Blocking yuuguu

[Dave01]

The kids here have started to use this chat program called yuuguu which I'm not able to block because it runs using java so it is using javaw.exe. It also can be installed as a regular user because they can install it to their profiles. Does anyone know how I might be able to block this?

[AngryITGuy]

I assume they are bringing in the software on USB, if so you need to implement a software restriction policy which will stop them from runninng executable apps from a USB device.

 

If you head down this route check out this post here I found it useful when I implemented software restriction policies.

 

You will probably also want to deploy USBDML across the network so you can control what drive letter USB devices are assigned making it easier to lock down the drive using your software restriction policies.

 

You can also apply software restriction polices to profiles and home directories stopping them from instaling and running programs from these locations.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited April 2, 2009 by AngryITGuy

[cromertech]

Maybe block them saving or running the install file with a file screen, however i've not had much experience with single files. I have a block on all exe files but its doesn't appear to be instant. It will delete any unwanted files overnight though.

 

It appears to install in the users appdata directory so I don't think there is any other way to block because everyone has write access to their own profile folders

[jamesb]

If you're using AD, you may be able to use software restriction policies to kill it. File signature restrictions maybe? That way even if they rename it they're not going to be able to run it.

[phillColeman]

Hi, I'm Phill from the Yuuguu Dev team.

 

Yuuguu is an online collaboration tool and I was wondering if the problem with Yuuguu is that it features a chat facility or is it installing unauthorised software on your network?

 

I assume that MSN, AOL and the like are banned too but I was wondering how you deal with, for example, GMail chat which is done in a browser - or are personal email accounts blocked?

 

Regards, Phill.

[email protected]

[powdarrmonkey]

I was wondering how you deal with, for example, GMail chat which is done in a browser - or are personal email accounts blocked?

 

 

Yes.

 

 

 

 

.

[NeilKay-Jones]

Hi, I am the Online Support and UX Manger for Yuuguu.

 

We all seem hell bent on blocking these kids from doing something that they obviously have a need for. Why not spend some time with these kids and learn why it is that they are becoming so resourceful?

 

It seems to me that what you offer in their profiles does not match the requirements of todays pupils/students and we should be looking to nurture the way children progress in their education.

 

Hear is a better idea to completely banning them.

 

Run a scheme that lets kids come to you with new technology and ideas. Let them put their case forward for such software and take time to understand that it is in their very nature to be social.

 

The consequences of acting on a complete ban must be thought of in view to gaining any sort of respect and building relationships with kids.

 

I am happy to talk more about this if anyone would like to reply or if you have other ideas.

 

I can see an interesting blog post on our site coming up.

Edited April 2, 2009 by NeilKay-Jones
add in a hi!

[localzuk]

We all seem hell bent on blocking these kids from doing something that they obviously have a need for. Why not spend some time with these kids and learn why it is that they are becoming so resourceful?

 

It seems to me that what you offer in their profiles does not match the requirements of todays pupils/students and we should be looking to nurture the way children progress in their education.

 

Hear is a better idea to completely banning them.

 

Run a scheme that lets kids come to you with new technology and ideas. Let them put their case forward for such software and take time to understand that it is in their very nature to be social.

 

The consequences of acting on a complete ban must be thought of in view to gaining any sort of respect and building relationships with kids.

 

I am happy to talk more about this if anyone would like to reply or if you have other ideas.

 

I can see an interesting blog post on our site coming up.

 

It isn't a 'need'. It is a 'want'. Most schools now have a VLE and school email systems. I have the joyous job of monitoring the email here, and it is *not* used for work very often. More often than anything it is just used to chat with each other in lessons.

 

Our VLE has a chat tool built in, and we have disabled it. We simply cannot see a reason for allowing children to chat to each other via a website. If they need to collaborate, they can talk to each other in school, or post on a school provided forum - which is moderated by the teacher in charge of that lesson.

[NeilKay-Jones]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

 

You mentioned that email is not often used for school work which indicates that it is used by some for the right reasons.

 

I agree, children chatting whilst in lessons via Im is not what we want when it is used for personal chat and nothing to do with school work.

 

Has anyone explained to the kids that you monitor their activities and asked them what they would use IM chat for to aid their studies. They may surprise you but i guess you would have to weigh that up with the misuse of technology and so would have to be in some kind of controlled environment.

Edited April 2, 2009 by NeilKay-Jones

[powdarrmonkey]

Has anyone explained to the kids that you monitor their activities and asked them what they would use IM chat for to aid their studies. They may surprise you but i guess you would have to weigh that up with the misuse of technology and so would have to be in some kind of controlled environment.

 

Yes. They couldn't come up with any positive answer.

