School internet filters

[Coyote]

Screenshot from a school computer yesterday. It's ironic that preventing access to humour made me laugh.

I heard from a mate that another category he came across was 'Educational Material'. School's preventing learning? Maybe they're afraid we'd learn the truth about something....

What proxy's do you use at school or work? I'm subscribed to circumventor but I suspect the main IT dude at school is also so blocks them as soon as he sees them, so I don't get to use them that long. Also google translator has been blocked.

By the way, kiwibiker is blocked under 'pornographic'.

[Usarka]

Hahaha, blocking humour. Grow up grumpy kids!

Our filter at work tells you why a site is blocked then says:


This page was blocked because it contains the following words or terms: Arse, Fuck, Cock, Shit, Donkey Sex,

So it tells us the words we aren't allowed to see :lol:

[hXc]

Ours just doesn't let us go on that page - "page restricted" or some shit.
KB ain't blocked, neither is SB. We've found 'mirror' sites too. So youtube, bebo, myspace etc are all accessible from school computers.

[James Deuce]

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

It's not just schools. KB is blocked as pornographic by all of the Government departments that I have anything to do with. Swearing is also an issue.

Where you have any organisation with an Internet usage policy that excludes common sense or discretion on the part of the user base you'll have most useful sites blocked.

Having said that, there are people who stock up on child porn at work. The IT guy at school is not enjoying restricting Internet access, I guarantee it.

[hXc]

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.

[James Deuce]

Heeeheeeeheee.

Latin translator working for you then?

[Str8 Jacket]

Man we didnt even have access to the Internet when I was at school!

[koba]

Having said that, there are people who stock up on child porn at work. The IT guy at school is not enjoying restricting Internet access, I guarantee it.


The IT guy at my old (all boys) college got in trouble for naughty things like that. one of the most disturbing things in the court pages in the local paper was "Making animal porn" was among the many varied naughty things he got charged with.

Freaky shit.

[Skyryder]

Man we didnt even have access to the Internet when I was at school!

And what access there was to inter.....e was punishable by being expelled if caught............or heaven forbid the other.

Skyryder

[Mikkel]

Oh, you gotta love censorship. Thank you thought police, we'd be lost without you.

And dodgy IT guys always makes me think of BOfH (http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard1.html), it's written by a Kiwi and bloody hilarious. And there's a lot more (http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/) as well.

[xwhatsit]

Is BOFH written by a Kiwi?! LMAO! Had no idea.

We had great fun at school playing with proxies and SSH tunnels and lots of fun stuff to try and get around the blocking software and firewalls. Usually successful, nobody can stop a pack of determined geeks.

[gijoe1313]

We have the usual filtering here at my school, however since I am on good terms with the IT guy, I just give him the addies I want unblocked to be assigned to my log-on.

All sweet! KB and Dilbert are fine with me ... I just avoid checking up on the more questionable threads (which means most of them! :o :doh:)

My class are now all in different stages of denial due to lack of work all the spectre of exams ... :devil2:

I should be riding my bike :weep:

[The Pastor]

i know at my school the turned the net 0n and off for classes, so out of class time u were pwnt.

but for some reason usin windows explorer (instead of ie) got around all blockages.

[James Deuce]

Oh, you gotta love censorship. Thank you thought police, we'd be lost without you.



It's not thought police it's the half dozen families of the religious right or extreme hippy left who insist on the rest of us respecting their principles at the expense of our own (or lack thereof).

[jrandom]

Is BOFH written by a Kiwi?! LMAO! Had no idea.

Yup. It originated at Waikato Uni in the early 1990s or thereabouts, I believe. 1980s, even?

[limbimtimwim]

The IT guy at school is not enjoying restricting Internet access, I guarantee it.I resisted it as best as I could at work. And I really didn't like doing it. None the less I did.

You have to look at something extremely rough for the one I set up here to go off.

A bonus I do like is the inline virus scanning, which stops a remarkable amount of stuff every day.

[Tank]

It's not thought police it's the half dozen families of the religious right or extreme hippy left who insist on the rest of us respecting their principles at the expense of our own (or lack thereof).

Its not always thought police - there is a lot of shit out there on 'normal sounding' URLs that I (or any normal person) would not want my kids seeing.

Like when I wanted to look up dereamworld (I think I went to dreamworld.com not .com.au or something like that) with the kids prior to a holiday and ended up on a realllllly porno site - not something I wanted to share with my young 'uns.


Sometimes blocking IS OK. Its common sense and appropriate - not some big conspiracy by thought police and greenies.

[James Deuce]

I didn't suggest it was ok to accidentally bang into deviant porn btw, I do understand and agree with what you are saying, however there are reasonable things that are banned from schools and universities because they may offend a very small minority.

[Lias]

Yup. It originated at Waikato Uni in the early 1990s or thereabouts, I believe. 1980s, even?

Its written by Simon Travaglia, who still works at the uni afaik.

And as for the topic, as one of the IT guys who blocks access I'm all for it because blocking your access speeds up MY porn surfing :bleh:

Its only when IT managers start talking about us having equal rights with the users that I start gibbering and screaming.

[Tank]

Its only when IT managers start talking about us having equal rights with the users that I start gibbering and screaming.

Its more fun asking for the proxy reports of the last 3 weeks worth of IT staff's surfing. Jesus - you should see the paniced look on their faces.

[Lias]

Its more fun asking for the proxy reports of the last 3 weeks worth of IT staff's surfing. Jesus - you should see the paniced look on their faces.

That is why you sniff the network passwords of the more clueless members of the IT department and surf yoru goatse porn from THEIR accounts :-P

[Gremlin]

Its more fun asking for the proxy reports of the last 3 weeks worth of IT staff's surfing. Jesus - you should see the paniced look on their faces.
hellooooo there is no report :2thumbsup

call it a perk of the job ;)

[Hillbilly]

Well, I am the IT guy, so get so do whatever I wish....:innocent:.....now, back to compiling those thousands of MP3's from that banned usenet group....

[pritch]

And dodgy IT guys always makes me think of BOfH (http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard1.html), it's written by a Kiwi and bloody hilarious. And there's a lot more (http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/) as well.

I don't know, but I think Mr T is a Pom living in this country. When you read his stuff you just assume it to be set in the UK. That'd be a hard effect to achieve if the writer hadn't at least spent a lot of time there...

My God daughter was a teacher in Auckland (sorry you young blokes, she's currently in the UK). After a visit to Queensland I sent her an email and she was called in to the IT persons office to read my post. I had mentioned Brisbane's favourite brew (not mine) XXXX. So their protection programme decided XXXX was obviously pornographic...

This software still needs work!

[danb]

One of the good things working in IT as admins - go straight through the firewall without the proxy turned on. Even staying that I rarely go to this site at work otherwise I would be on it all day.

[Deviant Esq]

At my work it's mega control freak - pretty much all websites are blocked apart from a select few. The IT guys have just turned WebMarshall to block everything except specified sites, which are about as useful as a frozen grape.

[Hawkeye]

Man we didnt even have access to the Internet when I was at school!

When I was there it was - "Whats a computer?" :lol: