Content filtering

[Michael]

Which software would you guys reccomend for the following purpose.

Basically, I want to block certain outgoing keywords in packets, regardless of application.

In a nutshell, I want to stop my sister from logging into facebook, MSN, all that palava... she is taking the piss at home abit lately, and I don't want to just block the websites/applications altogether because myself and my mum use them, and I will not always be here to enable/disable blocks around the clock, so i'd rather just install something that will basically block packets with her usernames in.

I've removed her laptop from the MAC address list in the router and basically don't want her commendeering the family PC for 10 hours a day while she sits and has her 'important' conversations on MSN about whos house she is going to be getting pissed at this weekend, so... well, there you go.


Possible? Reccomendations?

[Blaineoliver]

You could log onto the router and put say a time limit or see if you can add a password for certain sites. You can ahve it that the website facebook is blocked from 4-9 in the evening or similar.

[Splash]

What router do you use? do you have some redundant hardware that yuou could turn into a Smoothwall or similar?

EDIT - after re-reading your OP I see you're looking at something perhaps a little more complex than you understand.... This would require deep packet inspection, and if you're asking for suggestions on how to do it I'd suggest you don't understand enough about it to implement it. Give her laptop access again, then give her MAC a static IP mapping in DHCP and use this to filter on. Obviously this won't stop her using the family PC instead, but... it's better than the solution you have at the moment.

[hank]

One solution, assuming your sister is not savvy: edit hosts file.

1 - have an entry that points facebook to the local computer e.g.

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

(127.0.0.1 can be replaced by the ip address of say, www.hexus.net)

2 - find the ip address of facebook and call it by another name in the hosts file e.g.

111.11.1.1 www.bookface.com

(111.11.1.1 will be the ip address of facebook)


... now when you type www.bookface.com, you will get facebook, when your sister tries www.facebook.com, she will start reading hexus.

Any problems, you're on your own; I don't solve family disputes.

edit:

host file can be found:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

[Steve]

The second part of Hank's suggestion is unlikely to work due to sits using absolute references to themselves.

[shbris]

megalomaniac

[Dreaming]

I'm sure this is what user accounts were invented for. At home I too got pissed off with my sister putting limewire on everything she comes marginally close to, so on went user accounts and my account is the only that can install anything now. It's slightly inconvenient for everyone else but is going to save so much hassle in the long run.

[Zadock]

I'm sure this is what user accounts were invented for. At home I too got pissed off with my sister putting limewire on everything she comes marginally close to, so on went user accounts and my account is the only that can install anything now. It's slightly inconvenient for everyone else but is going to save so much hassle in the long run.

You could probably exclude access to facebook in IE or Firefox in her account, pretty sure you can do that in firefox anyway... its in the tools>security I think? Browser settings are according to user usually so you could just apply the change to her account and it wouldn't effect the rest of you. Make yourself the admin though!

I'll have a look later, I'm at work and we are on IE 6 for some reason (not allowed to update).