sigma

Its happened here too, so far for one member of staff. Thanks for confirming its not something I've done.

@KDW1987 Sorry, I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but are you representing a supplier or vendor here? At a far less spohisticated level... Since most filtering solutions still seem to be rather crude, in that they really do still seem to rely mainly on domain categorization (or so I was told recently by somebody who I would expect to know(?)), with some work done at the url level for some domains - even if there is full decryption (although always beneficial for reporting). So much for marketing "intelligent dynamic categorization" fluff. Hell, our ISP still configures their filter to whitelist twitter images, and gstatic.com (which includes Google image search thumbnails), for pupils, which means in reality they rely on Google Safesearch to do the image search filtering which also means there's no reporting available for what Safesearch blocks. County supplied broadband default filtering allows KS1/2 to get on to Andrew Tate's website and have a one 2 one chat "with one of their people" (not a bot), and read about whether they should cleanse their vagina with a cucumber - BBC is allowed. Presumably for older pupils too. I don't think its the products that are the problem so much as poor configuration in these instances.

Layering on an Impero type product is another strand of safeguarding and reporting that reaches into local devices where firewalls and internet filters have no visibility.

Strictly speaking, yes, but there'll be something "different" somewhere.

No unexected items in the bagging (filtering) area?

Might this be contributing to the performance issues? /forums/cloud-services/237958-netsweeper-configuration-mat.html#post2036558

We are a stand alone Academy, so can't comment on a multi school configuration. I would suggest you take a "real good look" if you are using the SBB supplied lists/settings. The Netsweeper online documentation is very good. Good luck with getting support tickets looked at or answered.

Is there any way in the "Smoothawll Portal" (which is all I have access to), for the Safeguarding Reports (which have to be run manually for Suffolk Schools), to have the all safeguarding categories combined into a single report instead of laboriously having to run a report for each Safeguarding Category seperately? An "all" option is not available to us so this is the only way we can access these reports as neither a scheduling option nor instant alerts are availble.

I did get the exact same problem with Adult Mixed Content with Netsweeper, but it’s only with the thumbnails in image searches. Also alcohol blocks if a pupil searches for a CocaCola image and one is returned by the search engine that happens to be from a site selling alcohol. Google and Bing safe search is much more granular than the categorisation provided by the school filtering providers which seems mainly to work at the domain level, so reasonable results are returned by the search engines, but the school filters have a different opinion. I am allowed to filter out false positives before passing on report data since the DSL has better things to do with her time.

I install Edge and Chrome for users. Apart from giving them the choice, there is still the possibility that an update in either will break something so I also like to have a fallback. For myself, I use Brave browser on mobile devices and Firefox with my custom add-ons for everything else.

I can access it without any problems. I have known it to be faster, but its perfectly useable for us at the moment.

Anybody else on Suffolk County Council Broadband/Smoothwall having reporting issues? We are getting a weekly summary from the Smoothwall (this is the sum total of information available to us), that says things like: "DANGER Pornography" and that its from the KS1-2 filter. No date, no time, nothing else. Can't even work out which class might have been using the computers. The "on request" Portal Reports for safeguarding or any other filter block have been failing for "MONTHS" in that they fail to select any data whatsoever Filtering is still working per se and I can force generate a block - safeguarding or othewise as whatever user type I wish - but thats it, gone. I don't know if Smothwall are aware of this yet since it has to go via the Suffolk County Council IT Service desk, then NOC, before it gets to Smoothwall.

No, but my scheduled Safeguarding Report that arrived (mostly), daily until the end of last term was deleted by SBB over the Easter break and since I'm not allowed to schedule my own reports I'm still waiting for it to be reinstated. That SBB still whitelist Twitter images, and now whitelist Google image search thumbnails - relying on Google Safe Search to filter harmful material - which still allows unwated images that would be category or otherwise blocked (overriding our shared list blocks), continues to demonstrate that Safeguarding is one thing they really don't take seriously, regardless of the marketing fluff.

