School filters vs. home proxies

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 3, 2006 4:00 AM PST

A teenager at a Pennsylvania school gets caught handing out business cards with instructions on how to circumvent his school's Web filter.

But instead of throwing the school discipline book at him, administrators offer a choice: They'll give him a break if he lets the school's tech people know how he beat the system.

Overwhelming response by parents, teachers and children to "Kids outsmart Web filters," a recent installment of CNET News.com's Digital Kids series, showed that the sidestepping of filters on school PCs is definitely a hot issue on campus (though it's certainly not the only one).

One of the most remarkable responses to the article came from the parent of the Pennsylvania teen. The student's free "Anti-Skool Policy" cards offered two URLs to access Web sites banned by the school. And, unfortunately for the student, they also bore his name, which led to his getting caught.

"My kid did get punished...(but) a bit different from the norm," the student's parent wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "The school would not press the issue if he showed the computer people (from the school) how he did it and explained how it worked.

"This pressure of being responsible for showing the school how the proxies worked, enabling them to block the proxies, had much more bearing on him than tossing him out for a couple days!"

So how are other schools handling this problem?

One IT administrator from a medium-size school district in Colorado wrote that kids accessing MySpace.com was a big problem until he installed a filter from 8e6 Technologies. "We haven't had an outbreak in a month," he said. Others promoted a filter from Websense and "white lists," or filters that direct traffic based on approved sites, not just a revolving list of unwanted sites.

On the flip side, kids touted Web proxies like Hidemyass.com, which even teachers used to access information on the Web.

According to one student: "Another school in the district caught some of the students using a proxy blocker to look up porn, and now it's a districtwide policy that if you use a proxy blocker or something similar, you get an automatic one-day suspension."

Judging by readers comments, it also appears that kids all over the world are savvy to proxies and other tricks for sidestepping filters.

A 15-year-old techie in Australia said that by logging on to his PC at school, he could use "Remote Desktop" to access the school Admin account. "Because they were using Windows 2003 edition, I could log in 'behind' (the teacher's) screen and I could use her computer without her even realizing it!"

Filters and proxies aren't the only issue when it comes to education in the Internet age.

College kids are flocking to a site that helps them figure out which professors are hot, and which are not. Academically speaking, that is.

Ratemyprofessors.com, the rating and reviews site that has ruffled some feathers in academia, has nearly doubled its audience in the last year, according to research firm Comscore and the 23-year-old owners of the site. The site drew 724,000 unique visitors in March, up from 385,000 visitors a year ago, according to Comscore.

Part of that growth can be attributed to interest from professors--at least 25 percent of the traffic originates from professors, said Will Desantis, president of the site. But professors have long stuck their nose up at the site: Some schools have threatened lawsuits or banning the site from their networks (there's that issue of proxies again). One professor even began posting a blog called "Ratemystudents" that trashed kids in his class.

"We've been getting less complaints," said Desantis, who bought the Maryland-based company with a partner last October for "seven figures." "Most (professors who are going on) are seeing what they can improve on."

Still, he said, "it's hard to break down the image. We're kind of seen as the bad guy because people look at it on the surface."

Professors aside, the site is attracting interest from advertisers, venture capitalists and "big Internet companies," Desantis said, following a recent investment in Facebook, a social networking site for college kids. Revenue is up significantly, Desantis said, thanks to sponsorship ad deals with companies like National Lampoon. "By midsummer, we'll have a partner, investment or be acquired," he said.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing trends when it comes to kids and the Web involves adolescents who cut themselves, or "self-mutilate."

Such children are increasingly turning to the Internet to vent and commiserate with others about their secret affliction, according to a new study from Cornell University psychologists.

There are roughly 500 discussion boards devoted to talk about self-mutilating behavior by kids driven to cut, burn or scratch themselves, up from 400 when Cornell began its study a year ago. The study, which was published Tuesday, found that of the 3,200 messages analyzed, nearly a third of the comments were supportive in nature. Another 20 percent of the comments were about triggers and motivation for self-hurting practices.

The researchers said the socializing threatens to "normalize" the behavior. About 15 percent of the comments were for sharing methods for cutting or burning oneself or on concealing the behavior.

Of the surveyed comments, most were written by girls age 14 to 20. "They can easily find each other 24/7, and adults are clueless that this is going on," said Jane Powers, a senior research associate at Cornell and co-author of the study.

The finding makes sense, given that the Internet is a social hub for teens. More than 80 percent of American kids age 12 to 17 use the Net, and more than half of those kids log on daily, according to a Pew Internet study. And because secrecy is a hallmark of self-mutilation, the Internet is attractive for its measure of anonymity. Researchers suspect that up to 14 percent of teens purposely injure themselves as an outlet for emotional problems.

Teen-moods.net, a Web site for depressed teens, is one such outlet for kids who "self-hurt." "I am a cutter and have been since 11 years old and im (sic) 16 now," reads one post on the Web site. "i told my counselor that i dont think i can ever stop....please any feedback or similar stories write me back."

Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.