Block list not blocking some websites.

[diz 0]

Hello!

I've had trouble before with internet filtering applications that are too easy to disable through various means on Windows. This application however seems like it's resilient to all the methods my users use to circumvent filtering software.

However, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I have the need to block every single website except for the websites I allow in a whitelist. I tried doing what's listed on this guide to block all websites except those I specify: https://support.eset.com/en/kb2844-block-a-website-using-eset-windows-home-products

I've gone into advanced setup, hit edit on the address list, opened the list of blocked websites, clicked on add,  typed * into the add mask field, hit ok to close the add mask window, hit ok again to close the edit list window, hit ok to close the address list window and finally hit ok to close the advanced setup window with my administrator password. I did a similar process to add allowed websites. I've done the process for allowed websites as well.

The allowed websites work perfectly fine. However, I'm finding that I have access to several websites that are not on my allow list that should be blocked with my block list according to that article.

Parental controls are disabled, yet it's still blocking websites which means that the advanced block list is working, just not for everything except my allow list for some reason. It's allowing websites that are not on my allow list.

What am I doing wrong?

[Marcos 5,443]

Please provide me with:
- logs collected with ESET Log Collector
- information about what exact websites you want to allow (all the others should be blocked if I understand it correctly)
- information about what websites are allowed but should be blocked.

[diz 0]

Hello!

I've attached a list of all websites I want to allow.

Beyond that, everything else should be blocked.

As far as what is working, random websites such as the following are not on the list, but being allowed anyways.

https://friday.app/p/website-blockers
https://heyfocus.com/blog/best-website-blockers/
https://www.ventureharbour.com/best-website-app-blockers/

I've found that I can pretty much google search anything and just go down the list of results and eventually stumble on something that loads despite the filter being active. Including explicit websites.

I'll get the logs shortly. Is there any way to transfer the logs privately so that it's not public to the forums?

Whitelist exceptions.txt

[Marcos 5,443]

Please provide logs collected with ESET Log Collector as requested above.

[Marcos 5,443]

Unfortunately ELC was not run as an administrator. There is also a warning in the operation log: WARNING: Not running under administrator account.

[diz 0]

Let me try it again then. Please stand by.

[itman 1,799]

1 hour ago, diz said:

As far as what is working, random websites such as the following are not on the list, but being allowed anyways.

https://friday.app/p/website-blockers
https://heyfocus.com/blog/best-website-blockers/
https://www.ventureharbour.com/best-website-app-blockers/

I tested this using "*" in List of blocked addresses and all these domains were blocked.

However, I noticed something strange when I initially open List of blocked addresses. It didn't shown Blocked as Address list type. Verify that List of blocked addresses when opened is formatted as shown in the below screen shot:

[diz 0]

These are the current settings. Here's a screenshot of it.

I'm still experiencing the issue. Though some of the above urls are now blocked since I switched over to the admin account. Other undesired links are still working however...

[diz 0]

I've spent some more time troubleshooting.

I have found that some websites on my allow list aren't being allowed either such as youtube.com.

[Marcos 5,443]

There are several problems with your setup:

1, The list of blocked addresses is not active
2, Allowed URLs are not entered in the form https://*,youtube.com/*
3, Do not scan traffic with domains trusted by ESET is turned on the SSL/TLS setup
4, The ESET LiveGrid Feedback system is disabled. As a result, ESET LiveGuard doesn't work.

[Purpleroses 21]

51 minutes ago, Marcos said:

There are several problems with your setup:

1, The list of blocked addresses is not active
2, Allowed URLs are not entered in the form https://*,youtube.com/*
3, Do not scan traffic with domains trusted by ESET is turned on the SSL/TLS setup
4, The ESET LiveGrid Feedback system is disabled. As a result, ESET LiveGuard doesn't work.

With number 3 do not scan traffic with domains trusted by eset is turned on should it be turned off.  Here are my settings.  I have never changed them this is from setup

 

[Marcos 5,443]

If you want to check the traffic with trusted sites like microsoft.com, youtube.com, etc. or use urls with path in the allow/block list or Web Control / Parental Control rules, then you should turn it off. Otherwise it can be turned on as it's highly unlikely that microsoft.com would get compromised and serve malware.

