Content Screening problems

[bombinho]

Hi,

I tried to find others having similar problems with the BT Business Hub but by now it seems I am the only one with following problem. I can not access web pages that I have not manually allowed in the Content Screening.

I do get a window instead of the desired page telling me:

"Access to this Web site has been blocked. The Content Screening rating server cannot be reached to validate the appropriateness of this Web site."

The log itself states:

  csd: bad server: 0.0.0.0:0

  csd: failed to send rating request to server: generic failure (nothing else makes sense)

  csd: failed to resolve host '': Unknown resolver error

Of course I can disable the content screening temporarily but I would avoid that if possible.

Any ideas? Someone else got this problem too?

Is that possibly another faulty firmware pressed on?

[whiller123]

@anyone still interested

Spoken to BT again this morning in an attempt to get a definitive answer:

Pasted direct quotes from the BT support team:

"Sorry about that. This is a known issue and
we are working to repair this for everyone. I will just grab some
details and highlight your particular case to our back office. Can you
give me the broadband telephone number please?"

" I believe we do not officially support it
in as much as we do not advertise it as one of the benefits of our
router but it should work and we are aware of current problems so are
still trying to implement a fix for it"

" we used to support content screening but
there was not consistency in wether it would work on a particular
router. It seemed to work on some but not on others. That said we are
aware of the issue you are describing and are trying to implement a fix"

"There is no timescale at present, sorry for the downtime"

Sorry about the spelling but this was cut & pasted from the live chat transcript

Rob

[Engineer]

whiller123

Thanks for the info mine is not working either!

I guess it is all of us.

Do you think they are going to fix this or are they pacifying you?

How have you got around the problem? I don't want to screen all my devices & I need to have a log to see who has been being naughty

I have telephoned them & was told they were not going to do this any more.

[whiller123]

@Engineer

Hi well I am pretty sure it is all of us as you think

Quick get around it is not quite the same but you get some screening, as Goldstien mentioned in an earlier post open DNS.

Change the hubs DNS settings to

• 208.67.222.123
• 208.67.220.123

This will give some filtering to everyone!

I have then manually configured the DNS settings on the individual devices which I don't want filtering With Googles public DNS

8.8.8.8

8.8.4.4

Works for me in the short term but not a solution that I will use long term. It does at least mean that every new device is automatically filtered. If you have reasonably IT literate operators using machines with full access they can of course get round this system by manually configuring themselves. I would suggest on windows devices restricting administrative privileges

Hope this helps

Rob

Quick edit forgot to mention NO LOGS sorry

[Engineer]

whiller123

Thanks for the reply but how does this work?

I will try this but may need some more advice if that is OK. I do know my way around the BT router so should be OK with that but may need help with my personal devices which I do not want filtered.

Some of my devices are apple & we have an Android can these be manually configured?

[bombinho]

@Engineer;

First step should be a quick visit at OpenDNS.org. It will tell you the pro and con of the system.

Pretty simple it just works by using special DNS-Servers in your Router. These DNS-Servers do

filter in Accordance to categories. The best way is to set up a free account. As you can then pick

categories to filter and tweak your filters to your needs. If you do have a dynamic IP address then

there should be one machine running that little tracker app which updates the network setting in

their database as soon as you change your DSL IP.

If you want to avoid filtering on certain devices then all you need is to set those devices manually

to an suitable DNS server as for examples BT's.

OpenDNS has a few downsides as there is a bad advertisement filter, literally useless. And to top that

with the free account either you will miss a lot of the settings or you have to accept even more Ads

through OpenDNS in case of typos or missing entries.

That system could get easily compromised. But I hope it is only a short term measurement.

On the plus side is that their paid services are a bit better. You can set up groups of devices and filter

them individually. And the manual filter is bigger too.

Even better is that the blocked traffic does not even see the gates of your system but that means as well

that filtering is not really easy as Rob already mentioned.

Just bear in mind that a DNS filter is not really a traffic filter. It is a hurdle at best.

But so are your logs. If someone knows he is getting watched he might just decide to work around.

[bombinho]

@whiller123:

There are various workarounds not needing administrative rights. The most brutal one does not require any changes. Just a bit of homeworks or a smartphone.

If I know where I am going, I do not need a satnav ;).

But as for the restricted accounts I can tell you about networks where the machines had been secured but the servers/hub still had the standard passwords. I think restricted accounts are something that at least at enterprise level is fairly standard.

And your Linux desktop with the Postit note of the root password stuck to the screen will not be more secure.

@all:

I am now back to manually shifting nasty pages and Ads into the restricted sites-zone. So the quick workaraund is actuall not quick after all. And it only works locally. And some pages appear to keep their content on a different server so you still get it regardless of the blocked DNS-entry.

[garlangreeny]

This seem to be a good information. I haven't tried it yet, but definitely will. I am running on the same issue every once in a while and I hope this will be the fix for it.

[Engineer]

whiller123

I have done what you advised & hey it seems to work fine, I only have 4 windows computers in my workshops which have internet access. I used to have a problem of my staff looking at girlie stuff instead of working, the BT hub stopped this plus I could see in the logs who was trying to look at what.

My staff do know I have blocked this & I don't think they will realise that anything has changed I will keep using this Open DNS until BT get this problem sorted. I have not bothered to change the DNS on my devices as the Open DNS only seems to block the porn stuff which I don't bother with anyway. With the BT system I had almost everything blocked Facebook Twitter etc.

Thanks for your help with this & thanks to the other guy who advised too much appreciated.

Oh my staff aint bright enough to change computer settings one of em struggles to drive a broom! besides they wouldn't dare

[whiller123]

@bombinho

Hi you are quite right of course & I realise this, I assume rightly or wrongly that people on here are not managing huge corporate networks but small business networks with a small number of client machines,

& any advice given accordingly.

Indeed whoever Engineer is seems to be doing just that. All my clients who use the business hub are all small businesses. but are of course just as important as my corporate clients, I have now had all my clients with this problem to contact BT for a resolution to this problem. The reports back suggest that BT are going to sort this, but only time will tell.

Thanks again for your advice.

Oh by the way I need Sat nav to find my way home every night

Rob 

[noeltech2000]

have the same problem here ... phoned bt and they said they didn't do content screening .... even though it has been working here for 5 years...  very strange... is BT hiding something???  using a 2wire modem/router