Youtube safe mode

[Sheridan]

Can anyone tell me how youtube's safe mode is setup? We're getting lots of videos blocked because its has been enabled (by the network administrator)

 

Thing is - we don't have it enabled in our smoothwall (content modification) and our Chrome policies (for staff) disable the safe mode setting for chrome. I can prove its not smoothwall as the same blocked videos work in IE.

 

Is there any other setting in Chrome policies that relate to this? I've set the safe mode to disabled at both computer and user policy, but its still blocked (and yet still works in IE)

[Iain]

Usually, if it is saying enabled by the network administrator, it is using a DNS CNAME/DNAME alias to redirect www.youtube.com to forcesafesearch.googe.com. Try looking in your DNS.

 

Edit - Sorry, I missed the bit saying Chrome only, so it is probably not this.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Iain

[machin05]

But that would affect IE too, wouldn't it?

 

Do you have the Chrome ADM templates installed in your AD Group Policies. There are some Safe Search settings buried in those somewhere.

[Sheridan]

Yeah I'm assuming it is the chrome policies - but I've got the safe mode disabled in the policies and its still blocked!

 

I know its not smoothwall or dns related as IE works fine. Makes a nice change telling staff to you IE instead of chrome though

 

The wording in the policies is a bit odd -I've got 'safe search' switched on, but 'safe browsing' disabled. There isn't a specific setting for youtube's 'safety mode'

Edited May 26, 2015 by Sheridan

[siuko]

There are newer chrome ADM templates that have the safe search and safe mode split.

 

We have them installed but they still do not seem to do what they are supposed to.

 

It is as if they have updated the chrome browser but the chrome adm templates do not match the settings.

[Simcfc73]

Got this exact same issue, have gone down the line of use IE instead for youtube then they get all confused as they like Chrome for Google apps.

[Sheridan]

Ahh I've updated my chrome templates and now I see a Youtube safety mode option!

 

Still has had no effect though even when disabled - apparently the network administrator has enabled this. I wish I knew how I'd done this

[ShorehamGeek]

Not sure if you've cracked this, I had this, and my fix involved going into the Admin Console, Device management > Chrome (Chrome Management) > User Settings

 

Now find "Content" (about 1/2 way down the screen) and there is the "Safe Search and Safety Mode" section. I've got the students set to "Always use SafeSearch for Google Web Search queries and SafeSearch for Youtube queries" and the staff have got "Always use SafeSearch for Google Web Search queries only".

 

That forces the additional safety for the pupils, but allows the staff to scroll to the bottom of the Youtube page and turn the Safety Mode off (which then gets remembered).

 

Hope that helps.

[Sheridan]

Not sure if you've cracked this, I had this, and my fix involved going into the Admin Console, Device management > Chrome (Chrome Management) > User Settings

 

Now find "Content" (about 1/2 way down the screen) and there is the "Safe Search and Safety Mode" section. I've got the students set to "Always use SafeSearch for Google Web Search queries and SafeSearch for Youtube queries" and the staff have got "Always use SafeSearch for Google Web Search queries only".

 

That forces the additional safety for the pupils, but allows the staff to scroll to the bottom of the Youtube page and turn the Safety Mode off (which then gets remembered).

 

Hope that helps.

 

That would only apply to managed Chromebooks though surely? Our staff aren't logged into chrome/google at this point so Domain settings wouldn't be applied.

[OB1]

Ahh I've updated my chrome templates and now I see a Youtube safety mode option!

 

Still has had no effect though even when disabled - apparently the network administrator has enabled this. I wish I knew how I'd done this

 

We made an adjustment to one of our content modifications. If you've got Enable Google SafeSearch [bETA] enabled in your Content Modification table, this will now include youtube, since they share the same infrastructure.

 

If you definitely want to turn it off drop me a PM.

[machin05]

We were having a play around with this, this morning as Safety Mode was kicking in too invasively for our liking.

 

It turns out that it's Force SafeSearch that now applies to YouTube's Safety Mode - Google changed it apparently. There is a registry setting you can hack manually if you want to bypass this without removing the GPO setting:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome - ForceSafeSearch=0

[Sheridan]

We made an adjustment to one of our content modifications. If you've got Enable Google SafeSearch [bETA] enabled in your Content Modification table, this will now include youtube, since they share the same infrastructure.

 

If you definitely want to turn it off drop me a PM.

 

We do have this enabled as one of our Content Modification policies, I'm loath to take this out if it will have an impact on the google safe search?

[ShorehamGeek]

That would only apply to managed Chromebooks though surely? Our staff aren't logged into chrome/google at this point so Domain settings wouldn't be applied.

 

If you're sure your users aren't logged in - then this wouldn't help, but it's worth double checking. This setting also seems to take effect if you're logged into the browser or indeed logged into youtube without being logged into the browser.

[machin05]

There are some new ADM files from Google for Chrome with specific and separate YouTube Safety Mode and Google Safe Search settings. Unfortunately thought, these new setting won't overwrite the existing and generic ForceSafeSearch that might be in place from the earlier ADM template, so you may have to remove those old policies in order to get this working.