In testing
Is my site blocked in the United Kingdom?
In the UK, High Court orders make six big providers block sites that infringe copyright or trade marks, and the mobile networks filter adult content by default. A legitimate site can get caught by accident: it may share a server address with a blocked pirate football stream, or a filter may put it in the wrong category. Virgin Media and NOW Broadband publish lists of court orders, but the lists are incomplete, so only a test from inside each provider's network shows what its customers get.
Sources: TorrentFreak, 12 August 2026 · Virgin Media and NOW court-order lists, checked 11 November 2026 · EE · O2 · Three · Vodafone · The Register, 15 August 2013 · Open Rights Group
Check your page in Germany, Poland or Norway
We cannot test providers in the United Kingdom yet. Enter a page and pick a country: we open it through connections of the main providers there (home and mobile; mobile only in Norway) and tell you provider by provider whether it opens. Free, about a minute, a few checks per hour.
Who orders blocks in the UK?
Mostly the High Court. Rights holders such as the Premier League, UEFA, Sky and film studios ask it to order providers to block sites that infringe copyright or trade marks. The Premier League's 2017 order and the film studios' 2026 order both name six providers: BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media. Virgin Media and NOW Broadband list these orders and the sites they name, but the lists are incomplete. On 11 November 2026 Virgin Media's list ended with an order of 3 October 2025, and neither list showed the studios' May 2026 order. The Premier League and UEFA orders against streaming servers do not name them. Newer orders, such as one Sky won on 11 December 2025 (on NOW's list), let rights holders add sites by notifying providers directly. So a site can be blocked without appearing on either list.
Sources: High Court judgment, 13 March 2017 · TorrentFreak, 12 August 2026 · Virgin Media and NOW court-order lists, checked 11 November 2026
Can a block aimed at another site hit mine?
Yes, if your site shares a server address with the target. The Premier League's first order against streaming servers ran from 18 March to 22 May 2017. It made providers block the IP addresses (the numeric addresses behind every site) of pirate streaming servers only while matches were broadcast, and the server list was reset every match week. It covered only servers that the Premier League reasonably believed had the "sole or predominant purpose" of streaming its matches without permission, and hosting companies were told weekly when one of their addresses was blocked. Virgin Media's list shows later orders against streaming servers for Premier League seasons up to 2024/25, and for the 2025/26 and 2026/27 UEFA seasons.
Sources: High Court judgment, 13 March 2017 · Virgin Media court orders, checked 11 November 2026
It has gone wrong before. In August 2013 UK providers blocked an IP address on the block list for a Premier League court order against the streaming site FirstRow. It belonged to a DNS Made Easy service that redirects one web address to another, so hundreds of legitimate sites that used it, including the Radio Times and DuckDuckGo, were cut off for a while.
Source: The Register, 15 August 2013
More cases: Collateral blocking in Europe.
Why does my site fail on mobile data but open on Wi-Fi?
EE, O2, Three and Vodafone block content they class as 18+ by default, and only on mobile data. Adult account holders can lift the block, usually after an age check. The filters cover more than pornography: EE's default setting blocks dating sites but lets gambling through, Three's business help page lists gambling among the categories it filters, and Vodafone names violence, drugs and crime. If your site is wrongly blocked, ask the network first (Three takes reports at content@three.co.uk). If that fails, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), whose classification rules the networks use, can decide whether the content really is 18+. Its rules do not cover gambling sites.
Sources: EE · O2 · Three · Three Business · Vodafone key facts · BBFC, pages checked 11 November 2026
Do home broadband filters block normal sites?
They can. Virgin Media's Essential Security, which blocks suspected scam, phishing and virus sites, is "always turned on" unless the customer asked otherwise, and if your site uses https (an encrypted connection), a blocked visitor sees only "a normal browser error message". BT's Web Threat Protect blocks sites inside BT's network, for any device on a BT Broadband connection; site owners can ask for a review at saferbrowsing@bt.com, and the site stays blocked until the review is done. Virgin Media turns its Web Safe filter on for customers who joined after 16 May 2024.
Sources: Virgin Media and BT, checked 11 November 2026
EE and BT say their filters do not work for customers who use a VPN or Apple's iCloud Private Relay (services that send traffic through other companies' servers), or a different DNS service (the internet's address book for site names). So one customer may see your page and another on the same network may not. Open Rights Group, which says filters "block many harmless websites by mistake", runs a free checker at blocked.org.uk, but on 11 November 2026 its status page showed it could test only on Three's network.
Sources: EE · BT · Open Rights Group and its status page, checked 11 November 2026
What changes in 2025 and 2026?
- July 2025. Cloudflare, a CDN (a network in front of many websites), began showing UK visitors of some pirate sites its own "Error 451" page, which says access is limited "in response to a legal order".Source: TorrentFreak, 15 July 2025
- May 2026. An order for six film and TV companies, including Disney and Netflix, let them add new pirate sites without a new court hearing, but forbade asking providers to block an IP address whose server also hosts legitimate sites. It was made on 7 May 2026 for six months, to 7 November 2026, "unless the Court orders otherwise". As of 11 November 2026, we found no public report of a renewal.Source: TorrentFreak, 12 August 2026
- July 2026. Ofcom, which enforces the UK's Online Safety Act, can ask a court to make providers block a site that keeps breaking the Act. It did not do so for an overseas forum that had blocked UK visitors itself, as that was "the fullest extent of what can be achieved under the Online Safety Act".
- 30 November 2026. From this date, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 lets a judge order the organisations that run or sell domain names, or that hand out IP addresses, to suspend a domain or address used for serious crime, including unlicensed gambling. A suspension can last up to 12 months at a time. The organisation can be in the UK or abroad, and the order does not ask broadband providers to block the site for their customers.
What has linkspect seen in the UK?
Our first UK measurements, on 10 November 2026, found court-ordered blocks applied differently on each network: BT's DNS sent visitors to a notice page, Sky's DNS falsely answered that the site does not exist, Virgin Media showed its own notice page, and Cloudflare showed its own 451 page. We have not yet confirmed that we can see blocks by IP address in the UK, and that run did not see the mobile 18+ filters. The UK is not open to customers yet.
Last updated 11 November 2026.