[ICTSM]

Hi, I am the Online Support and UX Manger for Yuuguu.

 

We all seem hell bent on blocking these kids from doing something that they obviously have a need for. Why not spend some time with these kids and learn why it is that they are becoming so resourceful?

 

It seems to me that what you offer in their profiles does not match the requirements of todays pupils/students and we should be looking to nurture the way children progress in their education.

 

Hear is a better idea to completely banning them.

 

Run a scheme that lets kids come to you with new technology and ideas. Let them put their case forward for such software and take time to understand that it is in their very nature to be social.

 

The consequences of acting on a complete ban must be thought of in view to gaining any sort of respect and building relationships with kids.

 

I am happy to talk more about this if anyone would like to reply or if you have other ideas.

 

I can see an interesting blog post on our site coming up.

 

 

Blocking you say? You, as a team need to talk to the people that govern the students online presence. Us as managers are merely the caretakers. Having students chat online is dangerous...especially when the other person on the end of the conversation calls himself 'Sally'.

 

There are quite a few ground rules we must follow - not allowing chatting is one of the good ones. The people you need to talk to are at BECTA. (Becta home)

[NeilKay-Jones]

Hi Powdarrmonkey.

 

That is a shame as we have many older students who use Yuuguu to work in research groups, largely for when they are not in school time frames and need to collaborate on projects set by the schools.

 

I would agree to banning software that has not been tested by the school and found a good use for as then as it seems here it would be used for just time wasting and no parent wants to think of their child wasting valuable education time on Im. Bad enough with mobile phones and text.

 

If i dig around some time this week and see how other schools are using our software then i will post back again with some feedback

 

Distance learning is one area I thought of and languages - setting up controlled environments for pupils to meet other pupils in other countries (sort of like a social online pen pal to enhance language skills).

[powdarrmonkey]

That is a shame as we have many older students who use Yuuguu to work in research groups, largely for when they are not in school time frames and need to collaborate on projects set by the schools.

 

In my experience, students prefer email, so they can catch up on each other even if they're not actively working at the same time, or they arrange face-to-face discussion and working groups - the approach I'd much rather see them persuing.

 

If we're not careful about placing this kind of technology in an appropriate context, we're in danger of breeding a generation of young people who can work very competently independently and as a team, but not understand how to conduct themselves in a meeting, can't socialise or read body language, and have problems reacting in an agile way to conversations that they can't review on screen as they go.

 

I do think this has its place - but I also think we have to be careful about using it in moderation and encouraging human collaborative working in preference to being on the end of a terminal.

 

I would agree to banning software that has not been tested by the school and found a good use for as then as it seems here it would be used for just time wasting and no parent wants to think of their child wasting valuable education time on Im. Bad enough with mobile phones and text.

 

The big problem with software like this is that is destroys the controlled environment teachers rely on to ensure their classes are effective and nurturing.

 

 

Distance learning is one area I thought of and languages - setting up controlled environments for pupils to meet other pupils in other countries (sort of like a social online pen pal to enhance language skills).

 

I've investigated this in the past but we always found that co-ordinating an activity with an overseas school, especially bearing in mind time differences, has made it prohibitively complex. It took a great deal of time, a luxury that neither we nor teachers can afford in normal circumstances.

 

I'm open to ideas on how you could make this easier though; a co-ordination service, perhaps?

[phillColeman]

Blocking you say? You, as a team need to talk to the people that govern the students online presence. Us as managers are merely the caretakers. Having students chat online is dangerous...especially when the other person on the end of the conversation calls himself 'Sally'.

 

There are quite a few ground rules we must follow - not allowing chatting is one of the good ones. The people you need to talk to are at BECTA. (Becta home)

 

That's a fair point and thanks for the link.

 

For what its worth, Yuuguu is a closed environment in so much as you have to approve anyone on your contacts list and you get to see the email address that people use to sign up with Yuuguu.

 

Regards, Phill.

[powdarrmonkey]

For what its worth, Yuuguu is a closed environment in so much as you have to approve anyone on your contacts list and you get to see the email address that people use to sign up with Yuuguu.

 

That's not really what I'd call a 'closed environment'. If an administrator had to approve contacts, or could limit it to just school email addresses, or similar, then you might be going somewhere.

[NeilKay-Jones]

Powdarrmonkey:

 

Yes agreed, for education sector and child safety that is not enough of a controlled environment.

 

I will dig about for some stuff on the distance learning and have you guys ever thought of trying Yuuguu for your own purposes as it is a great collaboration tool for free.

 

Thanks for the chat.

 

Neil

[m1ddy]

We do.

 

Its called IRC

[apoth0r]

 

I wish these companies would understand their audience a little better before shouting about how brilliant their software is for them.

