Netsweeper - Avoid a common misconception.

[filteringtech]

There seems to be some general confusion about adding wholewords and keywords (Netsweeper parlance), to shared and local lists.

 

 

If you add a wholeword or a keyword as an “allow” in a list, maybe even in a local list to override a shared list, you may not get the result you expect.

 

 

To be more specific, let’s say you might want to allow the word ‘adult’ to be in a search or url for ‘adult fruit flies’, or pupils are trying to find out if they need to pay for an ‘adult ticket’ (which is 15 or over at the Odeon), and find that the word is blocked, ‘you could’ add it to a local list to allow it. I have heard that some even advise this!

 

 

That might not be the best idea. A match in a local list takes a high priority, and as soon as a match is made, Netsweeper will act, and no further processing takes place. There will be a match in a search for:

 

 

‘adult fruit fly’ - No problem there.

 

‘adult prices’ - Its a bit vague, but probably OK

 

‘adult porn’ - Clearly a KCSIE problem, especially if a search engine without safe search or unenforced safe search is allowed.

 

There is no safe way to add a word allow because there is a whole dictionary of other words that can be used to subvert the allow to bypass further filtering and access ‘problematic’ content.

 

 

Its probably best in the case to leave out the word ‘adult’ from any lists or to have it in Netsweeper’s specific ‘search keyword list’ and to have category processing block inappropriate content.

[tom_newton]

This is good common sense - allowed search terms is a dangerous game, imagine your search term allow policy for "cabbage" is for whatever reason (policy order, limit of the filter as above) above a block rule - students can then just at "cabbage" to an illicit search term "bypass web filter cabbage" and get allowed through!

[filteringtech]

Just for the record, another (not Tom), filtering provider actually advises customers to override search words by adding an "allow" - including it in their online help.

[filteringtech]

If you have Netsweeper hosted by your ISP, you ought to check that your category settings are really being honoured.

 

You may think you have Social Networking blocked for pupils, but, it might be that your ISP has already whitelisted Twitter images for you, for all users. There's some really unpleasant stuff in there, so its just a heads up that as part of your KCSIE checking that your pupils can't do search with a non-safe search search engine, or find another way to access them. This especilly applies to pbs.twimg.com which is the domain that hosts uploaded user images.

 

Note: Everything that you or your ISP adds as an allow, bypasses content filtering and everything that is added as decrypt://site.com "allow"bypasses decryption.