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In an apparent attempt to block access to child pornography, Ask.com has begun restricting results for certain search queries that may lead to offensive and criminal content.

Blogger Ionut Alex Chitu, who says he was researching pedophilia laws in various countries, found queries related to child sex abuse return no results with the message "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service."

Chitu provides a list of banned search queries that includes [sexy girls], [Belgium's laws on pedophilia], [sex of a child], [pedophilia], and [zoophilia], and [blocking porn from kids]. In short, that's "any query that contains child and sex, kids and sex." And bestiality as well, it seems.

The filtering presumes, however, that searchers can always spell. As Chitu also points out queries for [pedaphilia] bring back some disturbing results from Ask.com's suggestion box. Chitu thinks the ban is a bad idea:

some people may just want to make some research on "laws on pedophilia". If you ban queries like that, you'll have to ban others: "how to make a bomb", terrorists or "suicide tips" and the list will never end.

Via Valleywag

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.