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Blocking search terms

JeremyWellner

Is there a way to block a search term from being located to begin with?

Our use case is that we have a student in our SpEd / Assist program that likes to grab a computer, and do a search on "THX Logo" and watch the first few youtube links.  This unfortunately also acts as a trigger for the student where they become very difficult and borderline violent, so for staff safety I've been asked to see if there's a way that I can have that search go into the ether and not return anything.

Thanks!



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  • 0

    The applaince will only proxy the request, it can't change data entered into a search. 

     

    There are however a few things you can do setting wise.

    #1 Ensure HTTPS scanning is enabled so the appliance can see material on encrypted web sites.

    #2 Block the category proxies and translators.  Translators for example query the site and actually don't return a result to the client, only the results. So creative people can use that to view a site they shouldnt be able to.  Blocking that will stop this abuse.

    #3 Under general options, ensure the logging mode includes user name and ip information so that you can properly generate reports on usage.

    #4 Dynamic Categorization, if used in conjunction to blocking proxies and translators can help reduce illegally proxied traffic. 

     

    Ensure your web policy is tight and that your default authentication profile uses SSO, does not have a portal and blocks all unauthenticated requests. 
    If they are using a special or specific application, you could also create a block based on user agent string. 

     

    I also recommend creating a report to log search terms..

    reporting / options / search terms  provided https scanning is enabled this will also apply to encrypted web sites..   You could also create a reporting group and schedule the report to magically appear in your email box. 

  • 0

    Yeah.... not a solution.  By the time the reporting happens and so on, the staff member might be in the hospital and we're notifying next of kin.

    So the real answer to the question is "No, we can't do that."

  • 0 in reply to JeremyWellner

    One question may be, if the student gets blocked, what are they going to do?  Use a different method?

    If this is highly ritualized behavior and they quickly give up, one solution would be to for you to perform the google search.

    Look at the logs to grab the specific URL.  Now create a Local Site List entry that blocks the url, either through recategorizing it to malware or by tagging it and putting a policy that blocks the tag.

    The problem is that it will only block Google.  If he turns around and does a different search engine - or if Google changes how the search query looks, you are no longer blocked.

    A variation on this is not to block the search, but to block each of the search results.  You basically get into individual video blocking. 

     

    If you are a school that participates in "g suite for education" (formerly youtube for schools) then I think you will have per-video blocking of Youtube as part of that system.  I know you can approve specific videos, I don't know if you can block specific ones.

     

    Ultimately the problem is a social one.  You have a person who should not have access to computers because they use them to self-trigger.

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