Hi
We are trying to stop students from abusing lessons by using hotmail. We have blocked the site using our cache server but this stops all staff from accessing it.
Ideally we would like to block the site for students only and allow staff, but if this isnt simple then just blocking access for all between 9am and 3.20 pm would help.
We have Server 2003 and use Active Directory for staff and students. Is there something we could configure in Group Policy? We also use Ranger but this only blocks programs as far as I can see.
Kind regards
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Really, the most surefire way would either be to remove access to IE altogether or to stop traffic at the firewall. I'm not sure what type of firewall you have in place though....
Watchguard firewalls for instance provide an addon to their OS that will do exactly what you're looking for.
Here are some new GPO's available in SP2 for Windows Server 2003 - which would involve installing SP2 first obviously if you already haven't...
Sorry, forgot the link....
http://www.microsoft.com/t
If your staff use different pcs (i.e. not the machines that the students use) you can easily do it through www.opendns.com.
You make an account there (one will suffice for all pcs) and you will use the DNS IP of OpenDNS.
Once logged in, you will go to Domain Blocking option and enter any domains that you want to block.
Apart from hotmail consider also blocking access to facebook, hi5, myspace etc. You have no restriction on the amount of domains you can block.
Whats more, they also offer statistics so after a few days you can check and see what websites are generating more traffic and block them as well if they are irrelevant to your lessons.
The service is completely free!
If you have Ranger, then a quick and dirty method could be to use the "Title check" facility, where Ranger monitors the title of any open window for a list of text strings and if matched can forcibly shut it. As long as you're students aren't going to have legit docs which include e.g. "hotmail.com" in their name, then this should do the job. You only need to apply it to students, not the staff.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: Haze0830Posted on 2007-11-19 at 07:11:17ID: 20312856
Do your students need access to Internet Explorer for any reason?
If not, you can prevent access to the browser through GPO.
Check out this solution as well for using GPO to configure the Content Advisor to block specific sites.
http://www.experts-exchang