Filtering YouTube

[cheaptonersucks]

Hi

Does anyone know know of a way of filtering YouTube as SLT have asked that it be unblocked. I have been informed that Smoothwall can filter videos but I have heard that Smotthwall is expensive. There is no budget to do anything at the moment so if there are any free ways to filter/restrict YouTube that would be good.

 

Thanks

[fiza]

If you have G Suite then you can approve videos so only those that are approved can be viewed

[FN-GM]

Smoothwall doesn't do it out of the box. It will require IT staff to add them to the allowed category.

 

If you have G Suite you can configure this so staff can approve videos and then students can only watched approved videos.

 

I can't find the link tight now. Can else someone help with this please?

Edited June 13, 2018 by FN-GM

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks for the quick response. We don't have G Suite and everything is heavily filtered. All third party web mail is blocked so on that note would unblocking the Google stuff allow Gmail? I am guessing so, which would not be ok with the NM. Is G Suite easy to setup and can it be handed over completely for the teaching staff to manage please?

[caffrey]

This ? https://support.google.com/a/answer/6214622?hl=en

 

You can set video approvers for the domain

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks I wasn't aware that Smoothwall doesn't do out of the box. Crikey, I have heard figures of £6000 costs mentioned for Smoothwall, so that's surprising!

 

I don't think that the NM would agree to G Suite being allowed if it means that Gmail is opened up. Can G Suite be unblocked but not Gmail?

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks, I will have a look.

[Katy]

What service/device are you using as your filtering to block it currently?

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks, we are using Sophos.

[fiza]

You can have G suite without Gmail.

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks, I must read up on G Suite.

[KevinB]

Thanks I wasn't aware that Smoothwall doesn't do out of the box. Crikey, I have heard figures of £6000 costs mentioned for Smoothwall, so that's surprising!

 

I don't think that the NM would agree to G Suite being allowed if it means that Gmail is opened up. Can G Suite be unblocked but not Gmail?

 

Smoothwall is capable of filtering Youtube properly out of the box, you just need to configure it to do so, just like you'd configure it to do advanced filtering on any site.

 

We do it here, with unfiltered access for staff and filtered access for students, they get restricted mode Youtube plus any additional videos that we add to a list that was set up by following a Smoothwall knowledgebase article. It's pretty straightforward to set up.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi Sophos can filter Youtube, do you know exactly what is being used to filter your web-traffic?

 

regards

 

Lee

[AlanD]

There are several ways of filtering YouTube...all well documented...and yes smoothwall and probably most other filters can do it...but no, smoothwall doesn’t do it “out of the box...” and you would need to follow the guides...and probably do even more work if you want to make work with tablet devices...and yes it would be good if smoothwall simply had ticks to enable/disable these things...

 

In fact...I’d be very surprised if your existing filtering doesn’t support safe YouTube access...what are you using?

 

There are..and will be...problems with YouTube clips which are not categorised as you might expect..so a useful clip wanted by a History class about weapons in WW2 might get blocked....and so you will need to work on how you will handle exceptions...

 

There are moderate and strict categories...and with smoothwall, you can do real-time analysis...although I’m not sure how good it is on videos...

 

And no, you don’t need to use google...although it’s free and you can sync your active directory usernames and passwords, use free on line storage...cloud printing and loads of other useful stuff...

 

At a push...you could just use the dns method...if you have no access to modify your we filter other than block/

Allow YouTube.

[APMerry]

Our staff have unrestricted access to YouTube. Recently I've found more and more videos being Age restricted by YouTube and requiring login to a google account to verify your age. We don't use G-Suite and I don't really want to be making google accounts for all staff just to watch YouTube. Is there any way around this without having to login to YouTube?

 

Example of age restricted video:

Edited December 4, 2018 by APMerry