Ensuring a safe and secure online environment is essential, especially in schools and public institutions. Effective web filtering helps protect your students from harmful content and enhances productivity. By implementing these best practices, schools can create a safer online environment, reduce the risk of exposure to harmful content, and promote a productive and secure digital experience. Effective web filtering is an ongoing process that requires continuous attention and adaptation to changing threats and needs.
Here are some of the best practices for implementing safe content and web filtering with Mobile Guardian.
Safe Content
Once you have added a new profile and are ready to continue with the Safe Content and Web Filtering on your profiles, it would be beneficial to follow some of the below steps to ensure your students are protected from harmful content.
Within the Allowed list and Blocklist settings, your first protection would be the category session. You will be able to block categories which has an extensive list of websites which has been categorised accordingly.
You will be able to Block or Allow the categories available. These will block or allow all websites that are categorised under this category.
For example; social media websites are categorised as such and would be blocked if the Social Networks category is under the Block List.
If you would like to block the majority of Social Networking websites but would like to allow a specific domain or URL which your students would need to access, you may allow this domain and allow your students to access everything within the domain.
To do this; scroll down to the Allowed list and add the desired domain. We would advise you only use the wildcard format or the full secure URL protocol.
Note: A wildcard is a symbol used to represent one or more characters in a string of text. Here we use th * symbol.
With Mobile Guardian to Allow or Block a full domain, you would use the wild card *.facebook.com or the full URL starting with the HTTPS protocol, eg: https://www.facebook.com. This will allow students access to the full domain “Facebook” and because the Social Networking category is Blocked, all other Social Networking domains or sites will be blocked besides the domain added to the Allowed list.
The same would apply if Allowing a category and blocking a domain.
URL Tester
To test if a URL has been categorised, blocked or allowed you will make use of the URL tester.
- Navigate to the General tab under Safe Content.
- In the bottom right enter the URL and select Test.
- The results will appear below
When using the URL tester there are a few things to take note of:
- This URL is whitelisted: - This means the tested URL you have entered has been added to your Allowed list.
- This URL is blacklisted: - This means the tested URL you have entered has been added to the blocked list.
- Blocked by category: This means the tested URL has been categorised and the category is in your blocked category list.
- Matches category: This means the tested URL has been categorised and matches the displayed categories which you are then able to block or allow.
- Not filtered: This means the URL has not been added to any block or allowed list and has not been categorised. These URL’s should then we added to your allowed or blocked lists if required.
Please let us know if you found this helpful.
Thanks for reading! 😊