topic Re: Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app in General Topics

Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app

KurdTech — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 01:43:59 GMT

Hello There,

What is the best practice to block YouTube, Instagram for mobile apps? So far I tried to create an application base and custom URL policy to deny YouTube, Instagram. It works (deny access) if you access the site via HTTPS (Chrome, Firefox), but it won't work if I access YouTube, Instagram on mobile app.

Thank you in advance

Re: Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app

SutareMayur — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 08:52:54 GMT

Hi @KurdTech ,

If you want to block it on any kind system, web-browser and/or mobile apps, blocking it using only Custom URL category should work.

Also before modifying anything, could you please check if mobile endpoint's traffic is matching the desired security policy.

Re: Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app

BPry — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 15:09:16 GMT

@KurdTech,

Mobile applications generally don't handle decryption well, so I'm going to assume that you are not decrypting traffic. You're going to need to filter on a specific test client and make sure that you're fully logging traffic for that client. Then you can create a custom URL category for the domains that you're actually seeing the client app hit when they are using the mobile app.

Mobile applications in general honestly don't interact with the normal domains you would expect, simply because they aren't seen by the user at all. So you'll generally need to have a completely different set of URLs than you would for normal site browsing if you want to block the mobile app.

Re: Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app

KurdTech — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 21:46:46 GMT

Thank you for reply.

I can see the host (mobile phone) traffic denied over HTTPS (Chrome) while mobile YouTube app not showing or i couldn't recognize except the quic. However, i add QUIC to denied application policy it seems like YouTube mobile app surfing was extremely slow.

Before adding quic i had used the custom URL filtering as below, but that didn't work for me. Not sure what did i miss

https://m.youtube.com

https://*youtube.com

Re: Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app

KurdTech — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 23:13:59 GMT

Hello Bpry,

Thank you for reply.

That's correct i do not use traffic decryption. Also, i looked at the log for the client i do see the application show as youtube-base and url m.youtube.com, www.youtube.com. i added the same other URL i captured on log s.youtube.com, i.ytiming.com. i still can access the youtube on the phone app. however when i include the quic in the application the youtube mobile app is extremely slow (unusable).

Re: Block YouTube/Instagram Mobile app

SutareMayur — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 07:32:26 GMT

Hi @KurdTech ,

Could you try by adding one more entry under custom URL category i.e. *.youtube.com ?