Paper: Red Rover: A collaborative approach to content filtering (Tommy Pauly, Richard Barnes)
slides-mtenws-paper-red-rover-a-collaborative-approach-to-content-filtering-pauly-barnes-00

Some network operators use content filtering, via DNS filtering and other network-based mechanisms, as a way to prevent their networks from being used to access content that violates their policies. For example, these networks will filter out malware or objectionable content.

Simultaneously, client devices and applications want to protect users from networks collecting sensitive and private information about their activity. Techniques here include encrypting TLS metadata, encrypting DNS traffic and selecting trusted DNS resolvers, and employing proxies or VPNs.

Although the mechanisms employed for user privacy and security can interfere with the mechanisms traditionally used for network-based content filtering, the objectives of the networks and clients are not fundamentally in conflict. Client devices and applications likely don’t want their users exposed to bad content, users likely don’t want to violate any network terms and conditions, and network operators usually don’t want to collect private information to track users.

In this paper, we suggest an approach to designing collaborative solutions for network-informed content filtering.