More SWGfL/RM Safetynet problems

[CliveMinion]

A couple of specific issues with RM Safety have recently come to light. It would be useful to know if it's just us affected, or whether other schools have the same problem:

 

1) Assuming you have the SWGfL SSL certificate installed, and the appropriate proxy address configured (which is a big assumption in a BYOD school), inappropriate Google searches are filtered. However, if a student opts to use Yahoo search instead, a whole range of filth is freely available and goes undetected by the filters.

 

2) If a user attempts to access a blocked website that uses https, the customised RM Safetynet filtering page doesn't appear. Instead, a browser error message is displayed. This looks messy, and means the normal links to terms of service, contact details and filter lists, etc, aren't visible.

 

Does anyone else experience these issues, and if so, has anyone found a workaround? RM don't appear to recognise it as a problem!

[MrEprise]

Seems in our case, if I search for anything untoward on Yahoo then these searches do get blocked. This however may be due to an accumulation of various filter rules over the years rather than the filtering actually doing it's job from the get go.

 

We do get the browser error page though when accessing blocked https sites, and this can often confuse users into thinking that the internet is down instead of the real reason that it's just not suitable. As far as RM is concerned, they seem to think this is just a side-effect to being able to filter out https sites.

[JGoswell]

Hi both,

1) The ‘search term’ filtering behaviour should be the same between Yahoo and Google when browsing through the SSL filtering service. If you are seeing differences in search term filtering then please do provide examples to the service desk we’ll be able to investigate.

 

2) HTTPS sites showing a connection error rather than a filter page is how the service currently works, and is a technical restriction as we support blocking secure sites at the domain level for devices where SSL interception can’t be used (e.g. transparent BYOD devices not using an SSL filtering proxy address).

 

In this scenario browsers don’t allow us to show a filter page.

We are considering changing this in the future as more schools move to using the SSL filtering option for all devices.

 

Thanks,

Jamie

[CliveMinion]

Hi both,

1) The ‘search term’ filtering behaviour should be the same between Yahoo and Google when browsing through the SSL filtering service. If you are seeing differences in search term filtering then please do provide examples to the service desk we’ll be able to investigate.

 

2) HTTPS sites showing a connection error rather than a filter page is how the service currently works, and is a technical restriction as we support blocking secure sites at the domain level for devices where SSL interception can’t be used (e.g. transparent BYOD devices not using an SSL filtering proxy address).

 

In this scenario browsers don’t allow us to show a filter page.

We are considering changing this in the future as more schools move to using the SSL filtering option for all devices.

 

Thanks,

Jamie

Search filtering should be the same between Yahoo and Google but it absolutely isn't.

 

To suggest that the service is working correctly when it's displaying an error message rather than the RM Safetynet filter page is ridiculous. I don't believe that this is normal behaviour for other commercially available web filtering systems.

 

Personally, I feel exhausted and totally disillusioned by the amount of time spent discussing this with service desk engineers. SWGfL and RM are hopelessly behind with their response to a move towards https throughout the internet. Never mind "considering changing this in future." It should have been addressed years ago!