Needing some help regarding web filtering

[blackholemac]

So I’m sure you folks are familiar with typical Safari behavior on iOS. You can put in a search query on the same place as the URL bar. A student puts in an inappropriate query and taps Go. Google lists safe searches but isn’t always perfect. When it is not our web filter catches it. You tap on an unsafe one of them and our web filter blocks the page.

The problem comes with image results and their previews in the search results. if I tap on one of those results that is inappropriate, our web filter blocks it. However, you can still see the thumbnail preview.

Today that occurred for a child whose mother happened to be somebody important. Mother was very angry ‘at what her child was exposed to,” pointed out that our district has very strong filtering in her classroom and why is her kid able to see such things. She plans on asking this question of district school officials.

Between the network guy and myself, We traced it down to these image previews. Network guy troubleshoots his usual way…fires up a windows computer (not signed into Chrome or Google anything) and shows that this search string doesn’t produce any image previews or the like using any Windows browser under our current filter conditions.

He asks me (the experienced Apple guy) why Apple devices running Safari under the same filter conditions do this unique behavior. We downloaded Google Chrome for iOS and it does not generate these previews in the search results. He also notes that if I cannot suppress this behavior that we may have to put a hard block Safari on all devices. I presume he means and replace with the Chrome browser.

I really, really don’t want go this route. We also do not want to go the route of assigning everyone Google logins because we are not typically a Google shop and do not have to for anyone else.

How do I suppress these image previews that only show up in Safari so that kids do not see image previews? I’ve tried going into the Safari settings for the iPad and turning off Siri suggestions, Search Engine suggestions, Quick web site search, and Preload Top Hit to no avail.

I’m hoping somebody here in education or who has spent time on web filters knows exactly what I’m talking about. We are currently using contentkeeper and have it deployed using contentkeeper’s recommendations on iOS. We escalated this to contentkeeper regarding YouTube previously for this same issue. Contentkeeper says that Apple device is using Safari are going to special places at Google that are not part of the filtering scheme. They later fixed this in their Web 2.0 code for YouTube. Again, I am at a complete loss and would love if somebody who is familiar with this unique issue to throw out some ideas. No restriction profiles that I know of are relevant. I plan on fighting with this issue on Monday in addition to the three or four other concurrent issues I am dealing with at work right now.

I could really use some help on this one. I’m online to answer follow up questions if that yields some useful ideas. This may even be an issue that the Jamf Safe Internet people know something about. I know we are using your competitor for our web filtering needs, but our district has been a loyal Jamf customer since 2012.

[AJPinto]

You might want to check if Private Relay is enabled, as that can interfere with DNS filtering and could be part of the issue. That said, this really falls under the vendor's responsibility. You should escalate this issue with ContentKeeper again. While it’s true that Apple often does things in their own unique and nonstandard way, it’s ultimately on ContentKeeper to adapt their service to handle these quirks. After all, you’re paying them to provide a functional filtering solution, and it’s their job to make it work properly in your environment.

[blackholemac]

Checked Private Relay and it specifically is off…both by virtue of using Apple ID for schools and confirmed that it isn’t functioning anyway.

Ultimately, I agree with you on the rest. I think am going to escalate to the ContentKeeper folks myself instead of relying on going through other people. I’m going to clarify what is happening and see what their plan is to address it.