A Game of Telephone—Misused Proxies and The Dangers They Pose to Schools

In the 90s and early 2000s, having a cell phone was a big deal. Text messages were a luxury. Phone calls to your friends without being tethered to the wall was an indulgence. Free nights and weekends were top tier. Handing a kid one of those indestructible bricks with the ringback tones was like giving them a key to the world at large. 

Now, that key to the world is able to do almost anything. Explore the far corners of the internet, communicate with friends and strangers alike, capture and share any moment in HD, and squash boredom with a flick of the thumb. In just a few short decades, these devices have become entwined in our day-to-day lives (I checked mine at least twice while writing this paragraph).

With 42% of kids owning a smart phone before age 10 and 14 US states actively banning cell phone use during the school day, how are kids handling the restraint of their technological crutches during school? Further, is there a chance that cell phone bans could increase schools’ and students’ exposure to risk? Let’s explore.

Point and Click 

What was slowly becoming common in the 2000s is almost a certainty today: 95% of teens (ages 13-17) have access to a smartphone. Individualized browsing habits aside, these totems of modern communication can drive kids to reach for them in moments of boredom, escapism, or just general distraction. 

So what happens when we prohibit cell phone use during the school day? The stimulus and the dopamine many kids have become accustomed to are now missing from those 8 hours. Some students can certainly be patient and stay engaged in class. Others will be sneaky and attempt to push the limits. But we have to consider the students most at risk: Those with the drive to keep engaging in content and the curiosity to find a new way to do so. 

When discussing vulnerable populations at large, children are always at risk. Children with curiosity? Even higher. 

Curiosity Got the Cat Detention (and a Virus)

As a student, one of my greatest sins in the computer lab was figuring out the file structure and how the use of a shared admin folder could pass text notes back and forth on save state: A home brewed instant message since I couldn't talk to my friend on the other side of the room during class. My downfall? Admin files and creation were tracked. Of course.

This was before students were assigned their own Chromebooks and carried them to every class. What is stopping today’s curious children from finding other ways to bypass the technology rules when they’re bored at school? 

A quick search on the r/school subreddit forum shows dozens of posts from students asking for advice on proxy sites to circumvent their school’s content filters. Even more results come back for unblocked game sites. These search results loosely correlate to the 83% increase YoY in proxy and filter avoidance sites on our network since the school year started and a 295% increase in suspicious domains containing “roblox.”

What the kids aren’t realizing, much like how I didn’t consider that my DIY instant message activity would be tracked, is that the domains they’re trying to access via proxies are often malicious. For instance, there was a 462% increase in September for malicious domains containing the word “gaming.writing I” And for the schools that aren’t blocking content categories relating to proxy and filter avoidance, access to these malicious sites is opening up a large can of worms (pun intended) on school networks.

DNSFilter for Content Filtering in Education

The risks of students circumventing network protections does not make a case for allowing cell phone use during class. However, there are additional important steps to take to ensure kids aren’t using school devices in ways that open the entire network up to threats.

1. Block proxy and filter avoidance sites across the network and individual devices
2. Educate students on the dangers of trying to bypass content filters
3. Allow students to submit access requests for sites they want to use on their school-issued devices
4. Monitor query log data for signs of circumvention attempts

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