Hey guys,

Anyond know of a freeware proxy that will allow me to block all http traffic with only a few sites allowed? Nothn fancy, just to be installed on work laptops that get sent to sites. Not part of the domain so GP out of the question.

All the ones i find, like freeproxy, has blacklists, but I'm not seeing options that block all sites except some. Laptops all have XP / IE (I know vista has the functionality I want).

Any ideas?

net nanny

im not one for open source, but ive been running squid on a box since the tutorial post here. ive downloaded a few good block site lists i can send over if you want.

ones for ads, ones for malicous sites.

thanks mooby that would be great. Do you know if squid can block everything a whhitelist? Seems to be a rarity in proxy apps. Netnanny probably can, but $40us a pop x 560 laptops, big investment for something that im sure will be in a freeware one.

I dont really need caching, just the url block on everything except what I want.

im not one for open source

wut?


what does that even mean, you'd rather pay for software that does something you could get for free?

what does that even mean, you'd rather pay for software that does something you could get for free?

obviously the instant you put up a product for sale, it immediately increases in quality and stability.

Either that or open source software obviously has the source available so any tech savvy person might be able to download it, analyze it and figure out a way around it in the case of a proxy. That and there's usually not much support other than community based if anything goes wrong.

maybe if you're retarded, I've been using it on my hosting boxes for years and never had a problem because I'm prepared to spend time patching software that needs patching and I have this new thing called a firewall

^^ Yeah all my s*** is open source & never had any issues either, I just meant maybe mooby is paranoid about that stuff happening.

Also how is a firewall going to stop people who are using the machine from getting around the proxy? From what I understand he wants to install a proxy that runs on each computer and blocks access to sites other than the ones he wants people to view, a firewall won't do s*** to stop people from unticking the "use proxy" option in IE.

That brings me to my next question, how exactly ARE you going to stop them from just unticking the option Grimy?

I run a completely open squid server (ie, src allow all to any from any etc etc)
i just firewall it from everything and allow only my home address

this is also how I watch those really annoying video sites - the ones that restrict some content to the US only

also a firewall .. could solve his problem, but only if they don't know its there
at home when I want to block an annoying ad site (ad.sensismediasmart.com.au for example) I just chuck an ACL on the adsl router and it works fine

firefox still sends the request and renders the page fine, as far as it knows the site is just not responding and I dont get bombarded with ads that I'm never going to click on anyway

what does that even mean, you'd rather pay for software that does something you could get for free?

ive got an msdn subscription, so i get alot of stuff free. open source is always badly documented. it was only because of parsays tutorial on here that i in bothered with it.

fair enough but someones paying for it..

who needs documentation when you can read the actual code ;)

also a firewall .. could solve his problem, but only if they don't know its there
at home when I want to block an annoying ad site (ad.sensismediasmart.com.au for example) I just chuck an ACL on the adsl router and it works fine

That would work if the laptops are going through Grimy's connection but the way I figure it is they'll plug them into the network at the location where they're going to be used meaning Grimy has no control over firewalls or internet connections at all and has to rely on software installed on the actual laptop to do the job although a software firewall would also do the job I guess but I don't know if they all have deny=all & allow=blah lists. I know the old kerio (now sunbelt) has the ability but didn't bother mentioning it since it's not o/s or freeware.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong tho Grimy but that's the way your post read to me, if your laptops are going through your own work connection via 3g or something like that then yeah just firewall them up to the eyeballs back at HQ and only allow 1 or 2 sites when accessed via certain IP's.

ive got an msdn subscription, so i get alot of stuff free. open source is always badly documented. it was only because of parsays tutorial on here that i in bothered with it.

some open source might be badly documented, but most of the opensource software I deal with is excellently documented.

and it was parabol not persay - maybe attention span is the main issue ;)

Do you know if squid can block everything a whhitelist?

Squid is massively powerful.
You can set it up so one src ip can access only a single url if you like, or a user logged in using ldap or whatever (not sure about ntlm) can get everything and another gets nothing. You can using regex to block or allow any url. Or send all requests match a rule down 1 pipe and the rest down another.

Rules are processed in order in a list start at the top and go until I find a rule.

Usually the last rule is either a blanket allow or deny.

what does that even mean, you'd rather pay for software that does something you could get for free?

ive got an msdn subscription, so i get alot of stuff free. open source is always badly documented. it was only because of parsays tutorial on here that i in bothered with it.

twas parabols tutorial

I'm not disputing that whoop, but he could run a firewall on the laptops
I'm sure theres something he could set a password for that the user couldn't "unlock"