Facebook has set up their site so that if a user types “www.www.facebook.com”, they will be able to access it through any Web filtering proxy blocking www.facebook.com.  Users can even type in variations, such as “www.www.www.facebook.com” or “hello.www.www.facebook.com” to get access to Facebook.

If users are accessing Facebook by using one of these many variations, it will not show up in reports under the category of Social Networking.  Instead, the URL is categorized as “Other” and is displayed this way in reports.

For now, to prevent users from accessing the site using these variations and to categorize these variations as Social Networking, you need to add the URL as a wildcard to the Social Networking category. To do this, follow the below instructions.

1. Go to Advanced Settings – Category Setup and click on the Edit URLs link.
2. Use the Select Category pulldown and select Social Networking.
3. In the text entry area for Custom URLs, type in the wild card URL *.facebook.com.  If you want to block any time the term facebook shows up in a URL, type in the wild card *.facebook.*

The Wavecrest Development Team is currently looking into alternatives to better handle these types of site variations within the Wavecrest Control List while maintaining speed and scalability in our products.