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familysearch.org not allowed on restricted access firewall

Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 1:26 pm
by ccmichaelson-p40
I have a church building that is on restricted access and we can not access familysearch.org. Can that website be "opened up" on the restricted firewall to allow familysearch.org? If not, we'll need to use the less restricted firewall.

Thanks,
Cameron

Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:00 pm
by aebrown
ccmichaelson wrote:I have a church building that is on restricted access and we can not access familysearch.org. Can that website be "opened up" on the restricted firewall to allow familysearch.org?
Regarding the blockage:
  1. We have had some experience where a domain may be blocked if the www is omitted, but it works if the www is included. So the first thing I would try is to type in the full www.familysearch.org and see if that helps.
  2. Next, if the site is blocked, observe on the block page what comes immediately after the "Reason:". That will be the category as determined by Websense, and which will be used by the firewall policy to determine if the site is allowed.
  3. Does the category look reasonable? If it is "Uncategorized" or if the category seems wrong then you can request a category change according to the instructions in this post.
ccmichaelson wrote: If not, we'll need to use the less restricted firewall.
Note that the firewall is the same, whether you use LDS Restricted Access or LDS Extended Access. The difference is only in how the firewall is configured; under the direction of your stake president, you can call the Global Service Desk and have them reconfigure the firewall to change the access profile. No hardware change is needed.

Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:29 pm
by jdlessley
ccmichaelson wrote:I have a church building that is on restricted access and we can not access familysearch.org. Can that website be "opened up" on the restricted firewall to allow familysearch.org? If not, we'll need to use the less restricted firewall.
According to the Church's definition of LDS Restricted Access there should be no filtering issues (restrictions) for FamilySearch.org since it is a Church sponsored web site.

You did not describe what happens when you try to access FamilySearch.org. Could you describe how you enter the URL and what indications tell you that you cannot access the site. Do you get the web page that has the orange title block that says "Filtered Content" or do you get the web browser page that says the site is not accessable (or something similar)?

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 9:29 am
by ccmichaelson-p40
jdlessley wrote:You did not describe what happens when you try to access FamilySearch.org. Could you describe how you enter the URL and what indications tell you that you cannot access the site. Do you get the web page that has the orange title block that says "Filtered Content" or do you get the web browser page that says the site is not accessable (or something similar)?
When I hit http://www.familysearch.org, I get the firewall page (I don't remember exactly what it looks like) which states that this website has been blocked (something to that affect). I can access all other church websites. When I hit something like http://www.espn.com, I get the same/similar firewall page as I do when I hit http://www.familysearch.org.

Please advise,
Cameron

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 10:05 am
by aebrown
ccmichaelson wrote:When I hit http://www.familysearch.org, I get the firewall page (I don't remember exactly what it looks like) which states that this website has been blocked (something to that affect). I can access all other church websites. When I hit something like www.espn.com, I get the same/similar firewall page as I do when I hit www.familysearch.org.

Please advise,
Cameron
Please let us know what category is displayed on the block page. It will be the word/phrase immediately to the right of "Reason:"