Dansguardian and Google through the Firefox Search Engine

I have Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop and I run DansGuardian as an internet filter on my machine. Sometimes it can get a little frustrating when it blocks something benign, but I found my patience wearing thin when I realized that DansGuardian was blocking searches from my Firefox Google search engine and the exact same search was going through on Google's home page.

Let me clarify that the searches I was doing through Firefox were benign (i.e. they should not be getting blocked). The reason DansGuardian is complaining is that the searches through Firefox do not require Google to have safe searching on. My DansGuardian configuration does require it. To fix this without weakening the filtering integrity, it is a relatively simple process in Firefox.

1. In Firefox, type about:config in the url line. (You may already be familiar with this if you are using TinyProxy as well.)
   
2. A window will display asking you if want to continue. I promise we'll be careful, so click yes.
   
3. In the filter bar, type keyword.url You should now see a single entry that has something like: "http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q="
4. Add &safe=active into the string: "http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&safe=active&q="

You're done! Safe browsing using either method. If you want to get really secure (you've got a code cracker in your home) you can always lock down the Firefox preferences. I have that applied to my proxy settings, so that no one can bypass my filters by using another port.

If you want more information about setting up DansGuardian, TinyProxy, and Firehol, check out this discussion.

For a discussion on how to lock Firefox preferences, check out this discussion.