To deploy the web-site blocking mechanism in Squid, add the following entries to your Squid configuration file (in my system, it’s called squid.conf and it’s located in the /etc/squid directory):
acl bad url_regex “/etc/squid/squid-block.acl”
http_access deny bad
The file /etc/squid/squid-block.acl contains web sites or words you want to block. You can name the file whatever you like. If a site has the URL or word listed in squid-block.acl file, it won’t be accesible to your users. The entries below are found in squid-block.acl file used by my clients:
.oracle.com
.playboy.com.br
sex
…
With the squid-block.acl file in action, internet users cannot access the following sites:
* Sites that have addresses ending with .oracle.com
* Sites that have addresses ending with .playboy.com.br
* Sites containing the word “sex” in its pages
You should beware that by blocking sites containing the word “sex”, you will also block sites such as Middlesex University, Sussex University, etc. To resolve this problem, you can put those sites in a special file called squid-noblock.acl:
^http://www.middlesex.ac.uk
^http://www.sussex.ac.uk