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Digital kids

School filters vs. home proxies

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 3, 2006 4:00 AM PST

A teenager at a Pennsylvania school gets caught handing out business cards with instructions on how to circumvent his school's Web filter.

But instead of throwing the school discipline book at him, administrators offer a choice: They'll give him a break if he lets the school's tech people know how he beat the system.

Overwhelming response by parents, teachers and children to "Kids outsmart Web filters," a recent installment of CNET News.com's Digital Kids series, showed that the sidestepping of filters on school PCs is definitely a hot issue on campus (though it's certainly not the only one).

One of the most remarkable responses to the article came from the parent of the Pennsylvania teen. The student's free "Anti-Skool Policy" cards offered two URLs to access Web sites banned by the school. And, unfortunately for the student, they also bore his name, which led to his getting caught.

"My kid did get punished...(but) a bit different from the norm," the student's parent wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "The school would not press the issue if he showed the computer people (from the school) how he did it and explained how it worked.

"This pressure of being responsible for showing the school how the proxies worked, enabling them to block the proxies, had much more bearing on him than tossing him out for a couple days!"

So how are other schools handling this problem?

One IT administrator from a medium-size school district in Colorado wrote that kids accessing MySpace.com was a big problem until he installed a filter from 8e6 Technologies. "We haven't had an outbreak in a month," he said. Others promoted a filter from Websense and "white lists," or filters that direct traffic based on approved sites, not just a revolving list of unwanted sites.

On the flip side, kids touted Web proxies like Hidemyass.com, which even teachers used to access information on the Web.

According to one student: "Another school in the district caught some of the students using a proxy blocker to look up porn, and now it's a districtwide policy that if you use a proxy blocker or something similar, you get an automatic one-day suspension."

"I could log in 'behind' (the teacher's) screen and I could use her computer without her even realizing it!"
-- A 15-year-old techie in Australia

Judging by readers comments, it also appears that kids all over the world are savvy to proxies and other tricks for sidestepping filters.

A 15-year-old techie in Australia said that by logging on to his PC at school, he could use "Remote Desktop" to access the school Admin account. "Because they were using Windows 2003 edition, I could log in 'behind' (the teacher's) screen and I could use her computer without her even realizing it!"

From plying proxies to panning profs

Filters and proxies aren't the only issue when it comes to education in the Internet age.

College kids are flocking to a site that helps them figure out which professors are hot, and which are not. Academically speaking, that is.

Ratemyprofessors.com, the rating and reviews site that has ruffled some feathers in academia, has nearly doubled its audience in the last year, according to research firm Comscore and the 23-year-old owners of the site. The site drew 724,000 unique visitors in March, up from 385,000 visitors a year ago, according to Comscore.

Part of that growth can be attributed to interest from professors--at least 25 percent of the traffic originates from professors, said Will Desantis, president of the site. But professors have long stuck their nose up at the site: Some schools have threatened lawsuits or banning the site from their networks (there's that issue of proxies again). One professor even began posting a blog called "Ratemystudents" that trashed kids in his class.

"We've been getting less complaints," said Desantis, who bought the Maryland-based company with a partner last October for "seven figures." "Most (professors who are going on) are seeing what they can improve on."

Still, he said, "it's hard to break down the image. We're kind of seen as the bad guy because people look at it on the surface."

Professors aside, the site is attracting interest from advertisers, venture capitalists and "big Internet companies," Desantis said, following a recent investment in Facebook, a social networking site for college kids. Revenue is up significantly, Desantis said, thanks to sponsorship ad deals with companies like National Lampoon. "By midsummer, we'll have a partner, investment or be acquired," he said.

Scarier than MySpace?

Perhaps one of the most disturbing trends when it comes to kids and the Web involves adolescents who cut themselves, or "self-mutilate."

Such children are increasingly turning to the Internet to vent and commiserate with others about their secret affliction, according to a new study from Cornell University psychologists.

There are roughly 500 discussion boards devoted to talk about self-mutilating behavior by kids driven to cut, burn or scratch themselves, up from 400 when Cornell began its study a year ago. The study, which was published Tuesday, found that of the 3,200 messages analyzed, nearly a third of the comments were supportive in nature. Another 20 percent of the comments were about triggers and motivation for self-hurting practices.

The researchers said the socializing threatens to "normalize" the behavior. About 15 percent of the comments were for sharing methods for cutting or burning oneself or on concealing the behavior.

