Blocking Chatrooms: software?, site-by-site?

me

[isom35]

Hello. I work in a public library which has internet computers available to the public. The subject of blocking chatrooms has come up. Wondering if any freepers out there have had experience/success. We have adults and kids talking in them for hours per day. thanks for any input.

[toupsie]

Require all library patrons that wish to use your computers for chatting to bring in a picture of their mother or grandmother. When they sit at the computer, attach the picture on the monitor and require that it remain there during their entire session. The more stern the photo, the better.

[Noslrac]

Pull the ethernet cable out of the back of the computer. Why block chat rooms?

Noslrac

[Praxeologue]

The marginal cost is relatively small: a telephone line, dialup connection, computer amortized over three years, etc.

"Forums" contribute to literacy and higher levels of learning. FreeRepublic is an example of the salubrious effect of forums on the minds of the participants.

If the person who is sitting in your library for three or four hours a day did not have that opportunity, what would they be doing? Arguing with their spouse? Panhandling? Smoking dope? Falling into a state of general depression?

If Andrew Carnegie were alive today, he would buy more computers and let people use them gratis.

Free InterNet connections in libraries are socially beneficial at a trifling cost: one of the few 'good' government programs.

[Thane_Banquo]

I hope you realize you'll be sued by the ACLU within seconds.

[Rebelbase]

Have a sign-in sheet and limit computer use to 30 minutes if there are people waiting. That is the way my county library handles it.

[airedale]

If you really want to stop the use of these programs a good start would be to remove any IRC software as well as any messenger type programs. Then go in and find the chatroom software that services like Yahoo or AOL uses and delete all of itDon't allow programs that aren't approved by the system administrator to access the web. I assume most of the time the IRC chatroom software use some pretty standard port assignments which aren't used for anything else. Have your firewall block those ports.

If you just want to limit use then the sign up list and ½ max usage blocks as someone else suggested is a pretty good solution that’s what they use in my local library.

[Britton J Wingfield]

Most irc clients use port 6666-6669. Block that port at the router. As far as web-based chat goes, get some screening software.

[Cicero]

I haven't tried any of those nanny programs for years, but my experience was that they were a real pain. Pages didn't load properly, because the program is busy looking for banned stuff. That slows everything to a crawl. Other programs shut you out of sites that are perfectly innocent, while the porn sites and such seem to change their URLs all the time, even taking over the old URLs of software sites that have closed down.

I think you are better off talking with your kids and agreeing with them what the rules are. Although my kids are quite sophisticated, they seem never to have figured out the History function on Internet Explorer, so from time to time I check to see where they have been visiting--but not very often, because they don't seem to be going anywhere they shouldn't.

I agree with you that there's a lot of stuff on the net that is bad for kids, but you're probably better off getting them to stay clear of them themselves, because sooner or later they are going to grow up and have to make their own choices.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Unless you're an admin, give up. Blocking these requires a frustrating amount of expertise.  

IRC and ICQ are easy enough to deal with, via port blocking, but YAHOO Messenger and MSN Messenger use dynamic port addressing so you are virtually unable to block them without messing up something else on the network.  They just keep hunting for an open port.  

If you have systems with NT security you can prohibit the installation of the client but, on Win95 or 98 that isn't going to work.  My final solution for YAHOO and MSN chat clients was to block the domains where the clients are authenticated and logged-in: yahoo.com and hotmail.com.  Draconian, yes.  But, it ended the chatting problem I had on my network.

However...there's no practical solution, that I've found, to stopping java script chatting.  You can disable java on all the machines but that can have a huge impact on legitimate surfing.

In the end, to deal with the java chat, we just threatened to fire anyone caught chatting via our business network.  That's not going to work in a library.  >:(

[sonjay]

Would you also be concerned if people come in and sit for hours reading books or magazines?

Why the need/impulse/desire to control what the library patrons choose to do, so long as they're not hurting anyone else?

Time limits are reasonable, IF there are other people waiting to use the computers. If not, what's wrong with just butting out and letting the library patrons be responsible for their own choices?