This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

School website flagged and blocked as "Alcohol and Tobacco" by Sophos

I came towards Sophos Support Center for the following reason: our school's website landing page is flagged as "alcohol and tobacco" and thus blocked by some networks using Sophos for protection (and this is not a pretty sight for parents wanting to visit the website of a school facility). Can Sophos fix this issue by categorizing us under "Education" (i can give details in private message so you can check us out to make sure that we really are a school) for example, or is there something we can do on our part for our website not to be flagged and blocked this way by Sophos ?
Thanks in advance.screenshot_sophos_filter


This thread was automatically locked due to age.
  • That's a Sophos XG block page (this is UTM, lol).

    An administrator of the firewall would have to change/allow whatever site that is as Acceptable.  You don't need Sophos to do that for your local filtering.

    You can also use https://intelix.sophos.com/login to request a reclassification.  Takes about 24-48 hours.

    OPNSense 64-bit | Intel Xeon 4-core v3 1225 3.20Ghz
    16GB Memory | 500GB SSD HDD | ATT Fiber 1GB
    (Former Sophos UTM Veteran, Former XG Rookie)

  • I cannot access Intelix as I am not a Sophos customer. I already contacted the administrator of the firewall. The situation is: our school's website was unaccessible from a company network using Sophos because Sophos categorized us as "Alcohol and Tobacco". Contacting the company's network admin will only resolve the issue for this particular company's network. But as Sophos has more than this one customer, we would need them to verify us as a school and classify us under "Education" instead of "Alcohol and Tobacco". Sophos' customer service was contacted already but then again, as I'm not a customer, nor is our school, they will not respond to any request and sent us to this community for help.

    This situation needs to cease as it is causing harm to our reputation as a school facility and our website does not contain any reference to alcohol nor tobacco. Not in source-code, text content nor metadata.

  • No need to be a Sophos customer to suggest a reclassification ... go to FileSubmission (sophos.com)  -- choose Web Address, and fill out the form (as you can see, the license is optional).  It will probably take a couple of days (sometimes longer) but eventually your recategorization should be approved if the request is accurate.  I hope this helps.

    CTO, Convergent Information Security Solutions, LLC

    https://www.convergesecurity.com

    Sophos Platinum Partner

    --------------------------------------

    Advice given as posted on this forum does not construe a support relationship or other relationship with Convergent Information Security Solutions, LLC or its subsidiaries.  Use the advice given at your own risk.

  • Thank you for the advice. I have to say it is not an easy find as it is under the "submit a threat" part of the support center.