Blocking a Top Level Domain (TLD)

Summary

This article explains how to block a TLD in the Guardian web filter.

Problem

Typically, companies use a different top-level domain (TLD), or country code, for customers in different countries, for example, www.google.com typically for the US and www.google.co.uk for the UK.

Sometimes it may be desirable to block a full TLD with the Smoothwall web filter, for example, to block all websites from a particular country.

Solution

1. Create a custom category, adding the TLD to block to the Domain/URL filtering field. See our help topic, Creating custom categories.
   The Domain/URL filtering field automatically infers a wildcard and a dot (.) to entries placed in it, that is, entries are assumed to be *.<text>.
   For example, to block all UK websites which have the top level TLD of uk, it is only necessary to add uk to the category. So adding uk is the equivalent of the more familiar *.uk format, just as an entry of bbc.co.uk is equivalent to *.bbc.co.uk.
2. Create the necessary filtering block rules as required see our help topic, Creating web filter policies.