School admins getting onto user Hotmail?

[me123]

The school claimed it was for their protection, but resorting to such manners is still morally wrong in my view.

As for kinky conversations, the best bet really is to keep them out of school. Every year, I sign a document saying "I will not access pornographic, sexually arousing material etc." and I'm sure some would argue that this counts as a breach of such a policy (if it is in place). If it was not happening in school (again, I don't know if it was) the school are (I'm sure) not allowed to use her username and password to access her account. And if they are, it is wrong.

 

[djw1981]

The school don't need to access her account. They can using network administrator rights see what people are looking at. If a 'target word' appears, that page is probably cached for checking later. This is to tighten the filters which stop access of inappropriate material. These emails will have been caught in the trap, as at first were Middlesex, Essex, Scunthorpe, "Dutch coastal defences", Cocckrel etc.

these trapped pages will be reviewed by a technician or staff member, who if they see something which could be a child protection risk will take action. imagine if they hadn't and a child were to be groomed over the internet (at school) by a person, and later sexually assaulted / attacked them. The media would have a field day criticising the school for not protecting the child.

 

[Tom B]

Written as someone who has worked in this field before...

Before anybody is allowed to log on to a school computer, they have to sign a copy of the IT Code of Conduct. This is an A4 sheet which basically says, use the school computers for school work only, don't play games, view dodgy sites, or do anything non work related. Expanded to cover practically every possibility, because some idiots will try and wheedle their way out of it. This contains a clause saying "I understand that my use of the network is monitored by the ICT Support Department". If anybody breaks this Code of Conduct, they get banned from the system. Quite simple. Of course they still try and wheedle their way out of it by lying, which just means their ban gets extended.

As for viewing somebody's emails from a provider like Hotmail, quite simple. It's called VNC. If you view something on a school computer, you accept you may be being watched. Particularly if it was a dodgy conversation, as Yorkie has said a box such as our Securus will take a screenshot of the page at the time if certain triggers are raised. Then when the Securus log is periodically checked, it's looked at, and if someone has been doing something they shouldn't then they get thrown off. Equally, there are specific things which we have to pass on to other people - if for example I had found dodgy conversations which were indicative of "grooming" or similar, they would be sent to the child protection coordinator.

Chances are, the T&C's say you should only be doing work on the computers and that use is monitored - if you want to send dodgy emails to each other that's fine, so long as it's on your home computer, not one of the school ones.

 

[RJ]

if for example I had found dodgy conversations which were indicative of "grooming" or similar, they would be sent to the child protection coordinator.

There's already one girl in my school who got exposed about that.

If anyone's daft enough to do things like send intimate stuff or access things like their bank accounts on a public computer, they deserve to get hacked. Save it for home or at least use a mobile!!

 

[thomasgholmes]

My schools t&c says they will do spot checks.

 

[me123]

Fair enough. But do they/can they/are they allowed to take passwords and usernames to view material on an e-mail site not accessed by the pupil during school time?

 

[djw1981]

but we have established that they didn't need to do that.......

Anyway they can do if you are using school equipment, regardless of whether it is during school time or not. The Data Protection Act is always superseded by the Child Protection Act/regulations.

 

[me123]

I need to read things twice in future; thanks.

 

[Nick W]

Anyone know what this Securus programme actually responds to, I've tried my best to set it off and have even had scripts to get certain characters to display profanities on screen but nothing has come back to me.

As for filters, our school has managed to get one that will happily block innocent sites and prevent innocent research yet people wanting games can always find a way round....

Why don't they just bin all their computers and spend the money on something more useful if they're gonna cripple the usefulness of the machines?

 

[yorkie]

Anyone know what this Securus programme actually responds to, I've tried my best to set it off and have even had scripts to get certain characters to display profanities on screen but nothing has come back to me.

There are different versions, for business or schools etc, and they have probably seen your 'violations' (as they call them) but have decided not to take action. Be careful though or you may be top of the violations league

Securus keep the word list secret, but people who administer the software can add or remove words!

As for filters, our school has managed to get one that will happily block innocent sites and prevent innocent research yet people wanting games can always find a way round....

1) which innocent sites? what you will probably find is that there is innocent material on sites that ALSO contain dodgy stuff, and 2) ANYONE can find a way round, not just those who want to play games!

Why don't they just bin all their computers and spend the money on something more useful if they're gonna cripple the usefulness of the machines?

In what way has their usefulness been cripped? Examples?

 

[RJ]

At secondary school we had a program called Ranger Remote which the teachers used to view/control all of the computers in a room. They got sick of using it after people figured out that sending them help requests crashed their computer.

Other students often went on shock sites which featured an accumulating amount of popups which spiralled around the screen, showing horribly disturbing images, and disorienting sounds on the electric whiteboards. After a while the pens disappeared and one of the boards had a massive crack in it.

As for site filters, we used anonymous proxies, but as people found out about them, the teachers caught on and blocked them one by one.

Always funny to watch the clowns get in trouble

 

[Tom B]

If you trigger a Securus box, it *won't* be obvious to you. They will probably see it, laugh at you trying to fool them, and look at the next one.

It responds to whatever you decide it should respond to... if there is a request for an innocent site to be unblocked, we can do that if it's clearly benign. As for the people playing games, they generally trigger the securus so we add the site to the block list.

We had a problem with one of the whiteboards getting damaged - after the bill was sent to the student concerned, the problem seems to have disappeared.

Always funny to watch the clowns get in trouble

Funnier is when you're b********g them yourself. "Oh I never agreed to the terms and conditions, I didn't return my form". "Didn't you now" *pulls out the relevent folder and shoves a piece of paper under their nose*. They still tried to kick up about it, so the ban length was increased.

