Proxy site for blocking

[PageZ]

Came across this on the net. A proxy site set up purely to allow kids to get around school security....

 

http://www.schoolsurf.org/

 

Get it on those blocking lists people!

 

Cheers

Mr B

[sidewinder]

http://www.denyfilters.com/ has 209 proxy sites on it, so well worth blocking them

 

Problem is with these things is that 100's spring up every day, its just impossible to ban them all

 

Edit: http://www.topproxies.com/ has tonnes as well

[alonebfg]

a teacher said something to me the other day that made me laugh she said just block everything and only allow the sites we use in school. i said which one do you use and to this she walked off lol.

[Geoff]

As I've said on previous threads, in the long run you really need a filter that works based on the content rather than just the urls of sites.

[6Foot2]

Removed.

[baronne]

SmartFilter is the dog's hootin' nannies. It's got a category for Anonymizers and all those sites you mentioned are locked out. We also blocked the term 'proxy' so the little blighters can't even begin to google for 'em.

rock on. :supz:

 

baronne

[BooBoo]

One of our biggest problems is the kids using these proxy sites to get on to BeBo. We now come down heavy on anyone found using a proxy site. If your using ISA check your logs for url's you don't reconise, try year 10's first.

 

We are trying to 'educate' our kids about the dangers of using these sites and what they then post onto sites like myspace and bebo. For us it's now more about the dangers of what they are putting on the sites than them using the proxies. If we can get them to think about who else is looking at their site then maybe they'll stop posting.

 

Did anyone see Criminal Minds last night? They were trying to catch a pedo who was using using one proxy to go to another etc several times before he was posting on newsgroups, scarry.

[baronne]

it's easy... the government just needs to monitor the proxy sites... there you have dodgy dealings.

[BooBoo]

Also, pass on any proxy sites to your consortium so they can block them at grid level. Our's, SWGfL, has now employed someone full time to find and block proxy sites.

 

You could try blocking sites that run the cgi or php script that these sites use. We found that very effective, you may block a few legit sites as well so be aware.

[baronne]

they could have just bought SmartFilter, would have cost them less than employing someone full time!

[BooBoo]

I would imagine that they also subscribe to SmartFilter or other databases as well.

[Geoff]

LancsNGFL uses Smartfilter. It is ineffective against the majority of proxy bypass sites, PHPProxy and CGIProxy in particular. We have supplemented it with Dansguardian running locally here at the school. This is capable of doing content filtering so catches anything the LEAs filter misses.

[tom_newton]

As far as I know, the only proxies that do a reasonably decent job of nailing proxy sites are SmoothWall SchoolGuardian, and Dansguardian with the correct configs, which comes as no real surprise, considering the underlying technology.

 

Lightspeed (US chaps) are supposed to have a reasonable answer to this particular question, but in all honesty I havent had chance to try it out.

 

Always good to know of new ones though, as they get shut down (examstudies, mathshelp, etc.) it makes it harder when I get to do demos

 

tom

[MkII]

We just dumped Smartfilter for CorporateGuardian as Smartfilter was doing a very poor job and became unmanageable - as just an URL filter. As Geoff says, you have to have content filtering to be effective.

[baronne]

hmm... looks like an interesting piece of kit....

was it pricey?

I thought our SmartFilter was a content filter, but obviously not... care to give me a lowdown on the difference...?

baronne

[krisd32]

we use surf control here and seems to do an excellent job of keeping the little darlings off anything you don't want them on!

 

i'm pretty sure by the logs it creates that it does do content filtering but i'm not 100% sure!

 

Kris

[tom_newton]

@baronne - the words "content filter" are often used to describe simple URL filters, largely because they are preventing you from seeing certain content.

 

True content filtering is much more effective. Most (all?) solutions still use a URL database in addition to content analysis, but the difference is they pick apart the downloaded content, and work out blocking based on html, page content and URL parameters. This allows effective, URL agnostic blocking of certain types of content, including proxy sites.

 

SmoothWall's "guardian" range are true content filters, as is Dansguardian. If you would like to know more about SmoothWall, either visit our website, or give me a call - url/phone number in my sig..

 

Tom

[baronne]

good... yeah I'll definately keep you in mind when we next review SmartFilter.... I think we bought a few years' subscription, so we might hang on to that for a few years yet...

[MkII]

Our filtering is done corporately baronne - hence the big boys version of 'guardian.

 

Smartfilter had no plans to move to content filtering, and DansGuardian was very good value for the money, and also offered us a very generous deal.

[leon]

Until recently we were just using Smartfilter, until I learned about Censornet through this board. I still run the Smartfilter on a parent proxy, with the Censornet as a bridge. Best of both worlds. On its own the Smartfilter is easily bypassed. Pupils here were uploading cgi proxies to personal webspace. Smartfilter wouldn't categorise those addresses in a million years.

 

Yay for Edugeek and Censornet!

[baronne]

Ok, so I'm starting to see a bunch of filter systems mentioned here, so we've got (correct me if I'm wrong and throw in suggestions here):

 

DansGuardian - free, open source content filter, runs on Linux

SmoothWall - DansGuardian on steroids, runs on Linux and has added features such as Active Directory authentication

Censornet - free, open source product with commercial offerings (appliance, etc.)

SmartFilter - commercial URL filter

SurfControl - commercial URL filter?

 

I feel a survey coming on here....

 

cheers

baronne

[baronne]

I'm finding our pupils are accessing sites by browsing to sites with odd URLs such as http://w.bebo or http://humpty-dump.bebo

 

baronne

[NetworkGeezer]

I'm finding our pupils are accessing sites by browsing to sites with odd URLs such as http://w.bebo or http://humpty-dump.bebo

baronne

 

I'll say it now to save Geoff the bother. If you use a content filter then it doesn't matter about the URL because you block based on what's on the actual web page.

[Geoff]

Thanks NetworkGeezer.

 

Dansguardian will do AD authentication providing you use one of the new releases (requires you compile it) and you have squid setup correctly to do NTLM authentication.

[baronne]

which products are best to use on a Windows network... these all seem like Linux solutions. I see DansGuardian and SmoothWall are connected, is SmoothWall based on DansGuardian? What's the connection?

 

cheers

Baronne