Blocking yuuguu

[AlMellor]

our CTO suggests you block *.yuuguu.com

[apoth0r]

Perhaps rather then a generic version of Yuuguu, you have one geared towards educational establishments.

The problems with generic is that it is far too easy to use tools not designed for a these institutes. I'm all for helping you with your endeavours but as the software stands it is not suitable for my establishments. Perhaps you may look into providing a yuuguu plugin for Moodle (open source VLE) that may assist your efforts in online collaboration.

This is one example of many uses I can see for specified educational tools from your company.

 

Kind regards

[AlMellor]

Hi,

 

Many thanks for your suggestion about releasing a specific version. We may consider that in the future, if there was a demand sufficient to justify the development work, and if the company began to actively pursue a target market of closed-environment education. It's not currently our main focus. But things do change, quite rapidly sometimes!

 

What I would say though is that the tips to block Yuuguu's Free and normal commercial versions would still apply. We would not stop releasing our core products even if we did produce closed-environment friendly packages.

 

In reality, it *is* a difficult job in this day and age to block all the various communication and instant message tools that there are. Some, like the Javascript based ones we know of, run in the browser - very tricky to stop, without collateral damage to other permitted web sites. Most others you can find a workaround using some kind of proxy server. And when that server is blocked, move on to the next - and so on. You have my sympathies over in IT net admin land; it is not an easy task at all. China - as far as I know - still hasn't managed to plug all of its holes in its national firewall, and they have essentially limitless resources and legal backing to perform that function. So it is a technically difficult task for which I doubt there is a definitive answer.

 

 

All the best, and nice 'talking' to you all -

Hope we've been of some assistance today.

 

have a good weekend!

 

Al.

[azrael78]

Apps like this tend to be either difficult to block or very simple I've found.

 

If you use mandatory profiles for the students - it's easy - simply wipe the AppData folder and everything in it at logoff (if you have it redirected) and/or pre-populate their AppData with items you know and trust.

 

Roaming profiles are harder, but you could wipe the specific java folders in AppData or redirect their AppData to a network share and then lock it down some other way.

 

Thankfully where I am, all the kids use mandatory, so this kind of application isn't a huge issue for us personally but I can see and understand how it could be.

 

FYI - We don't allow any kind of 'chat' outside of our VLE and even then, we have chat inside the VLE disabled at current, SMT may well override us on it but that's their call to make.

 

Az