I generally did spot checks, roving around the machines on VNC to check things were above the board, if suspicions were aroused (headphones and giggling tends to be one) or if I had nothing better to do.

 

[Nick W]

There are different versions, for business or schools etc, and they have probably seen your 'violations' (as they call them) but have decided not to take action. Be careful though or you may be top of the violations league

Securus keep the word list secret, but people who administer the software can add or remove words!

Send me a list please. I hardly use the computers now so I don't really care about the violation league . 2 of the admins are in my year at school and I talk to on a daily basis.

1) which innocent sites? what you will probably find is that there is innocent material on sites that ALSO contain dodgy stuff, and 2) ANYONE can find a way round, not just those who want to play games!

My favourite was D&T research for making child toys, and more recently education youtube videoes (teachers etc hardly having enough bandwidth to host their own videos).

It's always the games that are mirrored on other sites to allow people to find a way round and not the innocent sites.

In what way has their usefulness been cripped? Examples?

As above

 

[Tom B]

And then you'll moan when it comes to coursework time and you can't log on to print it off...

I imagine then you'll volunteer to create a filter to allow only the benign Youtube videos? If there's something on there they want the kids to watch, download it and stick it on a shared area.

As I've said, if someone really does need a site that has been blocked automatically but shouldn't be, we will unblock it.

 

[AlexS]

All I can say is winding up the ICT techs were some of the best days of our school lives. They once took my access to stuff away, so I got a teacher to go in there for me and demand it back. Which worked.

Mister Beevers, I hope you weren't doing this for fun! School age people volunteering to be school ICT techs without having already hit rock bottom are not cool.

 

[Tom B]

Oh no, they paid me quite nicely. They were short staffed for a time and I'd finished A levels, so I filled in for a couple of months. Nobody gets anything for free off me :P.

 

[RJ]

I got banned several times, namely for installing Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 on the network drive, using the Ranger remote to send a popup message to every single computer in the school (didn't go down well with the headmaster), being in possession of the school roll and creating a BAT file to format the network drive (they found it because my home drive was full as I stored music on it). Bans lasted until the next time I had an ICT lesson

 

[devon_metro]

Ranger is awful! Not that I know how to hack a network

 

[Beaker]

Tell me more about this 'ranger'...

 

[yorkie]

My favourite was D&T research for making child toys, and more recently education youtube videoes (teachers etc hardly having enough bandwidth to host their own videos).

If the "educational" videos on youtube are that important, surely the school can have a video library? I suspect the reason they don't is either because 1) the videos aren't that important and/or 2) copyright reasons (youtube is rather good at breaching copyright!), but unless you give specific examples it is difficult to comment without generalising.

It's always the games that are mirrored on other sites to allow people to find a way round and not the innocent sites.

Yeah, I wonder why that innocent youtube site isn't mirrored?

 

[Tom]

Yeah, I wonder why that innocent youtube site isn't mirrored?

Because I haven't got round to it yet ...

 

[ChrisCooper]

Me and two of my friends (both of them were computer nerds) spent most of our lives trying to hack into the school computer system and bothering the network admins. We did help them out a few times though, for example one time when the entire network was infected by a virus and we helped re-install windows on all the computers, and were rewarded with additional file quota etc (by the time I left, I had 50mb, when standard areas only had 5, and even teachers only had 10).
I think what bugged us most was the fact that whilst we were only supposed to use the computers for work, whenever we went to the admins due to problems (which there seemed lots of, when we first started they had just renewed the computers and there were lots of teething problems), they were always playing Command and Conquer, either individially or against each other using the network.
Another thing that really annoyed me aswell was when doing A levels and using computers a lot for work during free periods that teachers would often book the libray computers, when there were other computer rooms in the school that were not in use and locked up, which often lead to spending half the time trying to find a computer that was not in use and was accessible, which on many occasions involved one of the IT teachers, who I helped out 2 hours a week with GCSE lessons, letting me slip into one of their classes and use a free computer.
By the way, helping out with lessons did have good motives (aswell as the above benefit), firstly we were supposed to do that sort of thing during our free periods, and secondly one of the two slots I volenteered for was a year 11 class which a girl I fancied was in, although annoyingly I got moved to another class since someone could only do that slot.

 

[merseytrains]

Browsing round my documents in my school profile the other day, we're not allowed to access the free demo photos that come with Windows XP 'for security reasons'.

And my music coursework got deleted, and guess who's got to take the blame for that :-x

 

[thomasgholmes]

And when i press alt fr it says the administrator has cancelled this operation for security reasons.

 

[Tom B]

I hated it when teachers from other departments came into IT - you'd have to spend half an hour sorting out their lesson, because they had an old URL / hadn't put the files on the right shared area etc. Then they'd leave the room in a state when they finished.

I know what you mean about no machines being free though - however in my second year of 6th form some were installed in the private study room at the back of the common room. Though they were rarely used for work purposes...

 

[yorkie]

Browsing round my documents in my school profile the other day, we're not allowed to access the free demo photos that come with Windows XP 'for security reasons'.

Because you don't have - or need - access to the local C drive 'all users' area.

 

[mbonwick]

We have to use My Documents, they reference on to the school servers

 

[ChrisCooper]

Yes, we also had a couple in the common room, but they were even harder to get on than those in the rest of the school, again though I don't think a lot of work was done on them. Didn't help that there wasn't really a study area in the common room, it was all combined, so infact anyone who wanted to do serious studying tended to use the libray. Might have been full of nasty, smelly 10th and 11th years, but at least they were quiet (most of the time), and also there was less far to go for books. Only disadvantage was not being able to eat/drink/talk/breath loudly.

 

[thomasgholmes]

We use a public folder.

 

[mbonwick]

Each user has their own folder (their username)on the sever, which contains data like desktop icons etc. Within that is My documents where work is saved.