We use Netsweeper, but use the technique in this thread, worked for us: https://help.clouduss.com/ws-knowledge-base/blocking-embedded-games-in-google-search So, in Netsweeper parlance, I block the keywords: Femvve, for pacman pKhWu, for snake UixVIb, for minesweeper and logos/fnbx

I don’t think that unless Dave Tindall (who does get things done), is in the Office, nobody else from SBB ever looks here.

I’m not aware of any connectivity issues at the moment. Our issues are about time taken respond to look at, never mind resolve support tickets and their Netsweeper configuration, which forces inappropriate filtering, both blocking curriculum content content in ways that cannot be safely unblocked and various inappropriate whilelistings that override of our specific category and our shared list blocks. If you try a search engine other than Google or Bing, you can see how much is actually filtered by the respective safe searches by Google and Bing, but there is no Google or Bing report where you can see what was really filtered. Netsweeper, while a good product is currently just a lash-up on the top. They chopped our scheduled reports at the end of last term. Normal service has yet to resume for the scheduled safeguarding report. Fortunately, I have my own demand reports to cover it.

I have been well beyond ‘miffed’ for months.

If it's still an issue with things from Sendgrid as the other thread implies, they have HUGE problems with fake accounts sending out malware links in emails, so I would be really cautions about nodding them through unfiltered...

Have you tried it from a different browser, offsite/home - anywhere else to prove that Smoothwall is the problem and not actually identifying a security fault or other clickthrough issue?

"Which" used to rate Emma with the top rating, but I've stopped subscribing as it was getting very expensive for what became reviews for things I had no interest in. We have always had Vi-Spring, but was very impressed with a mattress in a holiday let which turned out to be a Tempur. I am normally very uncomfortable in holiday let beds.

I was thinking more of a non-interactive screen, but there doesn't seem to be any cost advantage that way. If you search here for the brand names there seem to be good references for both. Get three seperate quotes for each if you can. Lots of people here will recommend VeryPC.

Can I be contraversial and ask if you really need all the fancy features or would a big screen driven by a laptop be more cost effective and versatile? If you are set on one of these, I would be going with cost and warranty. I'm not familiar with these models, but if its going on a trolley, make sure that all of the connectiivity sockets are in protected locations and are not situated where they can be easily knocked or will be hard to get at when the trolley is wheeled in place. I have found that with these device types that the sound can be somewhat varialble and some very tinny to my ears. I'd also suggest a visualiser if you don't have one so that you can instantly display/enlarge paper based materials easily and it can act as a camera for zoom type meetings.

With my 6MB line (on a good day), I'd be happy if Openreach could give me average home broadband speed.

I had some weirdness at a school where somebody would "momentarily" turn on a printer I didn't know about that had a duplicate IP addy hard coded into it. I was only there for 3 hours a week and it never happened for long enough while I was there for me to find it for ages.

Sorry for this little rant, but I do get to the point.... We have Schools Broadband and Netsweeper. From our testing, it is quite clear that Google and Bing safe search do much of the heavy lifting as regarding filtering pornographic and other inappropriate material which is otherwise unfiltered because Schools Broadband whitelist some domains it can be found on - Twitter images for example, which are unfortunately displayed if a search engine not supporting safe search is used, so I have them blocked. Schools Broadband block brave.com in Netsweeper, so any allow of brave.com (to override it), creates a filtering bypass, so we can't do that. Once we have dumped all their rules, testing has shown safesearch.brave.com to be good, so I will create a redirect rule from brave.com to safeseach.brave.com which will enable use of safesearch.brave.com without bypassing filtering. In image search, Brave still shows the button to disable safe seach, but turing it off has no effect with the redirect rule. There's no other easy way of enforcing safesearch.brave.com as there don't seem to be any Group Policy settings for their search as its controlled by a user cookie setting. For the duckduckgo search, you have to append &KP=1 to any search urls to force safe search. I do that in Netsweeper. I have got rid of the google games with a combination of blocks in Impero and Netsweeper. I'm sure other tools could do it.