British Telephone's internet service has been using a filter that blocks attempted access to child porn sites. That's a good thing.

But then they go around quoting numbers that sound like bullshit.

This article states that they block more than 20,000 hits per day to child porn sites. This one, though, states that it's 40,000 hits. This news article, claims only 10,000.

Is that number single access attempts from multiple users or many attempts from very few users?

All the articles agree that the total number of blocked attempts for 3 weeks was 250,000. So, a little simple math states that the average number of attempts was 11,904.

So, is it bad math or sensationalism that's driving these stories? 12,000 hits per day isn't that many. Consider that many porn and mainstream sites recieve in excess of one million hits per day. Also, how many of those hits were made by the same few people over and over?

These stories seem to be implying that the net is infested with pedophiles, when that's just not the case. Porn webmasters even have a site and an organization, ASACP, that fights child porn.