timbo343 Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Hi all We are having a great problem with google chat at our school... We are using websense as our filtering service and i was wondering if anyone knows how to block only the chat feature? Thanks Tim
Geoff Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Google Chat uses standard HTTP requests (its based on the Jabber protocol). Get better filtering software.
timbo343 Posted March 21, 2006 Author Posted March 21, 2006 the jabber protocol?? thats a new one... do you know the http for it?? We have tried to block enabled.mail.google.com in our DNS but that has failed
Geoff Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Info on the Jabber protocol is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabber If you can only block by domain name then you have to block google.com and .co.uk. and any other regional variations... I doubt that's an acceptable solution.
MrDylan Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 hehe, can you imagine the uproar if you blocked google! dogpile's better anyhoo but I rarely remember to use it.
Geoff Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Best solution is to have your filter 'understand' the jabber protocol and block it that way. There's been hacks/addons for opensource proxys/filters for doing this for some time.
NetworkGeezer Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 How about blocking certain MIME types with ISA or Squid
Geoff Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 blocking application/xml really isn't a good idea. You'll break many many websites.
john Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 I thought google chat was blocked under the catagory of Instant messengers. But with websense you can block by protocol and many other things, its a huuuuge program. Edit - Just looked it up on the websense lookup tool, and its been listed under the instant messenger catagory. The address I looked up was http://www.google.com/talk
Geoff Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 talk.google.com also works, as does http://www.google.co.uk/talk and talk.google.co.uk. You can start being clever and use obscure google domains like http://www.google.co.nz/talk too. Good luck with that.
john Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Websense blocks all of those under the same header of Instant Messenger, I do find, although a pig to setup, Websense is a good tool once its working, and its very very inteligent, and for the cost of it, it really does work well.
Geoff Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 Well just updating "/etc/danguardian/phraselists/chat/weighted" to the lastest version of the file works for me on Squid/Dansguardian. Not bad for the cost of it.
john Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 I know, its free VS websenses £1000's, but I have said I am making a Censornet server next week, so I do listen and take note, honest!
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