Blocking facebook on the Bt BusinesHub [2701HGV-C]

[craven]

Hi, I'm trying to block facebook for all our office PCs. I've got nearly everything blocked but this call all be circumvented by simply visitinghttps://www.facebook.com.

I've tried adding the HTTPS URL to the blocked list but it's not changing anything?

[MHC]

I know these may be teaching you to suck eggs ...

Have you ensured it is applied to te right Level1/2 and PCs are in the same groups?   Have you used SAVE? and SAVE again?  Enabled block list?   reboot router?   Check spelling of URL?

[craven]

Yep, I've tried all that. It appears the router is having trouble blocking at the DNS level as it blocks non-https websites fine. 

[MHC]

DNS is only concerned with the www.facebook.com or even just facebook.com 

I wonder if it is due to https setting up between the PC and destination and the router not seeing it?    Can you find another http & https site and try that?

Or maybe remove the http version from te list and insert https to see if that works and then re-insert http version after.

[craven]

I tried just blocking https://www.google.com and trying to load that, it still loads fine.

Seems any https block is ignored.

[MHC]

What about trying to block by IP?    66.220.158.46      66.220.153.29     69.171.242.62   and any more that appear?    As they run multiple servers it will be hard to locate the list but worth a try ...

Or maybe adding a local DNS entry?    I was going to suggest it but it has no effect!

You are going to have to call tech support!

[craven]

Tried blocking by IP, still no joy. I don't think the router recognises by IP. 

Tech support via the phone is slow and unbareable, and apparantly the BT business customers aren't important enough to warrant a live-chat.

I suppose I'll just need to individually block the site in the hosts file. 

[nikkil]

I read in some thread that a BT router does't block IPs. As a work around, you guys can just set a dummy host file in every PC's host file. 

Host file would look like this; www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1. How many PCs do you have in total? 🙂

[MHC]

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@craven wrote:

Tech support via the phone is slow and unbareable, and apparantly the BT business customers aren't important enough to warrant a live-chat.

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I newver seem to have a problem - maybe a few minutes wait, but never slow and always relaible.    If you can, try calling late evening,  there seems to be less calls at that time and staff available.

[craven]

Thought I'd update this thread for anyone finding via google. There is no way to block the https version of facebook on this router according to BT Support. If you want to block it you'll need to either do it individually on each computers host file or buy a new router.