This morning, I received a Google alert for one of my many web aliases. It turned out to be a contribution I made to a forum a couple of years ago (thanks Google, a real bang-up job of keeping me up to date).

But what I read wasn't quite what I'd written. The forum software is obviously of a prudish disposition. It seems to be in the habit of replacing 'bad' words with asterisks. Now, we're all familiar with the kind of person who tut-tuts at raw language. Generally, they're not too smart. And so it is with this software.

The discussion was about preventing image theft on the web and I mentioned how pointless I thought it was to slice images into pieces because the thieves can simply reassemble them. This appeared on the forum as 're***emble'. Similarly, I'd started a sentence with: "***uming that...".

Who has a problem with the word 'ass'? Would this forum insist that Mary rode towards Bethlehem on an ***?

It's American, of course. And for that reason it took no action when I used the phrase 'piss off'. So much for smart software.