MLP Forums blocked at school?

[abcdefggggg 34]

I'm honoured that my humble 5-month-old pony forum has already been deemed dangerous to students' academic progress.

 

Ha! Amazing.

 

It isn't blocked here at my school; which was actually a surprise at first because of numerous other websites are blocked for "Forums/Message Boards"

[Artemisia 166]

I do not know if it is so at my place of education, but in two weeks time when the wifi has been brung I shall know. I have not had the courage to try it on the school computers yet. (Why did I just write like that...?)

[Drehgunklew 136]

No it's not blocked at my school. Mainly because they don't care what we do at all with our school computers, so long we don't download anything from The Piratebay etc. Those are the only blocked sites. Oh and porn sites too. Otherwise, they don't care at all.

[PrincessPixie 8]

I'm not in school anymore, so.

 

At my high school, it probably would have been blocked because they blocked most things like that (although it might still have been un-blocked).

 

At my university, nothing was blocked. At all. The only thing you weren't supposed to do was download software and applications and stuff like that.

[aperture_tech 56]

Most of the time, you can bypass a web filter using HTTPS instead of HTTP. Your school might be able to track you though, but nobody at my school gets in trouble for it as long as you aren't going on any NSFW sites.

[catfusious 33]

I have no idea if it's blocked or not but if it was thats stupid because there isn't anything wrong with discussing our love of ponies. But whatever, love and tolerate.

[joeyh3 153]

I actually work for a public school district, and I'm pretty much the only person in the entire 6500+ student district who runs our content filter (Technically my boss has access to it, but the day-to-day operations of the filter are handled by me alone).

 

Anyway, there seems to be a few misconceptions here about how schools block sites, and why they do so.

 

First and foremost, most blocking is done automatically with no input from the people operating the filter. Content filters analyize sites and categorize them, and if they fall into certain categories, the filter automatically blocks them. A lot of times, a filter administrator won't even know that a specific site was blocked, as it was all done in the background.

 

With most filters, forums such as this one will fall into a category such as "Online Community", "Social Networking", etc. those categories also include sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are usually blocked due to liability reasons (a lot of school administrators do not like those sites due to cyber-bullying, people posting pictures/videos of other students, etc). Instead of trying to each individual site where this concern may arise, it's easier to just block the entire category.

 

A second reason is bandwidth - school's cannot just buy the same cable modem/DSL service that you use at home - those are shared lines, and schools typically need private lines instead, which are way more expensive. A 10Mbps cable modem would run about $25 - $50 a month for a home user, but a 10Mbps connection for a school could easily cost several hundred dollars a month. So there's a limited amount of bandwidth for all the computers in a school, and schools would prefer that the bandwidth go for educational use instead of entertainment, as if you have twenty students trying to download a game in one computer lab, it will make it take much longer for twenty students in another lab to view videos about history or physics or anything else required for their class.

 

A third common reason - these sites just aren't part of your education. The internet connection in a school is meant for students to learn, not to have fun (unless you're like Twilight and find learning and fun to be the same thing). A lot of students don't want to do their work and instead surf fun websites, but they're there to do classwork, so sites are blocked to keep students on task.

 

Content filters are kinda a necessary evil. They're there for a reason (partially because in the United States, the law requires schools to use one), but they do serve a purpose. I get blamed a lot for sites being blocked/not being blocked, but in reality, unless I manually block something (which happens fairly rarely), most blocks are automatic and are done without me even knowing.

 

Most of the time, you can bypass a web filter using HTTPS instead of HTTP. Your school might be able to track you though, but nobody at my school gets in trouble for it as long as you aren't going on any NSFW sites.

 

That trick only works on older and low-end web filters. The reason that worked was because HTTPS traffic is encrypted, so a content filter cannot determine the content of HTTPS packets. However, for traffic to be encrypted, a certificate needs to be used to identify the website. The certificates themselves are not encrypted, so modern filters are able to determine which website the certificate was issued to, and if the certificate contains a blocked URL, simply close the connection, preventing users from accessing the site.