Yuuguu may be an excellent collaborator for older students at university/research level but I'm afraid any chat tool can and will be abused by the children of 11-18. It's down to the fact they do not want to talk about work in that environment (silence is a virtue - or at least used to be).

 

If YOU would like anymore information on the shinanigans, with instant messaging programs, in schools please speak to ANY member of staff in an educational establishment. I'm sure every one of them will have a story to tell.

So before you try to sell anymore of your ideas to the forum, bare in mind that we deal with the end product of these tools day in day out, and our picture is a lot broader than yours.

 

I wish it wasn't the case because there are possibilities of some good collaboration, IF we lived in an ideal world.

Sorry to burst your BuurBlee

[JJonas]

yuuguu.com is blocked here at the moment so I cant even begin to investigate how to block the app.

[NeilKay-Jones]

 

I wish these companies would understand their audience a little better before shouting about how brilliant their software is for them.

Yuuguu may be an excellent collaborator for older students at university/research level but I'm afraid any chat tool can and will be abused by the children of 11-18. It's down to the fact they do not want to talk about work in that environment (silence is a virtue - or at least used to be).

 

If YOU would like anymore information on the shinanigans, with instant messaging programs, in schools please speak to ANY member of staff in an educational establishment. I'm sure every one of them will have a story to tell.

So before you try to sell anymore of your ideas to the forum, bare in mind that we deal with the end product of these tools day in day out, and our picture is a lot broader than yours.

 

I wish it wasn't the case because there are possibilities of some good collaboration, IF we lived in an ideal world.

Sorry to burst your BuurBlee

 

Hi apoth0r,

 

We would like to understand our audience better but i do believe that collaboration software may have a place in 16-18 year old teens. We are not about shouting how good our software is before we have thought about ideas. Tone is hard to tell as you know in IM and our comments are to be taken as we would like to help. I remember my A-levels and working in study groups where collaboration tools would have made things a lot more easy when working outside of college.

 

Thank you for your broader picture as i bet it is hard work dealing with children of this age with temptations such as IM and i imagine with all the cyber bullying you hear about, you would have to be so careful of what the kids use.

 

It i still very interesting how they came about Yuuguu and managed to bring it into your environment.

 

One thing that has just occurred to me is that our software lets you share your screen with people who only need an internet connection. I would be very worried about the children using this if they have access to documents/information that you do not want others outside of the school to see.

 

It has been very interesting to talk with you all and it seems that below the age of 16 i would have to agree that our software would not be beneficial to the pupils.

 

Thanks for the comments and don't worry you have not burst our bubble at all and hopefully Generation Y will help to create the ideal world or near to it, so children can learn to use technology for both work and fun.

[Dave01]

Thanks for the help posted regarding blocking this program. I do use software restriction policies but this is complicated by the fact that the executable it runs is javaw.exe so blocking this I guess would block all java apps. And the fact that it can be installed using normal user rights. It is disappointing that yuuguu have developed a program which doesn't allow us to control its access.

 

I am in fact all for these sort of collaboration programs and we are like many schools implementing a VLE designed to perform these such functions but in a controlled way so they can actually possibly be effective in improving learning. Software like yuuguu however simply undermine what we are trying to achieve. I've seen what they chat about using these programs and I can assure you they are never discussing work! These programs are fine for use outside of lesson time but during lessons they simply make the teachers job much harder and do nothing to promote learning.

[NeilKay-Jones]

Thanks for the help posted regarding blocking this program. I do use software restriction policies but this is complicated by the fact that the executable it runs is javaw.exe so blocking this I guess would block all java apps. And the fact that it can be installed using normal user rights. It is disappointing that yuuguu have developed a program which doesn't allow us to control its access.

 

I am in fact all for these sort of collaboration programs and we are like many schools implementing a VLE designed to perform these such functions but in a controlled way so they can actually possibly be effective in improving learning. Software like yuuguu however simply undermine what we are trying to achieve. I've seen what they chat about using these programs and I can assure you they are never discussing work! These programs are fine for use outside of lesson time but during lessons they simply make the teachers job much harder and do nothing to promote learning.

 

Hi, I think it is very unfair to say that Yuuguu undermines the good work you are trying to do. Yuuguu was first built for collaboration between remote teams. Education has adopted our software and now with our understanding we do not think it is any use for the under 16 age group.

 

What i am willing to do is discuss with our team here and see if we can think of an idea how to block it. Please bear with me though as we are releasing a new version so time is very tight.

 

Regards,

 

Neil

[elsiegee40]

Neil

 

I accept what you say regarding the usage of Yuuguu. The problem for those of us who work in schools have is that there is no limit to the imagination of the under 18s and the creative ways they use things that people didn't intend them to use... and that's not just in IT!

