Censorship on school computers (1 Viewer)

[PaleReflection]

I was just wondering how restrictive other people's schools computers are.
So, so many sites are blocked under so many different categories, and most of the time its not even an offensive site.

For instance, a relatively new category is "electronic commerce", which blocks any website where there is the mere option of buying something over the internet, thus censoring such sites as amazon.com, kinokuniya and other book sites.

Hotmail is also blocked, as well as ANY image search.

Nudity, sex, profanity, etc. are all categories which determine if a website is blocked, but as I said before a lot of the time it's unnecessary. An example being Marilyn Monroe websites being blocked to a student trying to do research for an assignment.

I find it a great inconvenience as it pretty much makes doing any research at school impossible.

Who here has had similar experiences?

 

[ameh]

we have violence, sex and all those blocked...but googling images and cached items aren't!

 

[girlanachronism]

some of our blockages are fairly standard (ie hotmail, although not gmail ) but some seem really random.

what pisses me off is that at our school there's a link to report if a site has been unfairly blocked... but students can't use it! i think this is bullshit as sometimes i'll be researching for say, legal studies, but as a site may contain references to some fairly graphic things, they'll be blocked, despite being educational?

i also think they should set up a distinction of "appropriate material" between junior and senior accounts, as things which would not be considered appropriate for us to research for school in yr 8 or 9 are now necessary

 

[sunny]

A public school's Internet connection may be filtered by the DET if that is who they get their connection from.

 

[girlanachronism]

I think that's what ours is now, although that's fairly recent as the 'you have attempted to access inappropriate materials' page has changed

 

[*girl04*]

we can get into hotmail and stuff at school .. do it all the time to e-mail notes to my home computer.

we dont have many pages banned lol the other day these guys in da library accidently loaded child porn, school got angry with that .. but they didnt get their computer acounts frozen or anything .. accidents do happen

 

[PaleReflection]

I hate it, I'm constantly trying to reach a site and finding that it's blocked.
Why would electronic commerce be blocked? It's not as if any one is actually going to buy something over the internet at school!

Perhaps the worst thing is the blocked image searches. I don't know what I'd do if I was a student who didn't have a computer.

 

[alby]

the school's got webmarshall....pisses us off sometimes...
we cant get into hotmail or any of those, but you've got a school email account.....i can get into SOME bos forums/threads (depends on the content i guess)...you can get into ebay, but cant see the pics....image searches are allowed i think....& i know some people can get into some chat rooms...dunno which ones though

 

[Kwayera]

the school's got webmarshall....pisses us off sometimes...
we cant get into hotmail or any of those, but you've got a school email account.....i can get into SOME bos forums/threads (depends on the content i guess)...you can get into ebay, but cant see the pics....image searches are allowed i think....& i know some people can get into some chat rooms...dunno which ones though

We have WebMarshall. It only blocks a few sites, but it records EVERYTHING.

 

[cro_angel]

we have our school intranet system so we can access our own email and file directory..
rude sites are blocked.. sometimes bos works sometimes it doesnt.. oh and all geocities sites are banned

 

[ameh]

usually our school system records all the sites but we empty everything and delete the cookies/history and temp files so there isn't much of a trail.

 

[sunny]

usually our school system records all the sites but we empty everything and delete the cookies/history and temp files so there isn't much of a trail.

That wouldn't help. All logs would be kept on the school's gateway, not on the individual computers.

 

[PaleReflection]

What about LiveJournal?

I used to access it all the time, but I haven't lately. Apparently it's been blocked.

Is there some sort of compulsory filter that schools have to have? Is it regulation, or do they just choose to block what they like?

 

[dangerousdave]

My school has too many sites blocked, can't go anywhere, cant even do reasearch and they're fucking slow.
Oh well, I never use the school comps anyway.

 

[kat_mandu]

our filter isn't to bad. but we just found out a teachers login and password so we use that and have no restrictions!!!!! screw the system!

 

[alby]

We have WebMarshall. It only blocks a few sites, but it records EVERYTHING.

we have a fair few sites blocked...but no tonnes though
but yeah like you go to an "offencive" site & you get this thing up...."the site you are trying to access in considered offencive, your attempt has been recorded" or something along those lines....but probably unless you went on a really 'bad' site (eg. porn) they dont give a shit

 

[daydreamkitty]

Hhehehehehehheheheheh Censership is a joke lol
I dunno for everyone else's but uh my "old school" was funny
both teachers and students had the incabalities hehehe
My English teacher told me she was searching for a poem that
was searched under giraffes or something like that and she got a
blocked page mentioning that it was porn lmao that must have been some
very funny porn lmao

 

[alby]

lol giraffe porn.....sounds about as funny as lego porn! hehehheh

 

[kelboo]

I think our school computer system is a piece of shit... I never had a login name/password, so it'd always be someone else's profile I was using. They are extremely slow, because although it is a supposedly high-speed Internet connection, they have running about 150 computers all accessing the Internet at the same time using the same bandwidth. It's lots of fun.

Oh - and the most ridiculous thing about the shit computers is that the year 7, 8 and 9 classes get preference over any senior needing to do private research/study!!! Normally there is a class or three in the library, and there is only one period out of a two week cycle that there is no-one using the research computers for SHITTY junior classwork.

That said, one of the only good things about our computers according to this thread, is that nothing much is censored!! We can use Hotmail etc etc, but yeah there is a log that the administrator only can access to find out what sites are being accessed. The reason we are able to access Hotmail is to send work to ourselves (at home). Obviously we can't go shopping and look at porn on the internet, but all in all I don't think our censorship deal is TOO bad.

Finished my rant now back to you guys

 

[PaleReflection]

I checked on the computers today to see whether I could acces Bored of Studies: surprise, surprise: it's blocked.

Reason? It's classed under "School cheating information".

It's bullshit!