Chat Rooms (Policy)

[Chuck Bearden]

On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Fran Levin wrote:

> We are just the opposite. We only have 4 internet computers and chat rooms
> were banned in our policy. We are going to change the policy because we
> cannot police and enforce the policy. If anyone knows how to ban them
> physically from the station, we also would like to know.

The problem with chat rooms is that they are accessible by various
means.  You can effectively keep people from using chat clients on
your machines by taking normal security precautions that prevent
people from loading software arbitrarily.  

However, some chat servers have what is effectively anonymous telnet 
access.  With these, you can either remove the telnet clients from
your workstations (not good, in general), or you can try to identify
all chat sites with this kind of access and deny connection attempts
to them at a router or firewall under your control (good luck and have 
fun).  
 
Other chat sites are accessible via Java clients that the Java-capable
browser downloads and runs when the user hits the site.  You can stop
these by disabling Java in the browser, but then Java is unavailable
for all non-chat purposes as well.  Or, you can identify all chat
sites etc. (good luck etc.).  

Still other chat sites are usable even with a bare-bones web browser.
Each reloading of a page displays whatever new dialog has been sent in 
the meantime, with old dialog scrolling off at the top.  Your only
option here (short of removing the web browser) is to identify all
chat sites etc. (good luck etc.).  

Some Internet filters have a "chat" category, which, if they have
identified enough chat sites, would help a great deal with web-based
chats, but not with telnet-accessible ones.  

In short, people will find a way to chat, almost no matter what you
do.  

Chuck Bearden
Network Services Librarian
Houston Public Library
Houston, TX  77002
713/247-2264 (voice)
713/247-1182 (fax)
cbearden at hpl.lib.tx.us