SafeSearch YouTube Restricted Mode

In v16 SFOS supported something called Youtube Safety Mode, which is what they had back then.  Turning on SafeSearch enforcement turned on Safety Mode.

Youtube replaced Safety Mode with Restricted Mode.  At that point our enforcement was weakened.

In v17 SFOS now supports Restricted Mode.  Like the previous Safety, it is turned on with the SafeSearch enforcement feature.

Separating the two is possible, however the current decision is to combine them as we did in the past.

More feedback on this would be good.

I have to agree with everyone else. One checkbox isn't acceptable. After upgrading to XG 17 and seeing how restrictive youtube restricted is, I went and disabled safesearch. This is not ideal, because, as others mentioned, I want SafeSearch turned on, but I want youtube restricted mode off.

We are in the same boat. Youtube is restricted and my users aren't happy. Having more granular control would be great. I hope there is a fix coming soon!

Our problem has only started occurring since upgrading to 17 and then 17.01. The severity of Restricted mode forced by Sophos XG is far worse than Restricted mode manually configured on a device not going through our Sophos XG.

i.e. Enforce YouTube Restricted Mode on my iPhone (not going through XG) allows still a good YouTube experience. For example, if I search on Google for "roger federer youtube" I get a long list of links to YouTube, all of which work fine in Restricted Mode. BUT... perform the same search with Enforce SafeSearch set by XG and the entire list of YouTube Roger Federer links are classified as Restricted and not viewable.

In summary... this is not a YouTube problem. It is a Sophos XG problem. Sophos XG must be mangling the web requests somehow causing YouTube to respond with the Restricted mode error.

It's laughable that any YouTube content searched for in this way, via Sophos XG, returns as being Restricted. 

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply... I agree that this is a very strange problem. It has only presented since we upgraded to 17 and then 17.01 last weekend.

Here is the scenario:

1. We have Enforce SafeSearch ticked under Search Engine Enforcement. My understanding is that this is a global setting, and applies to any one going through the XG, with a web policy applied to the relevant firewall rule.
2. We do not enforce Decrypt & Scan HTTPS
3. User goes to https://www.google.com.au, enters a search string that includes the word 'youtube' e.g. 'roger federer youtube', 'hillsong youtube', 'planet shakers youtube', 'john piper youtube'
4. Google returns a list of relevant yotube links. User clicks on any of the links, goes to youtube and the "This video is restricted. Try signing in with a Google Apps account." message is displayed. With the 'hillsong youtube' search string, all of the links returned lead to "This video s restricted..."

This problem occurs for every teacher and student on our network.

Copy and paste of URL leads to same result. If I connect to the Internet (from same PC) via iPhone hotspot and manually enable Restricted Mode I can get to all the YouTube videos related to the above search strings. => XG issue.

I spent 2 hours with Sophos Support 2 days ago with a logmein session. The tech saw the problem in action. He said that he would escalate the issue and that I would get an email or phone call within 24 hours. Haven't received either yet.

Thanks,

Mark

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply... I agree that this is a very strange problem. It has only presented since we upgraded to 17 and then 17.01 last weekend.

Here is the scenario:

1. We have Enforce SafeSearch ticked under Search Engine Enforcement. My understanding is that this is a global setting, and applies to any one going through the XG, with a web policy applied to the relevant firewall rule.
2. We do not enforce Decrypt & Scan HTTPS
3. User goes to https://www.google.com.au, enters a search string that includes the word 'youtube' e.g. 'roger federer youtube', 'hillsong youtube', 'planet shakers youtube', 'john piper youtube'
4. Google returns a list of relevant yotube links. User clicks on any of the links, goes to youtube and the "This video is restricted. Try signing in with a Google Apps account." message is displayed. With the 'hillsong youtube' search string, all of the links returned lead to "This video s restricted..."

This problem occurs for every teacher and student on our network.

Copy and paste of URL leads to same result. If I connect to the Internet (from same PC) via iPhone hotspot and manually enable Restricted Mode I can get to all the YouTube videos related to the above search strings. => XG issue.

I spent 2 hours with Sophos Support 2 days ago with a logmein session. The tech saw the problem in action. He said that he would escalate the issue and that I would get an email or phone call within 24 hours. Haven't received either yet.

Thanks,

Mark

Same issues here safe search is too restrictive on you tube and had to turn off, defeats the purpose of the feature if it comes to a point we have to turn it off.

It needs to be separate but i doubt we will ever see it as it seems XG are not prepared to do changes to add features as the software will melt down even further with any changes.