[K12OSN] Stopping web messenger

[Joe Guenther]

You are exactly right on that!  Supervision is the key to this battle.  
And that brings it back to the core issue. The core issue is not the 
chat content (as it would be the content of playboy.com) but the waste 
of time. Thus teachers need to deal with this waste of time, just like 
they do other time wasters in the classroom. This is not a technical 
issue, it is a social issue as you state.

But besides that we have gone from using IPcop with DansGuardian to 
Astaro Security (www.astaro.com) which uses a far more sophisticated 
filter .  http://www.iss.net/products_services/webfilter/  It used to be 
known as cobion  www.cobion.com  That together with some neat packet 
filter rules, snort packet detection, allows us to be a bit more 
thorough in those cases where we need to be.

Joe Guenther


Mike Ely wrote:
> I've found that communicating the problem to teaching staff helps 
> considerably.  Knowing that the students shouldn't be doing helps them 
> considerably when supervising.
>
> I'm of the firm position at this point that there's no technological 
> solution to this problem that's going to be very effective.  I figure 
> if entire nations spend billions of dollars to filter Internet traffic 
> and fail, we don't stand a chance.  The problem is really a social one 
> and is better addressed as such.
>
> Mike
>
> Todd O'Bryan wrote:
>> Some of my students have figured out how to set up their own web  
>> proxies on their home machines. Not very hard if your ISP gives you 
>> a  static IP address. My guess is that these would be almost 
>> impossible  to stop completely, but it sure would be nice to know 
>> what strategies  people use for these kinds of problems.
>>
>> Todd
>>
>> On May 13, 2006, at 11:08 PM, Alan A Hodson wrote:
>>
>>> I overheard a lively discussion about trying to block all the proxy  
>>> sites that network gurus are having to deal with... I am sure glad  
>>> it's not my job... I am not sure if IPCop and/or Dansguardian are  
>>> providing the right corks for this overflowing dam...
>>> Good luck
>>> ALan
>>> -=o=-
>>>
>>>
>>>> I've got an IPCop box that all of my students pass through to get  
>>>> to internet and have been using the Dansgardian plugin for years.   
>>>> My Principal came to me a few days ago and asked why I've openned  
>>>> up msn web messenger to the students.  This had been blocked for  
>>>> some time by using the editable phrase, url, and site lists.  Now,  
>>>> several problematic students have figured out how to get msn web  
>>>> messenger running on their clients again...  I've looked at their  
>>>> history files and just can't figure out how to stop web messenger  
>>>> and what url they are using to get it going.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone here know how to stop webmessenger?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,  Jim
>>
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