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Im am IT support person and we noticed that since a lot of people have been using Portable GAIM / PIDGIN to access IM which is not allowed in the office. Is there any way i can restrict its usage?
Thanks, BusinessGeeks
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As always, the appropriate place to control your network is on the network itself. This is usually done at the firewall. You can restrict the ports used by IM or restrict access to the server. You'll need to search for yourself to find the ports and IPs as well as details about your firewall.
Assuming that you have a firewall on the network (which is highly likely for security purposes), you just have to block the ports that are used by the IM networks from going in or out of your network. Here's the common network ports & server addresses used by the major IM networks.
AIM / ICQ: login.oscar.aol.com , Port 5190
MSN: messenger.hotmail.com , Port 1863
Yahoo! (US): scs.msg.yahoo.com , Port 5050
Yahoo! (Japan): cs.yahoo.co.jp , Port 5050
NOTE: Yahoo! Messenger's File Transfer services use different servers ( filetransfer.msg.yahoo.com ) & port (80). Port 80 is the standard for HTTP... so you can't really block that port.
If you need all the IM networks that Pidgin supports, load up Pidgin & check the servers & ports used by each IM network in the advanced section of the "Add Account" window.
~TStodden
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