Offensive Word censoring/removal on emails

[Rozzer]

Hello All,

 

I have been looking around for some email filtering but I still cannot find anything which offers word censoring easily and affordable.

 

I am using exchange 2003 at the mo.

 

Thanks

 

Ross

[Ric_]

What and why do you want to censor?

[Ex-MGSTech]

Sophos Pure Message offers offensive word scanning

[Rozzer]

We have had a few cases of cyber bullying with the internal email system. We just want to stop any offensive words getting through to other students.

 

Ross

[john]

Puremessage could be the solution then, it has the offensive words filter as has already been said, so you could put in bullying words, only issue is it will then block the email / quarantine it so if staff emailed say a member of SMT about a bullying incident saying X called Y a "blargh" it would also block that.

[Edu-IT]

Email security service, managed email filtering service

 

That's what Synetrix use.

[tom_newton]

What are you using as an internal email system? Exchange?

[GrumbleDook]

Email security service, managed email filtering service

 

That's what Synetrix use.

 

Presently teh standard implementation of this for schools is to use this as a mail gateway to filter incoming and outgoing email *not* internal email though that is possible with a bit of jiggery-pokery.

 

MailSweeper / MimeSweeper / Mail Marshal are all products I could recommend.

[gshaw]

PureMessage is a right pain, just tried to trash Exchange before for no apparent reason

[Rozzer]

We have filtering with our council for external emails but not internal.

[tom_newton]

Oops I am an idiot - just re-read OP, and realised you are on exchange.. think in that case you need an exchange-server-based solution. Certainly we have looked at adding this sort of feature to SmoothWall, but intra-school comms (largely MAPI, hard to capture) is an issue. POP3/SMTP external email is easy.. but not particularly useful in your case. Sorry, not got any recommendations at this time other than "install somthing on the exchange box, not elsewhere".

[ICT_GUY]

It might be a clbuttic mistake though.

[Edu-IT]

Presently teh standard implementation of this for schools is to use this as a mail gateway to filter incoming and outgoing email *not* internal email though that is possible with a bit of jiggery-pokery.

 

MailSweeper / MimeSweeper / Mail Marshal are all products I could recommend.

My mistake. I forgot the OP was talking about internal mail.

[mpe]

Puremessage could be the solution then, it has the offensive words filter as has already been said, so you could put in bullying words, only issue is it will then block the email / quarantine it so if staff emailed say a member of SMT about a bullying incident saying X called Y a "blargh" it would also block that.

 

Also such systems may end up encouraging the kids to find words/spellings which make it through any blacklist.

[Rozzer]

Also such systems may end up encouraging the kids to find words/spellings which make it through any blacklist.

 

Yeh but whats worse letting them have every swear word to a very small amount.

 

Ross

[steele_uk]

Has anyone managed to get Exchanges Content filtering tools to work on Internal mail?

 

We have 2007 here and the content filtering tools, but i think it only applies the policies to mail coming in from an external source?

[todav]

I use Gfi MailSecurity on Exchange 2007. It allows me to do content filtering and attachment filtering, as well as a load of other stuff, such as AV. I bought it mainly for the first 2 features on internal email though. It's AD integrated, so I can target groups with different levels of filtering.

It's not cheap....

[eddyc]

We use Microsoft Forefront for Microsoft Exchange server and this supports both 2003 and 2007.

 

Not only does it virus scan but can also keyword scan and then mask the words / bounce the mail / forward it to a monitoring mailbox.

 

I did set this up earlier in the year - anything that contained 5 or more inappropriate words was forwarded to a "badmail" mailbox so it could be reviewed - I had to get rid of this within a few weeks as some days there would be in excess of 500 e-mails that would need reviewing / actioning.

 

Anywho Forefront is available under the select agreement and you can download it via the MVLS website - when it asks for the activation code, you need to put in your select agreement number and then away you go!

 

You can also use forefront to disclaimer the mail - you can pick whether it only marks external or all mail etc - a disclaimers always useful!

 

If you want to take the forefront route and need any help just give me a shout!

 

Ed

[pete]

An offensive word filter won't necessarily pick up a threat to beat them up behind the bikesheds though, will it? Or things like "the reason your Dad died of cancer was because of you" (yes, that happened here).

[ICT_GUY]

This could be Clbuttic mistake.

[sippo]

We use sophos pure message, and touch wood, had no issues whatsoever. You can add words to the offensive list. Easy to set up and manage.

[maf_001]

You can manage key word filters using Exchange 2007 transport rules, you don’t need any addition software to do this. If you would like examples please let me know.

 

Alternatively you can always outsource your email to a hosted solution like School Email that will allow you to manage blocked words and has bully and key word filtering built in.

 

Mark

[Uraken]

@maf_001 i would be very interested in more info (if you could spare a moment) on how you can use exchange 2007 with no additional sotware to filter bad words etc.

 

thanks in advance

uraken

[maf_001]

@maf_001 i would be very interested in more info (if you could spare a moment) on how you can use exchange 2007 with no additional sotware to filter bad words etc.

 

thanks in advance

uraken

 

Hi Uraken,

 

To filter emails based on key workds using exchange 2007, you need to do the following steps:

 

Create and populate a group for all your students. in this example i am going to use a group called "Pupils"

 

They is 2 ways you can create the new rules i will show you the EMC way incase you are not familiar with powershell.

 

Open EMC -> Organzational Config -> Hub Transport -> Transport Rules

 

Select New Transport Rule

 

Give your rule a name

 

Conditions, check -> "Sent to a member of distribution Group" and then choose your pupils group. Then check -> "when the Subject field or the body of the message contains text patterns" then enter the key words you wish to block.

 

Actions -> you can either check "silently drop the message" or i prefer "Send bounce message to sender with enhance status code" The choice is yours but i never like to drop messages with out knowing why, also you can customise the NDR if you choose send bounce back.

 

Exceptions -> by default you do not need to select any but you may find you would like an exception.

 

The only warnig i would give with this method is that if you filter a word like "cum" then it would filter the word "cucumber" so be very carful when adding words. Once the rule has been created depending on your enviroment it should take no more than 5mins to apply.

 

This is a basic way of filting key words using Transport Rules and the Exchange Managemanet Console.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Mark

[todav]

The only warnig i would give with this method is that if you filter a word like "cum" then it would filter the word "cucumber" so be very carful when adding words

 

To get around the above you can create 2 almost identical rules:

In the first rule use 'when the Subject field or the body of the messages contains text patterns' and in here avoid putting words like the one above.

In the second rule use 'when the Subject field or the body of the message contains specific words' and put all those words that can be part of legitimate words.

 

This way you can block as much as innapropriate content as possible.