how are websites blocked

wpshooter

Golden Member
Mar 9, 2004
1,662
5
81
The company that I work for seems to have this prejudice against firearms because I find that many of the various firearms websites that I used to be able to view are now being blocked. And of course since this is their network they have basically the right to do what they want.

But my question is regarding by what means they accomplish this.

For instance if I do a google search on Browning, for instance, and I then try to click on this link that would take me to the Browning Firearms site, it is blocked.

But if I do a another google search on Browning and I then try to click on the link for the Browning Companys' archery divsion, I CAN view that site.

So, my question is are the network administrators monitoring the web use activity and then doing blocks on specific firearm related website links that they see being accessed or are they filtering on certain keywords in the links such as FIREARMS, GUNS, etc. etc., because like I say I can access Brownings archery site but not its' firearm site ?

Thanks.

Moved to Networking from OS.
Anandtech Moderator - bsobel


 

Brazen

Diamond Member
Jul 14, 2000
4,259
0
0
It could be either way. Squidguard relies on lists of websites assigned categories and then the admin can check which categories to block. If the website is in the list, then the category is looked up and determined whether or not to block it. Then there is dansguardian which uses weighted keywords and if the cumulative weight of all the keywords found on a page exceeds a threshold, then the page is blocked.

An admin can also add a custom list of sites to block, regardless of category or keywords.

From my experience, the list of websites with assigned categories is more common and is what I use on my company's firewall (not squidguard though, a crappy proprietary product). We also monitor the firewall logs to just spot check what sites people are visiting, especially sites that a lot of traffic to them. We find a lot of streaming radio and video sites that way, which we block because they are not work related and eat up our bandwidth. We have also discovered someone making frequent visits to a porn site that did not get categorized as porn (so was not blocked until added to the custom list and the person fired) and also for instance a horse site that had way to much traffic going to it that we blocked to 'encourage' the user to get back to work.