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How do I tell if my school is using a phone jammer?
Ok, so here's the story. My high school is one of the biggest in my state, for as long as I've been going there this odd thing has consisted, where every day when school starts at 7:10 AM, every student's phone will suddenly lose any ability to access the internet. Students have learned to install free VPN's on their phones and using them has worked to get their Wi-Fi back, but here's the weird thing; stopping use of the school's wifi and using cell data instead doesn't fix it either, Which leads me to believe the school has some sort of cell phone jammer in place. Calls can still be made, but all attempts to text anyone or access the internet are useless without a connection to the school's wifi and a vpn. Teacher's phones seem to be completely unaffected, so let me know what you think about all of this. Do you think it could be a phone jammer?
- pavel_lishin 2y agoIt's possible that they have their own "cell tower" that the phones connect to, that blocks all non-phone-call connections. That's not a "jammer", but would have the same effect. It feels unlikely, because it seems like it would impact people outside the school, unless the whole school is effectively a faraday cage.
- _cj3c 2y agoCan a faraday cage be switched on and off? Phones work fine in the school in the morning.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoMaybe, but it's more likely that they're simply toggling some mode in that private cell tower to allow certain connections through or not. The faraday cage comment was more about making sure people outside of the school aren't affected - you wouldn't want strangers walking by to be unable to connect to the internet. (Or hell, maybe they don't care?)
- stop50 2y agoA faraday cage works passivly and can't be shut down. I would rather think that the school has a deal with the cell tower operator. since these towers are identifiable and can be triangulated i should be easy checkable where the cell tower is.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoWhen we lived in one of our apartments, we had no cell signal, so the phone company sent us a "personal" unit - we plugged it into our router, and it received a connection to the internet, and allowed us to connect to the cell network. It was limited to only our phone numbers as well. I imagine the school is using something similar, but on a larger scale.
- JohnFen 2y agoI once lived in an apartment building where there was no cell coverage unless you climbed onto the roof. I bought a little cell repeater, put up an antenna, and restored great service. Not just to myself but to everyone within a couple hundred feet of me. The entire setup cost me around $200. I wasn't examining the cell connections, but I could have. They've changed the laws since then to require you to get the cell provider's permission before doing that -- but presumably that would be a very easy thing for a school to get.
- beardyw 2y agoIn most jurisdictions all of those things would be illegal.
- JohnFen 2y ago> Calls can still be made > Teacher's phones seem to be completely unaffected Then they're not using a jammer. There are other things they could be doing, though, that have the advantage of not being illegal. My guess is that other commenters here are correct: they have their own cell "tower" in the school and they're filtering things through that.