A new survey of school children has discovered that many use ‘proxy servers’ to surf websites which may have been banned on security systems. Whilst it may sound out of the normal reaches for most children, when one secondary school class was asked, every pupil knew exactly what proxy servers were and how they worked.
Bypassing website controls, proxy servers are described as “secret tunnels” to the internet. One pupil explained “It’s just a box that says ‘type in the website that is blocked’. You type it in and it brings it up.” Offering a way to pass restrictions that may be in place to offer internet security, browsing history is also affected as every site visited after using a proxy server fails to register. And whilst schools can block the proxy servers themselves another pupil said “When the blocked proxy server you were using got banned, you had another one ready and everyone had at least four that they knew and everyone shared them about.”
Recognised as an increasing problem within educational centres, many of those companies providing schools with internet services are doing all they can to stop the use of web-based proxies. JANET, responsible for carrying a large amount of traffic around school networks expressed “I would agree that proxy servers to get around security systems is indeed a problem. Technical solutions need to be used as one aspect of a wider approach to protecting users, including educating children, teachers, and parents in how to use the web safely.”
