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Using Content Advisor to control Allowed Webites on Clerk Computers

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:05 pm
by vailmd
I am a new Stake Technology Specialist. As I have gone around the Stake some of the Clerk computers have Content Adviser setup on Internet Explorer to control what websites can be visited from the clerk computers. Others do not have the Content Adviser enabled. In addition some that have I/E with content adviser another browser such as FireFox of Chrome was installed to avoid the website blocking of Content Adviser.
I am looking for feedback from how other Stake are dealing with this issue and if there are any polocies or guidlines in place for this.

Thanks,

Mike

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:40 pm
by aebrown
There are no published policies or guidelines that mention Content Adviser. There's no requirement to use Internet Explorer on clerk computers. It's true that IE is installed by default, and policy requires stake president approval for installing additional software, but I've had no trouble obtaining that approval for something like a browser that is more standards-compliant than IE.

I'm the stake technology specialist for my stake (for over a decade), and I've never even looked at Content Adviser, since no one has ever raised any issues related to it. The Church-managed firewalls seem to provide adequate filtering, so I've never felt any need for adding an additional layer on top of that.

Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 6:39 am
by harddrive
aebrown wrote:There are no published policies or guidelines that mention Content Adviser. There's no requirement to use Internet Explorer on clerk computers. It's true that IE is installed by default, and policy requires stake president approval for installing additional software, but I've had no trouble obtaining that approval for something like a browser that is more standards-compliant than IE.

I'm the stake technology specialist for my stake (for over a decade), and I've never even looked at Content Adviser, since no one has ever raised any issues related to it. The Church-managed firewalls seem to provide adequate filtering, so I've never felt any need for adding an additional layer on top of that.
aebrown, I'm like you. I have been STS for almost 5 years and no end in sight. I have never used content Adviser either, and like you said, I allow the firewalls to do the filtering for me.

One question that comes to mind is what sites is the content adviser blocking that the church doesn't already block? If there is a special one, then I would send a message to the church asking them to block that website for everyone.

Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 6:43 pm
by Mikerowaved
harddrive wrote: I have never used content Adviser either, and like you said, I allow the firewalls to do the filtering for me.
I've not used it on a church PC either. Besides, running as an administrator, like most of our machines do, it's pretty trivial to disable or bypass altogether.