Block applications and personal e-mail sites

[Guest]

Hi,
I'm new to windows server (2003) and I would like some help with the
following:
1. I want to block all users on my domain from running any messenger
applications, such is yahoo AIM MSmessenger and so on. Could somebody help
me with creating policy to achieve this.

2. I want o block all users on my domain from checking their personal
e-mail accounts (hotmail, yahoo, aol,...) Any help here is appreciated. Can
Windows 2003 server do this or do I need to setup a router?

Thank you so much in advance.

 

[Steven L Umbach]

If the client computers are XP Pro you can use Software Restriction Policies
to control what users can install and run on their computer with a
combination of hash, path, and certificate rules with hash and path rules
being the usual ones used. You can start with a default allowed policy or
disallowed policy and create the exceptions or allow or deny. There is no
way to use Group Policy to stop users from accessing their internet mail
accounts. That would have to be done at the gateway using something like ISA
2004 as the gateway proxy server/firewall. ISA 2004 can do url/domain
filtering and deep application filtering for http for extensions, headers,
and signatures.. I would post in one of the ISA newsgroups to see what kind
of luck ISA users have had in this regard. You can download ISA 2004 and try
it for free for 120 days. The links below explain more. - -- Steve

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/rstrplcy.mspx
-- XP Software Restriction Policy
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/isa/2004/plan/httpfiltering.mspx
-- ISA 2004 http filtering.