So I posted a few days ago on TechLearning about how easy it is becoming for students to bypass school filters in a very wide variety of ways. Yes, in the post I did mention a few ways that people could bypass school or work filters. I didn’t do this to teach people how, I did it to raise awareness amongst educators and to point out that simply filtering the internet is insufficient. Filters don’t protect our students, educating them does.
It didn’t take long after I posted it for a student of David Jakes’ to leave a comment.
While our district users extensive filtering on web sites that we students can access, even the most basic users know how to get around them by using any one of thousands of web proxies …
Aside from a strict whitelist of web sites–which would be disastrous for a learning environment–there’s not much [network administrators] can do that students can’t get around with extreme ease.
Sorry to be so pessimistic, admins, but we’re just *that* clever.
Think he’s just bragging? Then take a look at this story out of Australia (credit to JINXIE for sharing it): Student cracks $84m porn filter. It seems that Australia decided to throw money at the problem. They invested $84 million dollars in a complex filtering system to try to keep students away from porn sites. It took a 16 year old 30 minutes to bypass it. So the government added another filter to take care of the security hole. The same teenager was able to bypass the new addition within 40 minutes.
So what did this hooligan have to say for himself?
“Filters aren’t addressing the bigger issues anyway,” he said.
“Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I’d fix.
“They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them.”
What a radical idea. I wonder whether they could have developed such a forum or educational program for less than $84 million dollars…
[…] Develop an informative program or seminar for students on the dangers of online predators. Make it interesting, hands-on, and relate to them. Don’t give them story after story about kids who get attacked because they put their phone number online. Conduct such a seminar in a school computer lab, and encourage everyone to actually log into their MySpace profiles and take an objective look at what information they posted online. Also in this boat: don’t spend $84 million on a filtering system that an enterprising student could crack with on…. […]
[…] bloggers are laughing as hard as we are on this one; Tech Blorge, Teach 42, and Reason are the best ones to read in our […]
My instinctive response to this, and your TechLearning post, was to want to post it so my college students could get around the stupid filters.
My second response was to bookmark your TechLearning post so I can use Meebo when I’m at work. I use Yahoo IM for my office hours (I teach four online classes at a community colllege) and yet I can’t have it open when I’m in my *real* office hours if I’m on the wireless network.
My third response was to hope that these young hackers are posting how they’re doing these things so I can find it.
My most recent experience with a filter was with Google images. I had deliberately put on the strongest filter, and my search brought up appalling images of torture victims (no, I don’t remember what I was searching for, but it wasn’t that). A mindset that brings up this image and doesn’t let me talk to my students I have trouble buying in to.
The bigger question I have: a student can sit on a networked computer at a school for 30 minutes hacking at it - and no one notices? The problem there is supervision, not the filter.
My other question is - do we have any research that backs up the claim that educating students will work better than filters? I was one of those teachers that tried to educate my students about this stuff, and it never seemed to work for me.
When I was a kid, we had the same attitude towards the closed campus - educate us on how to be safe off campus, instead of keeping us from leaving campus during lunch. Did I listen to any of this education? Nope. I was just basically saying “give me some lessons that I will just nod my head to, so that you can feel good about what you are doing, and then let me run a muck to do what I want during lunch.” Man, the crazy stuff I did during high school lunch off campus…. (after being “educated”)
And, I’m sorry students - you aren’t that much more clever than admins. They are giving you some freedoms to not totally ruin your web surfing experience. I am not an admin person, nor am I totally in favor of filters, but I know that they can clamp down your surfing enough to keep you off of sites they don’t want you on. The reason they don’t, I am told, is because we “really, really, REALLY wouldn’t like it.” If you hack past those controls, it is because you are taking advantage of the freedoms they are giving you - not because you have found some hole in the filter.
The problem with filters is that the Internet is not very well tagged or labeled. Require labeling, and all filters would work easily. If I don’t want to accidentally see appalling images of torture, I should have the right to keep that from EVER showing up on my computer. That should be my right as a web surfer. However, certain industries know that this system will cut back on their revenue, because they rely so heavily on covert bait and catch schemes to hook people on their content. Therefore, they turn the issue of tagging their content into a free speech issue. Which is clearly isn’t.
[…] How Effective Are Filters? Ask Australia - Steve Dembo mocks the thinking behind an $84 million porn filter that was bypassed by a 16 […]
[…] teach42 It took a 16 year old 30 minutes to bypass it. So the government added another filter to take care […]
Hey there. My spam filter didn’t pick out an invitation from you to join Quechup. Have you seen this? http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/09/07/beware-of-quechup-spam-scam/#comment-40651
Cheers
Mmmmm! The comment above is from me but has somehow named me as Matt??? Not sure what is going on here.
Internet in Education is kind of like drinking water, start with the carbon based filters.
Besides, the young man is right:
“educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I’d fix.”
Speaking of which, I just read this from danah boyd, on Controlling Your Public Appearance. Some good stuff. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/09/07/controlling_you.html
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