[diz 0]

12 hours ago, DonaldLopez said:

Which browser are you using right now? I think it's blocked from your browser. Try and clear browser history.

I'm using Firefox. I will try clearing my browser history. The screen that appears when the website is blocked is definitely eset though.
 

5 hours ago, Marcos said:

There are several problems with your setup:

1, The list of blocked addresses is not active
2, Allowed URLs are not entered in the form https://*,youtube.com/*
3, Do not scan traffic with domains trusted by ESET is turned on the SSL/TLS setup
4, The ESET LiveGrid Feedback system is disabled. As a result, ESET LiveGuard doesn't work.

Thank you for looking into these! The list of blocked addresses wasn't active at the time of the scan because I was trouble shooting it at the time. The other 3 are things I have not tried yet. I will try them and see if they fix the problem shortly.

Thank you all for your help and patience with me!

[diz 0]

I have tried the suggestions Marcos made. I changed the format of the URL exceptions as listed above.

 

I have also disabled Do not scan traffic with domains trusted by ESET.

 

I have finally, enabled ESET liveGrid and liveGaurd.

 

Additionally, I reset my browser history completely and rebooted my computer. Now I am not getting any exceptions working and am still finding some explicit websites working when I enable URL blocking.

Is there something else I need to enable or disable? Did I get the format of the exceptions incorrect? I'll grab some new logs momentarily and upload them.

Thanks for your help

[diz 0]

Here are the new logs.

 

essp_logs.zip

[itman 1,799]

8 minutes ago, diz said:

I have tried the suggestions Marcos made. I changed the format of the URL exceptions as listed above.

You entered a comma instead of a period after https://*

[diz 0]

I fixed the comma issue. I am now able to access a few websites on my allow list. I'll be trying them all shortly.

However, I am still able to access some explicit websites even though they should be blocked. I'm noticing that some of them will be blocked properly on some attempts, and then end up unblocked on later attempts. Some are just never successfully blocked unfortunately.

I'm also noticing some random websites which shouldn't be loading at all are loading text only such as britannica shown below. The page for this forum post was also loading that way despite now being on my list of exceptions.



I'll try everything on my exception list shortly.

Edited August 10 by diz

[diz 0]

I've done further testing.

The following websites are blocked despite being on my exceptions list.

adaptive.akamaized.net/

adfs.untsystem.edu/

barnesandnoble.com/

catalog.unt.edu/

cdn.jwplayer.com/

They give me this screen

The following pages are loading text only or have nearly all of their elements blocked.

support.microsoft.com/

slack.com/

rockpointechurch.org/

ibm.com/

amazon.com/

I am still able to access some explicit websites not on me exception list unrestricted. The issue is occurring consistently in both Firefox and Edge.

[itman 1,799]

28 minutes ago, diz said:

adaptive.akamaized.net/

adfs.untsystem.edu/

These domains don't resolve in Firefox.

28 minutes ago, diz said:

barnesandnoble.com/

catalog.unt.edu/

These are HTTP only web sites

29 minutes ago, diz said:

cdn.jwplayer.com/

Redirects to jwplayer.com so that is the domain you need to block.

[Marcos 5,443]

You'd better use the url format *.barnesandnoble.com/* if you want to allow all subdomains regardless of the scheme (http/https). As for the mangled sites, note that many websites load css styles, images or other media or content from other sites that would be blocked unless you allow them as well. For instance, our forum loads the content or other stuff also from content.invisioncic.com, fonts.gstatic.com, i.ytimg.com and some other servers as well.

[itman 1,799]

17 hours ago, diz said:

The following pages are loading text only or have nearly all of their elements blocked.

support.microsoft.com/

slack.com/

rockpointechurch.org/

ibm.com/

amazon.com/

Try prefixing all these domain names with *. as @Marcos noted above. Actually, this should be the way all whitelisted domains should be specified.

If you only want to access HTTPS sites, Firefox has a HTTPS Everywhere option.

Edited August 11 by itman