Of the surveyed comments, most were written by girls age 14 to 20. "They can easily find each other 24/7, and adults are clueless that this is going on," said Jane Powers, a senior research associate at Cornell and co-author of the study.

The finding makes sense, given that the Internet is a social hub for teens. More than 80 percent of American kids age 12 to 17 use the Net, and more than half of those kids log on daily, according to a Pew Internet study. And because secrecy is a hallmark of self-mutilation, the Internet is attractive for its measure of anonymity. Researchers suspect that up to 14 percent of teens purposely injure themselves as an outlet for emotional problems.

Teen-moods.net, a Web site for depressed teens, is one such outlet for kids who "self-hurt." "I am a cutter and have been since 11 years old and im (sic) 16 now," reads one post on the Web site. "i told my counselor that i dont think i can ever stop....please any feedback or similar stories write me back."

Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.

Add a Comment (Log in or register) Showing 1 of 2 pages (85 Comments)
Geez
by umbrae May 3, 2006 6:11 AM PDT
Its sad when a student has to teach the IT department about Proxies. Prehaps that should stop hiring administrators from the Kmart School of Tech and actually hire people that know how to do the job.
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I'm a proxy admin for a school district
by YourM0m May 3, 2006 7:47 AM PDT
This is a difficult issue. Just today I blocked around 25 more proxy sites that students were using. There are litterally thousands of proxy sites out there. There is no way to blacklist them all. I have all the ones that students have used up until this point blocked. I can search through the logs looking for proxy sites and block them as I find them. I also can actively watch the logs and grep for proxy sites as they hit them. When I find one they can get to I block it.

Recently I added some complex regular expressions that block most proxy sites even if they are not blacklisted. It's a very tricky thing to block the sites you don't want them going to but still allowying access to what they need to get to. Using a whitelist only approach would never work for us. I don't know how other districts do it.

Another thing a lot of people don't realize is how easy it is to setup a proxy bypass off of their home internet connection. If they do it properly it's almost impossible to detect.

There is no easy solution to the problem. You just have to constantly adapt to what the students figure out.

--
Steve - http://tail-f.net/
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Problem is deeper than proxies
by eligiblebachelor May 3, 2006 8:30 AM PDT
Being about a year out of high school which had really bad websense filters I hope I can add a little to the issue at hand. I personally used proxies on more than i should have had to and by that i mean school projects that needed the web to research for blocked nearly every relevant search result known to man. By this I mean for example my health class had a unit on drugs and side effects why we shouldn't do them etc. well if you do a search for crack, smack, pcp and any other drug out there your search is blocked. Every student better hope that you also aren't needed to research the issues like God in the Constitution or how Muslim terrorists bombed the United States. These are nearly all blocked for terrorism and also that awful religion word....In short the way I saw it and still see it the only sites worthy of blocking are that of pornographic nature and sites that just kill time like game sites (I do not mean game review sites as this would surely conflict with sites needed for debate classes on how violence in video games affects reviews and the desire for young people to have them and things like that)this is because by limiting information at school students will only do projects on the status quo and well...who wants that?
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the more walls you build, the more the need to get through them
by Carusk May 3, 2006 8:32 AM PDT
im a senior high school student and inmy earlier years i used to do anything to get past any restrictions i could, its all part of this rebellious feeling growing up. if theres something stopping me, i gota find a way around it. we even accessed the schools students medical records once. we only got caught for having programs like putty and a few other tools, which we only had to pay the overtime it took the techies to trace it to us.
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Four words: Filters Won't Ever Work.
by gefitz May 3, 2006 8:45 AM PDT
The problem is that people have this expectation that blocking "the bad" and allowing "the good" is easy and maintainable in the long run.

To keep up with this issue, you need a full-time employee monitoring the network at all times. Libraries can't afford books, schools can't afford teachers, but society expects them both to be "proxy parents".

