full-disclosure - MSN Contact Blacklisting

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Message-ID: <BAY14-DAV167AUwqlk20003468b@hotmail.com>
From: dispacct at hotmail.com (Dean)
Subject: MSN Contact Blacklisting

Hi All,

I look after a small (20) station network and we are looking for a way to
centrally control the contact list on MSN of our users.

I have seen commercial products such as iMMarshall but these are far too
expensive and much too complicated for our needs.

Management want us to create a blacklist of unauthorised MSN contacts to
prevent certain individuals spending too much time chatting to their
friends.

Is this possible? How? I realise a whitelist would be a more effective and
secure solution but we review logs and if we see excessive non-work related
traffic to a certain contact, we would like to block it. The work in
approving each and every contact would be too much bother.

Is this possible through MSN alone or would we need to install some sort of
filter to drop packets containing 'blacklistedpersonsaddress@...mail.com' or
something?!?

>From security point of view I would agree that MSN etc are a risk, they do
serve a useful purpose in facilitating some of the business that is done
here. Certainly works to cut down costs on speaking with international
clients and suppliers. Previously one might make a dozen phonecalls to the
same supplier chasing terms, stock location, brand, configuration etc etc it
can all be done via MSN instantly.

Hence the reason we would like to keep it active, yet block those contacts
that are not business related. It is only a small proportion of the
workforce that are abusing the privilege (we do monitor all email/msn
traffic) and if we could find a solution just to block those contacts,
management (and as a result me due to the fact they will be off my case
about it!) will be happy

I especially would like a solution that is transparent to the end users.

If this is not the right place to ask I apologise,  but I have already tried
in experts exchange,usenet and had NO answers - not even a hint. If there is
an answer already on the web, my google-fu must be very weak.

I was even looking at installing parental controls (!) but again that would
mean administering each workstation as opposed to doing it through the
server.

Kind regards
Dean