content control

[av8or]

I'm doing some research on controlling the sites that users visit. I'm wanting to restrict sites that pertain to sex, violence, drugs, terrorism, etc, etc. Is there an efficient way to do this? Other than block all internet access. I have some labs that are for educational purposes and also are accessed by children. I just don't want them to be able to visit sites that are not appropriate for children. I know that nothing will ever be 100% fool proof.(Other than disconnecting the connection to the internet) I would just like to be able to restrict the majority(or even a lot) of these sites.

[element-x]

I'm almost postitive that the SQUID Proxy does this type of filtering. Perhaps you could look into that.

[Craig McPherson]

Squid itself has no such feature, but Squid does allow "URL redirector" programs to be "plugged in" to it that do a wonderful job of what you describe.

I personally use Squidguard (http://squidguard.org/), a redirector (which requires Squid, of course) that allows you to restrict, redirect, block, or allow URLs based on domain, IP, or expressions within the URL.

The site also contains a set of category-sorted blacklists that you can use with the program, that I've had very good results with -- most pr0n sites were blocked, and I found very few blocked sites that shouldn't have been (you can, of course, manually allow blocked sites). For some bizarre reason, goatse.cx wasn't on the list of blocked sites, but I added it myself.

I wrote a little HOWTO about it in the "How I Did It" forum. Go look for it there, and I think it'll get you started.

[ 05 October 2001: Message edited by: Craig McPherson ]

[av8or]

Hey Craig,

Could you post the URL to your post? I searched the How I Did It forum and couldn't find it. I searched by your user number and the by the word Squid and didn't find anything. If you could post the URL that would be great.

Thanks

[av8or]

Never mind, I found it. Thanks anyway.