Blacklist iOS Apps - Block from running

[mhayden]

Hi - we are a K-12 school and have distributed iPads to students. I would like to blacklist or completely block some apps. I know I can create a smart search to look for the presence of some apps, but can I do any actions like delete that app once found? What strategies are others using to manage apps they do not want to have?

Thanks!

[GSquared]

I wrote something for jailbroken iPads that we use for our in house ones that will prompt the user to authenticate using a password we set on them to open certain apps and such. It is the only way I know of to restrict apps. You can also change the age range settings of iTunes I believe if you want to restrict things that way. The built in restrictions are pretty bad in my experience to be honest.

/Really/ inefficient code since it started with one restriction and kept getting addons and I never rewrote it but here is what we use: https://github.com/GSquared/SASRestrict

It also has a few workarounds I haven't gotten to fixing yet so it isn't 100%, but maybe you can grab an idea out of it.

[cdenesha]

As I think more about this, one thing I think you can do is make a smart group with those apps, and then make that group an Exclusion for something important that you push out via MDM, like WiFi. Then you can have a discussion when you have to fix it.. Not the best in customer service, but that is the only automatic thing I can think of.

An alternative would be to send an Email as an Action to the users of that group, perhaps after the group has notified you of a change in membership. Manual, but perhaps not a lot of effort. Certainly better for the user, who could have installed something hours before and then their iPad checks in on its own 24 hour schedule and no longer has access to WiFI..

I just deployed last week, so I'll try the latter.

chris

p.s. can you email me a list of apps you don't want them using and why? My email address is in my profile. thanks!

[mhayden]

I guess the only thing I could do would be to lock their screens on our PowerSchool Student app, then. Our Wi-Fi isn't passworded yet and no app is both mission-critical and not attainable on a Windows machine (we rely heavily on Google Apps and EDU 2.0).

The apps that we are looking to block are anything that could be used to circumvent the filter (Puffin, Opera Mini, Virtual Browser, etc.) and possibly social apps down the road, particularly Snap Chat and Ask.FM which have lately proved to be a huge distraction and a source of bullying.

[cdenesha]

Ahh.. we just became a GAFE district so are new to it still. We actually deployed Puffin and Virtual Browser as some teachers are still using Flash enabled sites (yuck) and some math teachers utilize java applet sites.

[lhscasper]

Hi Melissa,

if they're school owned iPads then you're in a slightly better position than we are - our iPads are BYOD and we are unable to "ban" Apps because the parents will just overrule us. If your program allows it, I would suggest you have a banned App list and then find / deal with students who install apps on that list.

We use our proxy filter / bandwidth management system here to good effect to effectively block some of the undesirable apps based upon IP addresses / URL's etc. Not very effective but it does get rid of the worst of the lot.

As Chris suggested, use a Smart Group to remove WiFi access. I have automated this in many instances (using the exclusion rule of the WiFi certificate) and this gets kids to come to me so that I can discuss their usage with them.

No amount of banning is going to be complete though - the kids will always find a different App or some way around the ban. For example, in our first year our biggest problem was with Viber so we banned / blocked that. Within days the kids started moving to Skype or some other App. The best long term solution will be to slowly educate the user base as to what is acceptable and what is not - but we're a long way from that ourselves at the moment.

One last thing, I have just started playing with Supervised mode and if they are school owned devices then you could put them into Supervised mode and that gives you much better control over what the students can do with the iPads.

Cheers,
Chris.