Does anyone know how to block chat on google

[timbo343]

Hi all

We are having a great problem with google chat at our school... We are using websense as our filtering service and i was wondering if anyone knows how to block only the chat feature?

Thanks

Tim

[Geoff]

Google Chat uses standard HTTP requests (its based on the Jabber protocol). Get better filtering software.

[timbo343]

the jabber protocol?? thats a new one... do you know the http for it?? We have tried to block enabled.mail.google.com in our DNS but that has failed

[Geoff]

Info on the Jabber protocol is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabber

If you can only block by domain name then you have to block google.com and .co.uk. and any other regional variations...

I doubt that's an acceptable solution.

[MrDylan]

hehe, can you imagine the uproar if you blocked google!

dogpile's better anyhoo but I rarely remember to use it.

[Geoff]

Best solution is to have your filter 'understand' the jabber protocol and block it that way. There's been hacks/addons for opensource proxys/filters for doing this for some time.

[NetworkGeezer]

How about blocking certain MIME types with ISA or Squid

[Geoff]

blocking application/xml really isn't a good idea. You'll break many many websites.

[john]

I thought google chat was blocked under the catagory of Instant messengers. But with websense you can block by protocol and many other things, its a huuuuge program.

Edit - Just looked it up on the websense lookup tool, and its been listed under the instant messenger catagory. The address I looked up was www.google.com/talk

[Geoff]

talk.google.com also works, as does www.google.co.uk/talk and talk.google.co.uk. You can start being clever and use obscure google domains like www.google.co.nz/talk too.

Good luck with that.

[john]

Websense blocks all of those under the same header of Instant Messenger, I do find, although a pig to setup, Websense is a good tool once its working, and its very very inteligent, and for the cost of it, it really does work well.

[Geoff]

Well just updating "/etc/danguardian/phraselists/chat/weighted" to the lastest version of the file works for me on Squid/Dansguardian.

Not bad for the cost of it.

[john]

I know, its free VS websenses £1000's, but I have said I am making a Censornet server next week, so I do listen and take note, honest!