Why is Bebo banned..?

techguy

Hi,

I am on a network that has a filter installed.. My question is why are sites like Bebo not allowed? The filter says personals/dating not allowed but Bebo is not a dating site. people just uploads information/ pics and then link to friends that they already know. You cannot search for people in the same area as you or for similar interests..

Do you think that if I was to e-mail the admin crowd they could include it in their "Always allowed" list because It is the only way that I can keep in touch with people that are living away.. Or would I probably be wasting my time.

I have used a proxy server once or twice but the next day when admin go into their office they ban my ip address so I have to request that they unban it..

Hakko

rogue-entity

I just dont like Bebo. I never did.

When I was in secondary school, I had no internet access at home because my parents said "we dont need it so your not getting it". I kept on to them about it for the real reason why I could not have it and my dad just said, "your not getting it because no one under 21 should be allowed use the internet". So I was dependent on the school for accessing my emails and stuff. I used to hate going into the computer room with only 6 computers and cheeky 1st and 2nd years playing games and looking up sites like BeBo non-stop. I could never get onto a computer with them. And when you kicked them off they would rat to the teacher.

But I hate porno filters even more because one that was used in my old secondary school was Bess. It blocked everything under the sun until I discovered the override password, on two seperate occasions.

So.. here is what I did when I found out that WIT was blocking boards.ie
I contacted Websence and got them to move boards.ie into the "Messageboards and Clubs" category which is a premium category that I doubt most schools and colleges subscribe to. And by the time the database at the college was updated, boards was unblocked.

So... Here is a little story that may be of interest to you. At college they

techguy

Any chance of hearing the story that might be of interest to me.?

rogue-entity

Sorry, my post got mangled for some reason. The story that was to be of interest was how I got boards.ie unblocked. I had asked the Computer Services department and I was told they would sort it, but they did nothing at all so I contacted Websence and got them to change the category that boards.ie was under to one that the college would not have banned.

So my suggestion to you is to contact the admin first and ask them to unbann bebo explaining why it should not be blocked under dating/personals. If that fails. contact the company that makes the filtering software and ask them to change the category of bebo to a more appropriate one. With luck the new category may not be blocked and you could be free to go in about 2 days (when the database of blocked sites is updated.

techguy

the filter is also websense so how would I go about contacting them and what wording should I use?

Thanks

rogue-entity

Websense does not seem to be blocking it in the college so perhaps your network admin is blocking that category, but not the college where I am.

Try emailing them at: databasechange@websense.com Just ask them to recategorise "bebo.com" into a more appropriate category. And hope that the category is not blocked by your organisation. "Web Chat" is blocked in the college but "Forum/Messageboards and Chat" is not as it is a premium category. That is what I had boards.ie classified under so it is less likly to be blocked as it costs the company that uses Websense a lot more money.

You could ask them to add bebo into one of these Premium categories:
Streaming Media (as you can share video files, and a lot of bebo users seem to do that)

Messageboards and Clubs (Tricky this one, but doable as the category includes blogs and other similar things).

You could also see if any of the other categories listed here,
http://websense.com/global/en/ProductsServices/MasterDatabase/URLCategories.php
, would suit Bebo better. As I said I do not use it but I agree that its current category does not suit it.

If Websense will not recategorise the site for you, or they feel that the current category is their best match, then you can either talk to your site administrator or you can move on to Stage 2: Proxy Bypass

Good Luck

techguy

I am nearly sure that they have the premium list aswell because the kazaa.com site is blocked under "peer to peer file sharing" and that is under the premium list.
I will contact websense and ask them to move bebo.com into either:
Societies and lifestyles
Messageboards and clubs
or Streaming Media

If they will not I will find out who to contact in the college as I dont deal with them directly.

Thanks