4 ms·

One side effect of schools blocking websites is students downloading and using free VPN software. They have no money, and it works well enough for "unblocking"

• csydas 10y ago
  Can you elaborate where you are seeing this? Is this as the post-secondary level or lower? I worked in higher-ed in the US and almost uniformly our institution and those we talked to in mailing lists were adamantly anti-blocking. Remembering back to when I was in HS and our library was outfitted with a few donated computers that shared a 56k connection, I know they had a net-nanny installed, but that was quite some time ago.
  • Vexs 10y ago
    Schools blocking stuff is very active still- it's extremely prevalent up to and including high school, and only a handful of colleges do any sort of filtering. Furthermore, kids find increasingly shady free vpns as IT blocks more and more free vpns. Lots of kids will use free vpns to get their SAT/ACT/AP scores a day or so early.
    • LogicX 10y ago
      wow, thats a good use-case you dont think of often.
    • chimeracoder 10y ago
      > Lots of kids will use free vpns to get their SAT/ACT/AP scores a day or so early. I don't understand - how does a VPN help there? Are schools actually blocking the websites that publish the test results?
      • tonyztan 10y ago
        Some standardized test scores are released on different dates depending on the location of your IP (divided into zones like Eastern, Central, Western US, and International).