Blocking Images from Searches

Novell Cool Solutions: Tip

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 25 Mar 2005

Problem

A reader recently asked about blocking certain images that come through searches:

"With SurfControl and BorderManager, is there a way that I can still have these image sites be usable without totally blocking them, but block out the inappropiate pictures that come up when certain searches are made? The sites these pictures belong to are being blocked, but the search doesn't block the pictures themselves. I don't think there is any rules that I could enforce to get this to work without banning them totally. Am I right?

And a few of our Forum experts came up with these solutions:

Solution

Try the lines below. They will block access to the pages where the safe search can be switched off.

*://*google*/*advanced*
*://*google*/*safe=off* (This covers against cookies already set)
*://*google*/*preferences*

Here is an access rule example that blocks all of the images from these sites:

images.google.com/*.*
images.search.yahoo.com/*.*

This will actually block all images on the page, but you can still use the link to go get the image. If it is appropriate content, the page will be displayed and the user can get the image they are looking for. If the site is being blocked, they will get a blocked message.

This is not a perfect colution, but it is better than the safe search cookie (even with safe surf on, a creative user can get offensive images).

Reader Comments

• Excellent. This was actually flagged as being misused this very morning so imagine how great I now look as I had it fixed in 2 minutes ;-)

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