What's happening
You are unable to access a specific website, and the following notifications are received:
Website Blocked
To keep you secure online, access is blocked to websites categorized as...
Web Content Blocked
Block message related to Secure Connection
*The messages will vary based on whether you access the website via https (secure) or http (insecure) .
Why am I receiving these messages
You will see these messages when the website category of the affected URL is set to block in your web filtering settings.
If the message states that the site is classified as malicious please refer to this article
Addressing the messages
- Option 1 - Add the specific blocked URL to the Website Exceptions on your Sophos Home dashboard.
- Option 2 - set the Category to Allow (this will be the case for streaming sites, as they use multiple urls)
For more information regarding categories and how to unblock them please see this article
Add the blocked URL to the Website Exceptions
- Sign in to your Sophos Home dashboard.
- Select the computer where the website is blocked.
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Go to the Web filtering tab.
- Scroll down to Website Exceptions.
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Add the website domain to the field then press Enter on your keyboard. You will then see the added domain below the field.
- Try accessing the website on the affected computer to confirm that the above changes has been applied.
- If the site is still not accessible, you may need to unblock the category instead, see steps below.
Allow website categories
Some categories may not be overridden by adding a URL exclusion, for example if Streaming Media is set to block, adding exclusions for sites within that category will most likely fail, as they use several IPS and sites which will not be unblocked unless the category is set to Allow.
Some websites will be considered under multiple categories. For example a site that contains, among other things a chat feature, may be accessible, but return block messages when the chat feature appears if the chat category is set to block.
- Sign in to your Sophos Home Dashboard
- Click on the computer you would like to configure
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Access the WEB FILTERING tab.
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Select the website categories that you would like to Allow by clicking on the circle under Allow
For more details see how to set up Web Filtering