Topic awaiting preservation: Blocking site : AKA Web Monitoring for the company

Was needing some software (or other alternative) to block users from going to certain sites.
I have looked at a few pieces of software but thought I would ask here too.

Thanks in advance!

Later,

C:\

To what end?

It would be nice to just block stuff on websites according to a time that was spent on it. Just have a lot of people checking personal email, online bill pay, general surfing.

I have seen some that will send emails about the activity and that would be something that we would want definatly, but if it just did a pretty good job of blocking certian stuff that would be great too. I am sure there are some software out there that would allow you to use a black and white list kind of function and that is what I am mostly after. If I could get an email report of the activity and then be able to just white and black list sites that is the ultimate right there I think.

This is certainly something that would have to be passed out as a memo that the employees would have to sign and say that they understand. Never put it past an employee to try to take it to court that Big Brother was watching over them (which they are )

Thanks in advance!

Later,

C:\

easiest way is to block port 80 on your outgoing firewall and install a proxy server like squid, and add those sites to it's ban list.

Of course someone might have their own anonymizer, you probably don't block google's cache and the like, but hey, it's quick, it's simple, and it's not that evil ;-)

quote:

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Tyberius Prime said:

easiest way is to block port 80 on your outgoing firewall

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but by doing this it will block *all* web stuff right? Don't want to do that, just block certain sites. Need the web for certain parts of work.

Later,

C:\

It will, but what will then happen is the Squid proxy will pickup al transmissions bound for port 80 and reroute them, usually through port 8080. It will also filter requests by URL and allow you to ban sites fro mbeing accessed. The reason you block port 80 at the firewall is to prevent your users from trying to get around Squid by forcing transmissions out through port 80.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

thanks for the info. I have never heard of squid I don't think which is what confused me. It looks like Squid is for Linux. This is a windows server so i guess i just need to find a proxy server for Windows?

Later,

C:\

we run Web Sense at work to protect our precious bandwidth.

WebSense... works... although if you do as my University does with it and just simply download the latest block of WebSense bans without actually reviewing them...

Well, lets just say

"www.google.com has been blocked under category 'Pornography'"
"www.php.net has been blocked under category 'Hacking'"


Justice 4 Pat Richard

well I'm gonna try to talk them into just blocking port 80 via the router and then use WinProxy to open certain sites. Seems to be the easiest and most fool proof (to me anyway)

I do like the features that some have that will give you a detailed report of who is doing what and then just blocking those sites. However, if I leave it up to them to block the sites, it will never get done and they just spent money on something that is not being used.

Later,

C:\