Whitelist on ChromeOS while still allowing Chromebooks to run

[_techie_]

Hi.

 

I have been tasked with setting up a whitelist for our exclusion room. I have been getting it to work, bar one thing - blocking google.com which comes under the inbuilt Chromebook category. Students can still get to Google and search which is what we want to block.

 

This is on smoothwall, and we are using the cloud filter on ChromeOS.

 

Any suggestions welcome.

 

Thanks

Mark

[jthompson]

I think you're basically looking to block "google.com/search". I was going to suggest adding that to a URL blocklist in Google Admin, but I'm not sure that you can do that as a per device setting in Google Admin, only as a per user.

[LeMarchand]

We use Fortigate, but you may be able to implement something similar. We can use regular expressions to block and

 

.*\bq=\b.*

 

theoretically blocks any search for that term. We've found some engines don't comply, but the big boys do.

 

Might be worth trying

 

.*\bq=*\b.*

[_techie_]

I will take a look at these two thanks. I have managed to improve things by using a combination of both Senso's Allow Only whitelisting, and Smoothwall.

Seem to have something - next steps are removing the PC's in there entirely.

[Joeloman]

In Smoothwall there are ready-made categories that can block Google Search as well as some other search engines, these are currently available:

 

Search Engines Al known Search Engines

Search Engines -> Baidu

Search Engines -> Bing

Search Engines -> DuckDuckGo

Search Engines -> Google Instant Previews

Search Engines -> Google Search

Search Engines -> Reverse Image Search

Search Engines -> Search Suggestions

Search Engines -> Yandex Search

 

If you use Block for "Search Engines" all known ones will be blocked, guess around 5-600.

 

Read more about the different categories in Smoothwall:https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004511520-Blocklist-Categories-and-Content-Modifications-List

Edited April 26, 2024 by Joeloman