Circumventors

[Biker]

We have been monitoring our students internet access and have found an increasing rise in access to Facebook, MySpaces, Bebo, etc. These sites have been banned on our onsite and our ISP's filtering, but the students are still managing to access them. They are getting around our filtering by using Circumventors and are creating a secure tunnel https:// out.

Has anyone been able to block this?

[adurrant]

We have the same problem and we use RM SafelyNet filterning

[tom_newton]

Proper http proxy blocking (content based) and https whitelists.

 

We (SmoothWall) are actually looking at better options than https whitelisting, which does work, but there may be easier ways. Certainly we have one planned for July...

[enjay]

Explain to the culprits that some proxy bypass sites are used for identify theft/phishing scams by logging the usernames and passwords which people enter while using their site. That should hopefully stop them.

 

Also, the tried and tested "sacrificial lamb detention" wouldn't go amiss.

[TechMonkey]

We absolutely blast any student using a proxy, whatever they are using it for. They are then blasted by the head of house & really drilled in to them the severity of the situation.

 

Apart from that we ban what we can and monitor top sites due to any proxy getting a hit for every resource it fetches so very quickly becomes top with one or 2 people using it.

[clareq]

We have a policy that if any student is found using a proxy avoidance website they are immediately whitelisted (only allowed to access a walled garden) and given a detention. We then search for any other access to the site in the previous 48 hours, and whitelist and detain all other students found. This is advertised on the Intranet homepage, so all students know the policy.