Re: Query on content filtering

[Cal Frye <cjf () CALFRYE COM>]

Good luck.
I was in a position to use a web filter in the past, some six years ago. Since
the situation has surely changed and hopefully improved since, I'll be kind and
not name the application, but they're still in the game.

There is no joy in content filtering. You get beat up from the libertarian side
for blocking too much (or at all!), and you get beat up even more from the other
side for the stuff that gets through -- and lots will get through.

If you go looking at the sites that are "unclassified" by the software that your
users have located, you'll want to use a non-essential computer, preferably not
Windows, and keep your browser window tiny -- lots of those sites contained
stuff I didn't really need to see :-(   -- and I'm not being prudish, really.

I believe that if I were to implement something like this at Oberlin, I'd be
drawn, quartered, boiled, stomped on, and buried in soft peat for three years to
"mature." Your mileage might vary.

--Cal Frye, Network Administrator, Oberlin College
   www.calfrye.com, www.pitalabs.com, www.ouuf.org

  "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it down
again on something solid." --G. K. Chesterton.


Don Murdoch wrote:
> Greetings.  I am interested to know if other Universities are using content
> filters – products like Web Sense, Blue Coat, Cisco Content Engine, and the
> like. We have a forthcoming state policy (in draft, subject to change, who
> knows where it will end up) which may require some sort of web / traffic
> content filter to be in place.