 

Some filters are able to go a step beyond that - instead of just analyzing who the certificate was issued to, they just encryption the entire stream and just analyze the data like it was a regular, non-HTTPS transmission. This is a bit more complex though, as the computer receiving the data is expecting a HTTPS transmission from the site that the certificate was issued to, and the filter, not having the server's private certificate, will not be able to re-encrypt it using the original certificate.So instead, the filter has to re-encrypt the data using it's own certificate. This causes a problem because the encrypted data would show that it was coming from a location other than where the client was expecting, which will result in an error. The only way around this is to install the filter's certificate on the client computers.

 

When it comes to controlled networks, where the organization owns every computer on the network, the second method is the best way to filter the Internet connection, because they can simply put the filter's certificate on all the computers, and the end users will never know that their data was unencrypted and inspected by the filter. However, in schools that allow students to bring their own tablets and laptops and that, the first method is more ideal, because otherwise there will be a ton of errors and complaints about fake security certificates and that.

[Wubsie 1,123]

My school doesn't really block anything except for Facebook. (which is something I don't care about whatsoever).

I was on here for about 4-5 seconds at my school because I didn't want anyone to see me looking at ponies. XD

I didn't even attempt logging in at school because I knew I would forget to sign out and someone would play around with my profile.

[KakeiTheWolf 652]

Probably because forum websites are disruptive and not conducive to learning most of the time.

 

If that was the reasoning for blocking things in schools... most of my high school teachers needed to be blocked. They were in no way productive people.

[~Sugar Sprinkles~ 638]

Um, I dunno! I never really looked it up at school to see it if is blocked, but I am pretty sure it is ._. they block everyone non educational

[rcollinz13 428]

Well, considering that I am on MLP forums right now at my school; no it's not blocked. Although, a lot of the other forums I tries to get on are blocked. I gues that we're just that awesome.

[treyblowski 3]

sadly I didn't find out about this site until after I graduated, but i have a friend who's still in high school so maybe I can ask him.

but I dont think it would be blocked though, since my other friend could go to FML but the intimacy section was blocked, some images are blocked on google images, some arent, even a few of the more risque pieces of mlp fan art, my other friend went to a site that had pictures of the room Chris Farley died in( his body was still there), yet IMDB is blocked( but i could understand that somewhat since every film genre is featured on IMDB, but if they can block one section of a web site, why not block certain movies featured on the site?) I could have sworn another friend told me that at one point Rotten.com was not blocked, with how messed up my schools site blocking policy is, mlp forums and Equestria daily blocking them for a dumb reason,

 

forgive me if this post seems a tad jumbled in its execution

and I will reply if my friend says its blocked

[Fghik 360]

I'm assuming yours is a collective filter much like the one we have. Ours doesn't block forums by nature; but when it does it is listed as an "exception" (sites specifically listed to not allow access too.) MLPForums is still up to my knowlege. If it's not blocked by the filter, than if it's blocked it was purposefully added as a blocked site.

[Jon the VGNerd 885]

Eh, MLPForums in my college is not blocked. Then again, too few people in my college seem to notice me go on the forums anyway (or they simply don't care at all). http://mlpforums.com/public/style_emoticons/default/dry.png

[Commander Urdnot 2,680]

Nope, but I've gotten Equestria Daily blocked at my school. (By accident)

 

My economics teacher saw me reading it while he was teaching. Most of my teachers just laugh and ask me about MLP, but for some reason he got really angry, and ratted me out.

[Chales 129]

Nope, its not blocked at my school. Now I'm at college so their less strict then highschools. Also my teachers don't know how to use a dvd player so I'm sure they wouldn't be able to restrict sites.

[AegisReflector 886]

When I was in high school, every forum that was hosted by SMF or InvisionPower was blocked because it was listed under "OBSCENE; PORN"

 

Apparently you all are porn addicts and are hazardous to my health.

[Ghostpony 17]

yeah it seems to be blocked at my school, its under forums and message boards. it sucks so much i wish it wasn't though school must you always make it harder for me to like you.

[khaine21x3 789]

Probably because the mainstream watches fox news and perceive bronies to be anti god sexual deviants who are trying to destroy muricca

[Lunar Guardian 80]

Nope; I was able to get in and see the colorful background at my high school.

 

I would expect that the only reason it would be blocked is the IP.Board Community Forum Software that runs these forums and many others is pretty widespread and can probably be easily identified as an nonconstructive forum and blocked.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Hamez