Good luck with that. I'll watch what my kids do, show them right from wrong, like my parents did for me and theirs for them. Too bad most parents don't see the need for that effort.
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what 2 do
by zxocuteboy May 3, 2006 9:26 AM PDT
I think my lil sitster might be a cutter... but i don't really know what to do...
Reply to this comment
one word: cellphones
by sonicdivx May 3, 2006 10:06 AM PDT
Umm, so what happens when cellphone internet drops in price. Forget the school network, lets use the cellphone.
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School filters quash motivation to learn
by yen2ken May 3, 2006 10:15 AM PDT
Today's public education system seems more concerned with attendance than with learning. It's foolish to put more effort into ways to keep students from illegitimate activity than into ways to reward successful efforts to learn. Invisible internet fences snuff out innovative impulses in some kids and totally confuse other kids who can conclude "the Internet isn't useful." Teachers need to encourage and reward curiosity, motivation, and initiative whenever it appears in young minds. In doing their jobs, administrators and teachers must always chose between enabling and constraining their students. Better to demand that kids learn to do quick and discriminating web searches than to force them to paw thru library books to find answers to easily graded test questions. Better to task kids to find ways to validate web "information" than to prevent them from using the web during school hours. If they have time in school to play, give them more and better learning assignments, don't lock them out of the electronic library. And if protecting sensitive young minds from web-smut is the aim, better to leave the web doors open, then identify and track the kids whose PCs get dirty, and punish those offenders appropriately for partaking, than to implement fences that prevent kids from developing self-control and good judgement.
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Old Computer + Debian + Tinyproxy
by The Red Herring May 3, 2006 2:28 PM PDT
Old p3 I found in the garbage + Debian 3.1 + Tinyproxy

Its free, and nearly impossible for admins to block.

Is it morally right? Should I have it?
Yes and yes
I'm not doing anythign illegal with it, I have logs to prove it, I just hate being told what I can and can't see on the internet.

Have a nice life admins,
Nerds will always win.
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De-Sensitizing Kids To Internet Control
by Jeff419 May 3, 2006 3:20 PM PDT
I am totally against censorship. It goes against every principle America stands for. What truly concerns me is that our children are getting used to having certain websites blocked because they are deemed "inappropiate" by someone in authority. What gives these people the right to make that kind of decision? When you consider this and the net neutrality battles currently being waged it leads me truly question the direction we are going as a society.

There are also the stories about cell phone companies selling a tracking service so parents can monitor their kids movements and also set certain areas off-limits. It's not that parents shouldn't be able to tell their kids where they can go, that's very reasonable. What bothers me is that these kids are being trained that it's okay, even normal, for their every move to be tracked.

All in all any campaign being sold with the goal of protecting children scares me. Why? Because it's so easy to defend ridiculous policy. All they have to do is say that their opposition is against protecting children and the general public, being easily controlled sheep, will automatically swallow this like they swallow everything else their TV tells them.

But then again maybe I'm just paranoid. Believe me, I'd love to be proven wrong, but in this I don't see that happening.
Reply to this comment
key log
by davaal May 4, 2006 4:49 AM PDT
in my labs, i key log. its draconian, but every child - from the lowliest 1st grader to the snartest 5th grader - has a login/password and an assigned seat. they dont know it, but i log every key stroke. then i can search for phrases 'time' and 'station' stamped key words. i can pull reports to see who's logged as what.

punishment is ruthelss and is absolute. whenever someone is caught, i ban them from all school computers. i let them know that i read every email they send or receive in my lab.

if they wanna bypass security, they can do it on a another teacher's computers or in the 'other' school lab.

because of 2 kids, i recently blocked all webmail. the kids know that if youre sitting at a machine that comes up 'mail.google' or 'mail.yahoo', youre finished.
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key log
by davaal May 4, 2006 5:10 AM PDT
in my labs, i key log. its draconian, but every child - from the lowliest 1st grader to the snartest 5th grader - has a login/password and an assigned seat. they dont know it, but i log every key stroke. then i can search for phrases 'time' and 'station' stamped key words. i can pull reports to see who's logged as what.

punishment is ruthelss and is absolute. whenever someone is caught, i ban them from all school computers. i let them know that i read every email they send or receive in my lab.

if they wanna bypass security, they can do it on a another teacher's computers or in the 'other' school lab.

because of 2 kids, i recently blocked all webmail. the kids know that if youre sitting at a machine that comes up 'mail.google' or 'mail.yahoo', youre finished.
Reply to this comment
Sounds like me...
by cammears May 4, 2006 6:49 AM PDT
That sounds alot like me...

I am a Senior in High School. At our school we have a "one to one" laptop program, every high school student is issued a laptop for them to take home.

On our laptops we have restrictions to where we can install programs (AIM, FireFox). But that doesnt mean that we cant run them. Our district network has Websense for internet filtering (that doesnt stop me).

At my house I have setup a proxy server that also has VPN and Remote Desktop. The VPN support allows me to transfer files to and from my home servers. The Proxy server that I have setup allows me, and other students to get passed the school network. I currently have around 50 accounts setup , one for each user on the proxy.

