat May 6 '09 at 1:09
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This question has a disproportional number of views! – Doug Chase May 29 '09 at 19:23
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One of the NOC guys at my last job once told me "if you ever see one of the switches trying to go to Hustler.com, that's me making sure we didn't route around your filters, don't worry about it." Sure enough, I started noticing that every time he worked late on topology stuff. – Bill Weiss Nov 7 '11 at 14:17
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9 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

If there isn't, there should be. RFC2606 reserves several top level domains for test purposes with the understanding that they will never be assigned. It also reserves three second level names for use in documentation examples. The reservations are:

  • .test (testing of DNS related code)
  • .example (documentation and examples)
  • .invalid (known and obviously invalid)
  • .localhost (127.0.0.1 by any other name)
  • example.com, example.net, example.org (documentation)

From their described intended uses, it makes sense to me to use something like pr0n.test as a defined positive. You could arrange for that name to resolve to something benign (BANG!) so that on failure of the filter you get something more interesting to happen than just a failed DNS lookup.

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The trouble is, none of those tlds have sites which really exist, and as such, any test will be marginally biased because you're trying to block "nothing", or if you have set it up, trying to block an internal site. Having said that, filtering vendors should probably agree on some test URLs to "prove" you're up-to-date, but the chances of everyone agreeing are ~nil. – Tom Newton Nov 7 '11 at 13:09
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up vote 13 down vote

Explain to your boss and HR that you either have to hope the porn filter is working or will need to test it by going to inappropriate sites. Make sure you tell them when your doing the test, and how long it will take so they know your not "testing" the filter all day every day. Then they can decide weather they want to let you try and visit sites like that at work or hope the filters work by default. The second option is to install it at home with out telling your teenage son and see how long it takes him to get angry and ask why the internet isn't working like it used to.

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Your answer is useful, but wasn't quite what I had in mind when I asked the question. I have updated the question, to try and be more clear about what I am looking for. – Zoredache May 6 '09 at 5:53
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up vote 8 down vote

We (at Smoothwall) have a "daily" URL in the lists to test the filter - with the date of list in the URL so you can tell you are up to date. Your vendor may provide a similar feature. It may well not be documented - ask them!

Alternatively, I like playboy.com. Should be blocked, but the homepage is always fairly benign - girls in bikinis etc. so low HR riskfactor if you just hit /.

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I like this idea... it both proves the filter is in place and that it is current. I'd still like to see an industry agreed URL that will always be blocked, combined with a real page explaining that you shouldn't have been able to see it. – RBerteig Jul 30 '09 at 20:38
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up vote 3 down vote

Not an adult site, but we use Poker Stars to test that our fitering is working. We block gambling at the same level. So if Poker Stars gets blocked, then the filtering system is working.

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up vote 3 down vote

We use www.pornsite.com

It should be blocked, but if it isn't, the home page contains a "You must be 18 or over to proceed" type of message with only text and no images.

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There are some quite graphic words on there, mind - these can easily offend our colleagues if we're not careful, but yes, good one with no obvious images. – Tom Newton Nov 7 '11 at 16:42
@TomNewton: your colleagues need to grow some thicker skin. – insta Nov 7 '11 at 17:26
I'm sure their may be other similar "landing pages" that could be used that do not contain offensive language, but I'm sure that this site must be less offensive than one that contains explicit images. Also, since we always use this site to test with, we assume that if it shows up in logs that it was harmless unless they went beyond the landing page. – compcentral Nov 7 '11 at 18:23
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up vote 1 down vote

playboy site is a "de facto" standard for this goal. It's is ok if you talk about url filter. It's rumored that some filter software have a specific routine to find "playboy" (and only "playboy") anywhere in the url to be able to block it even through an anonymizer.

But if you talk about a testing a content filter, no content (string) has been defined.

And, of course, for "image filter", the answer is no.

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up vote 1 down vote

Testing a pr0n filter should be easy enough. Use playboy.com. It's been a known pr0n website for over a decade.

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up vote 1 down vote

At a previous job we used sex.com and only sex.com. It's easy to remember and a real porn site. If anyone that wasn't an admin and testing a filter changed showed up in the log for that site then you knew they were looking at it.

Unfortunately if there is an issue you will be exposed to porn.

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up vote 0 down vote

We generally try to go to www.whitehouse.com, www.hustler.com, and www.playboy.com ... and if our security guy is feeling fiesty he will go to google and search for his favorite type of porn and see what happens :)

I personally have never seen a filtering product miss any of the first three, and honestly if it did something is wrong or the software is very very very bad.

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