user accounts

I don't know if its possible, but I was wondering if I could block the internet from certain users from any computer by their logon. I know I can do this with ip addresses, but I'm mainly thinking for the students when they get caught looking at inappropriate material on one of our computers. I would like them to be able to access our network so they can do their work when its saved on the file server, but keep them from accessing the internet unless they get clearance.

 

One way to do this is via Firewall settings.

I have my Firewall (Norton Internet Services) configured for the different accounts on the home PC that sets children setting for the youngest kids accounts, teenage level for the oldest child, wife has adult access and myself as supervisor. The supervisor and the settings are password protected.

 

well, this is a network with around 200 users and 250+ computers with windows 98 on most of them. I need to block http access to 1 user on every computer.

 

You can disable internet access through the Novell software. The district recently banned me from the internet without a word. I had to have a teacher come and grant my user access to the internet. It must have been because of all the time I spent on this fourm.

 

I think you still have to setup 200 users or perhaps you do the reverse ban a selected few and allow the others full access.

I'm not sure if this appropriate for your setup, but you could create a proxy script and have this downloaded on login for particular users - see Internet Options/Connections/LAN Settings.../Use Automatic Configuration Script. Need to disable sneaky users from changing this though.

How are you going to control content once access has been granted or is it all or nothing? Perhaps you set the users content advisor settings as well.

 

Every school I've been at gives each individual student their own login name, usually their ID number or a combinationf of lastname and ID #. This is strictly for security from people who know too much like me. This is also to keep immatuer students from messing with other people's documents. I bet the school has some sort of security system like Novell or something.

 

We are not using Novell. We have a content filter box to keep certain pages and websites from opening, but the box won't actually filter by usernames.

 

This is a good time to ask the administration for a OS upgrade on the computers. They're more likely to agree if you tie it with some scary sounding words like "security threat" or "hackers" or "virus"


EDIT -
I just had some creative thinking.About the only thing I know left to do without spending any money is to either just unplug one computer from the network or do what happened to me when I was caught logging into another school's server to play some games (I was bored, don't let him/her even use a computer. I got out of some stupid assignments being kicked off the computers (who wants to make a movie showing how to solve a math problem?). Other than trying that or upgrading the os's to something that has user priveleges like windows 2k or XP, I'm stumped.

 

Yeah, spending money is a huge no-no, unless the its coming from a specific account. The whole education program in this state is losing money seems like on a daily basis.

If I unplug the network cable, then they use our network services, like printing.

Oh well. Thanks to all.

 

Just remembered this: http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/5238.asp

The resource kit includes tools to set up policies as well as configurable proxies. Hopefully you won't be too cash strapped to afford it.

This is a similar Windows 98 resource kit as IIRC well that allows the setting of domain policies via the poledit application.

However, you say that your network is a mixture of Windows 98 with some other OSes - so the above resource kits may not be suitable.

 

I guess all the machine logs on to a domain and gets a user profile along with performing a logon script.

If the logon script for that certain user could be setup so it configures the network to not having a default gateway. And then block the user from being able access network settings. Then wihtout a default gateway it will not know how to access the internet, not sure if it would ruin the access to rest of the network for that user, as it depends on how it is configured.

Another way is using a software router (Like MS Proxy/ISA) where the user has to authenticate to the machine before allowing access the Internet. Then disable Internet access for that acount on the software router.

But the administrator for the network should have the knowledge for doing this.

 

for those interested, i found a way to do it.

i went into c:/program files/internet explorer and denied access to iexplorer.exe for the specific username (in this case, test). the reason this works for me is first i'm having to log into all these computers anyway. so when a student logs into the xp machine using the username test to use our software that can only be accessed with the username test, it denies them access to the internet. but if they want to do research on the internet, then they'll have to use their own username and password leaving a nice little trail behind them.

kudos to me!

 

How do you deny access to a program in Win98 ?

 

there arnt any access privilages. all i could think to do is put IExplorer on the server, which runs win2k, and from that you can change access privilages! wow, im feeling smart today

 

through the policy editor? i know we had some setup on the older pc's and some people could access stuff that the control panel and things, but we got rid of them (the pc's).

 

Didn't know that the policy editor could do that for Win98, but when looking at the policy editor in Win2k one have to specify all applications the special user can access where iexplore is then left out. Is there away to allow all applications but one ?

 

i really don't know.