I dont go around and spred my proxy around the school, but I do give it to people durig class that need it. Even though this is my last year here I still plan on keeping the proxy running for a couple more years.

At my house I currently have DSL, but within the month I will be getting FIOS, which should speed up the connection alot. I am running the proxy off of a HP Netserver that I picked up from a local business. So the only money out of pocket is paying for the internet connection.
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What's funny...
by thedreaming May 4, 2006 7:48 AM PDT
...is that these kids are proving that they are smarter than we think they are, but we only see them breaking rules that we setup for their protection. The internet isn't a clean place, so we have to stop them from wandering to the wrong website and reading something they shouldnt know about until they are older and can understand what they are reading.
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Myspace is "scary" now?
by lewissalem May 4, 2006 8:13 AM PDT
Ok, so there's some pervs that are on myspace. There are pervs that are on every social networking site. But to call myspace "scary" is a little irresponsible.

Myspace is over anyways. The second somebody puts a patrolman to watch over a bunch of kids, its over. The only thing you can hope to do is to help your children make the right decisions. It's a scary world, but you have to let go sometimes.
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It is so easy to get around these school blocks
by School Hacker May 4, 2006 10:29 AM PDT
My school uses the St. Bernard Filter Service to try and keep us off of innappropriate sites. Not only have some friends and I set up some programs that allow us around them, if they block these we just enter the network as admins and change it back. The schools really need to get better IT people to protect the networks. I could have hacked these back in 7th grade.
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Kids are funny...
by tonycb May 4, 2006 12:55 PM PDT
Wait til you set foot in the real world. Try this crap from a company's network and see how fast your ass is escorted out by security. I've seen it many times. You don't follow our rules, get the hell out. Terminated on the spot. Try to cry censorship and they'll laugh in your face.

Anyone that thinks a school doesn't have the right to limit what you do on THEIR computer on THEIR network, needs a wakeup call. The real world and a real company could be just that.


You put a companies data at risk, they won't take it lightly, trust me.

You kiddies be careful or you might see yourself in front of judge.

It's rediculous to think that most kids are by passing filters because they want to get to legitimate education websites. Even if a few are We all know, for most the reason is to check personal email, myspace, porn etc, etc. It's a joke. And our youth doesn't need yet another distraction.

Good luck admins. I know it's gotta suck to have to deal with snot nose brats all day.
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Have people forgot about ping?
by xharold May 4, 2006 2:37 PM PDT
ping www.myspace.com from Terminal or command prompt. It's not hard. I'm glad I'm one of the only tech savvy kids in my school. Sometimes being tech savvy comes with some sacrifices, teachers automatically assume you use Windows at home. Not me. If people used Linux in their schools, they could just block out hosts. It's not hard, you know. It's just a matter of editing a file with roota ccess. Just make sure you don't allow password reset when GRUB comes up (if you use it..)
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Have people forgot about ping?
by xharold May 4, 2006 2:38 PM PDT
ping www.myspace.com from Terminal or command prompt. It's not hard. I'm glad I'm one of the only tech savvy kids in my school. Sometimes being tech savvy comes with some sacrifices, teachers automatically assume you use Windows at home. Not me. If people used Linux in their schools, they could just block out hosts. It's not hard, you know. It's just a matter of editing a file with roota ccess. Just make sure you don't allow password reset when GRUB comes up (if you use it..)

63.208.226.42 Go myspace!
Reply to this comment
Not just content filtering
by bladesmith May 5, 2006 10:03 AM PDT
While content filtering and bandwidth management are parts of the school filtering equation, don't forget about virused websites, websites with spyware, virused emails, drive by spyware infections, phishing attacks, etc...

One of the last things a school admin wants to worry about is cleaning up dozens or hundreds of workstations each day because users (students or staff) visited infected websites, either inadvertantly or deliberately.

Most students couldn't care less about protecting their school computer from infection and care even less about preserving network resources for their fellow students.

Website filtering helps preserve internet access by filtering out bandwidth hogging activity.
It preserves computing resources by preventing the infection of school workstations.

Some school filtering solutions have override features. Our school district allows this for school purposes.
If a student needs to access sites that are blocked (for whatever reason), they ask their teacher. If it's for a school project, it's allowed.

If they're caught abusing the privilege, they get a date with the school principal.

If the students are worried about their privacy, forget it. Privacy in a publicly funded school district isn't a right or entitlement. They may as well get used to it.
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