 

In fact, I think that something 'not being suitable' probably makes teenagers in particluar even more creative in its use.

 

In Kent, Kent Police's child protection officer Murray Letham goes round to schools and other organisations explaining the risks that children expose themselves to on the internet and how we, as adults, can help to educate inform and protect them.

 

Both in my job and as a parent I have taken what he has said to heart.

 

Perhaps, your organisation could have a chat with someone like Murray about the risks and how you can help to prevent child abuse through your service. A call to Kent police will put you in touch with Murray and I'm sure he'd be happy to help or tell you who you need to speak to.

Edited April 2, 2009 by elsiegee40

[NeilKay-Jones]

Hi elsiegee40,

 

I agree, my son nearly three and has just finished a ten week course of school before he goes to Pre-school in Sept. This has helped him develop and shows how good he is at interacting with other children.

 

That too makes me shudder to think of how careful i need to be to protect him when i have so much technology around the house.

 

That sounds like a good idea to contact Kent police and it would be nice if we can do something to help stop this from the original source rather than you guys having to deal with trying to block us. As many people have said, it is easy for us to sit here and say how good our product is without having to think firstly about what it is kids will do with this technology.

 

I remember watching a programe a month or two ago where a child was giving lessons to there children over the internet (she was a child prodigy). Would be nice if all kids could embrace technology but obviously it is just not going to happen.

 

My worry is the statistics about cyber bullying death increases. My son was born with Pierre Robin Sequence and has had his 4th operation in his life two weeks ago. He needs speech therapy and although his ability to solve problems is astonishing his speech will effect him in some ways, we will work hard to help him get ready for school.

 

Right now we need to concentrate at Yuuguu on becoming self funding as we are a start-up company but when we have the time we will look into how we can build our software with this topic in mind.

 

Thank you to all who have posted and sorry for going off the original topic.

[AlMellor]

Hi all,

 

Another Yuuguu developer here. I can see how Yuuguu is going to cause some problems in environments where communication needs to be controlled. It is designed to make communication easy for people with little IT knowledge.

 

We're going to take a look into how you might block Yuuguu as soon as we can, but I thought I would share some technical tips with you about how it works. It might be enough to get you started.

 

You are correct in that the desktop application runs inside Java. But it still talks to our servers over the internet using standard protocols.

 

If you block access to our messaging servers, you kill Yuuguu. The desktop application could still be executed, but it wouldn't do anything. You couldn't even get past the 'login ... connecting' screen. Students would quickly get the message that the party was over.

 

Yuuguu basically does two things as far as you are concerned:

 

1. Instant Messaging

2. Screen Sharing and remote control of mouse/keyboard

 

The instant messaging uses the industry standard XMPP protocol, but we send it over port 443 SSL to keep comms secure. I guess this will make blocking at the XMPP protocol or port level impractical. We connect to a DNS address of xmpp.yuuguu.comwhich load balances our messaging servers, and so a block to this I reckon would work.

 

Once you stop XMPP traffic, you not only stop instant messaging, but you also stop our control protocol which manages sharing screens and remote control. This means that screen sharing could not be started. You would not need to block our screen share data traffic, as the process could never be initiated.

 

We don't build administration type features into the product by design intent. It's primary intent is to allow teams who normally collaborate together to do so over the web. It is also designed to be very easy to use for non-technical people. Sadly, both of these design goals conflict rather strongly with locking down a network as an admin. It is perhaps no surprise - and to their credit - that students have found this to be the case.

 

I haven't tried blocking xmpp.yuuguu.com myself yet, but I would suggest it is worth a go.

 

As an aside, I thought it was a very interesting statement made about wanting to encourage human interaction, and how to behave in meetings, how to read body language etc. I think that is very worthwhile indeed. I personally was not helped one iota with that at school, and entered the world of adult work basically half functional. School in the UK in the 1980s didn't seem to relate to the fact that in a few years you would go to a place of work, typically, and have little further day to day use for geography and latin, et. al. Things do seem better for my nine year old girl! Anything to redress this balance would be hugely welcome. As to how Yuuguu relates to that, I think it is a separate concept. Once you *can* relate in the real world, you find it is sometimes expedient to do so over the internet instead. A half-world plane trip to review a document, say thank you and 'I accept' isn't really the way forward anymore. That said, Yuuguu staff meet up face to face regularly; it's just that when we do, we make sure it is for more 'human' and relationship-developing activities than such mundane tasks.

 

 

Hope this helps.

I'll try and get back with a 'proper' answer if this guess doesn;t work,

Al. Yuuguu Dev.