[K12OSN] Stopping web messenger

[Mike Ely]

Yeah, that's a common enough trick.  I'm struggling with it, too.  The 
option I haven't taken yet is to whitelist sites that can be used with 
port 443, but I'm leaning in that direction.

On a related note, the supers here are talking about setting web access 
up as a whitelist-only situation.  While this seems insane at first, 
it's pretty much what's already happening anyhow.  Ideally, what I'd 
much rather see is the state to step forward and fund schools to the 
point that we don't have stuff like this happening - invariably it turns 
out to be due to inadequate supervision, whether that's because high 
school students have actual free periods (shockingly, they tend to get 
into the most trouble when they're scheduled to be at school but not 
anywhere in particular), or because middle school teachers are seeing 45 
students in their classes...

Jim Christiansen wrote:
> Hi Huck,
> 
> meebo and a ton of other access urls are blocked.  Also, a student came 
> to me and told me that the way they get in is then they get a blocked 
> url and the dansgardian block page comes up, they change the blocked url 
> to a secure http site by adding the s (https://...) and then they get 
> into a working browser with messenger.
> 
> I'll have to grab their browsing history somehow before they delete it 
> to take a look.
> 
> Jim
> 
> =======================================
> Re: [K12OSN] Stopping web messenger
> 
>    * From: Huck <dhuckaby paasda org>
>    * To: jim linux ca, "Support list for opensource software in 
> schools." <k12osn redhat com>
>    * Cc:
>    * Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Stopping web messenger
>    * Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 11:10:50 -0700
> 
> block meebo.com ;)
> 
> --Huck
> 
> Jim Christiansen wrote:
> 
>    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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