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INFO: Adding wildcard URLs to a Category and differences

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R3000

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Adding wildcard URLs to a Category and differences

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If I add a wildcard URL (*.go.com for example) to a custom category, and then set the category to 'Allow', would I still be able to visit a website like www.disney.go.com?

It depends on the URL that is being visited. Simply having a wildcard added in the ‘Allow’ library category does not guarantee an automatic exclusion of all URLs or sub-domains under the wildcard. If a URL in question is “specifically” categorized in a different category, which is marked as ‘Block’ in the given profile, then wild card exclusion will not work for the particular URL.

As an example, assume following URLs are listed in the R3000 library as shown below:

*.go.com -- Custom_Category
www.disney.go.com -- Entertainment
www.xyz.go.com -- Not Specifically Categorized.

Your filtering rule states that the Custom_Category is marked as 'Allow' while 'Entertainment' is marked as ‘Block’. Block/Allow results of visiting each of the above URL will be as in the following:

www.go.com -- Allowed due to custom category being marked as 'Allow'.
www.disney.go.com -- Blocked due to the URL being "specifically” categorized in the Entertainment category.
www.xyz.go.com -- Allowed due to the URL not being specifically categorized in any category; hence, the only possible match found in the library is *.go.com, which is in the Custom_Category that is marked as 'Allow'.

So, based on the R3000 filtering logic, any URL that is specifically categorized in a certain category will have precedence over a [rather] less specific URL [wildcard]. In other words, *.disney.go.com is more “specific” than *.go.com; therefore, the specifically a URL is listed in the library, the higher the precedence is when it comes to actually blocking or allowing.