[plug] blocking porn etc

[Leon Blackwell]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2002 at 04:40:19PM +0800, Simon Scott wrote:
> Anyone had experience with the different ways of blocking nasty sites? How 
> would a simple iptables block compare with something like squirm?

squirm (and other squid redirectors) are usually more effective than
routing hacks, since they can look at more than just the hostname/IP.
Also, since you're not affecting non-web traffic, you aren't going to
slow connect times for other services.

The only thing you do need to be careful of, however, is to ensure that
users can't get past the proxy.  This is usually as simple as blocking
port 80 (or shunting it to squid with a transparent proxying method),
though there are redirectors out there that will let them browse through
other ports.

That said, there's *always* a way to get around a content blocker,
unless you cut the network cable  :)

Oh yes, and the quality of blocking is only ever as good as your
database of things to block.  You're never going to block everything,
but you can try.


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