This article applies to:

• R3000

Question:

X-Strikes and image search overblocking

Reply

From the R3000's perspective, a "block" is a "block," whether it's a single image on a page, or many images on a page (such as with an image search).  A user might not be intentionally requesting every link or image, but the website itself could be "GET'ing" content from other sources on behalf of the user.  The R3000 is looking for http GET requests, and treats each one as a separate request, regardless of where it came from.

So, if a "block" is issued based on a category you've specified in the X-Strikes configuration, it will be counted towards the users' X-Strikes limit.  This can potentially produce an overblocking condition, especially while doing image searches.  You should take this into consider when deciding what categories to include for X-Strikes blocking.  If you're too aggressive with X-Strikes, it may cause overblocking.

You might also consider using the Google/Yahoo Safe Search Enforcement feature. This will prevent most of the "undesirable" GET requests to begin with.

This article was previously published as:

8e6 KB 281041