[Novalug] limiting web email access

[Angelo Bertolli]

C Megan Larko wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had an interestng discussion with another linux person at my church 
> this evening.   He said that he is looking for a way in which to limit 
> internet access at his home to web email preferences.   The goal is to
> limit the young people in his house from getting something like  a gmail
> or a hotmail account potentially communicating with someone unknown to
> the parents (young people currently between ages of 7 and 11).  He could
> try to web-blacklist all gmail.google.com and similar sites.  He was
> musing as to whether there was some sort of signature that could be
> blocked in the web filter or iptable set up.   I couldn't think of 
> any distinct signature other than perhaps the string "mail" in the 
> title line.   I don't think "mail" is necessarily in the meta data.
> I am curious, especially you parents on the List, how would you 
> approach this question of limiting access to web email pages on 
> your home network?
>   

It's unclear what you mean by limiting the access.  If you want to block 
access, you can assign 127.0.0.1 to those domain names in /etc/hosts 
(which also does exist in Windows).  I'm not sure what you mean by 
"signatures" and I iptables only deals with IPs and does not understand 
domain names.  Is the main idea to stop them from signing up for a new 
email, but at the same time allow them to use their current email?


-- 
Angelo Bertolli
Please remove my email address from your post when replying
[Tech http://bitfreedom.com | Gaming http://heroesonly.com]