SparkleBox?

[LeMarchand]

without scaring any of them

Where's the fun in that?

[ZeroHour]

Certainly better than walking into said school one morning to find 10 members of staff grabbing at my collar and trying to buy my time with coffee and biscuits because their favourite/only resource has gone

You lucky sod! getting bribes and not abuse to fix issues, that sounds refreshing....

[synaesthesia]

The joys of working with primaries
They all get seen to anyway, noone ever gets left out - just the bribes make them think they're being seen to first or something

[Marci]

ermmmm, post 50 just says -

"Oops, no idea what happened there!"

Then the hosting site's administrators have pruned the message out... the basic summary being, "site owner has been banned from working with or having contact with or to be seen to be attempting contact with minors. His hosting of the site itself is in breach of these conditions."

How valid that statement is, who knows. At a guess it's removal from TES is due to ongoing legal proceedings upon which a verdict is yet to be made.

[Michael]

I find this a very interesting development. I've worked in schools for quite a number of years and I am pretty certain even a handful of teachers at every school use Sparklebox. I don't consider the software a threat to security, however if the reports are indeed true they're operating illegally all schools and LAs should take note of this.

[synaesthesia]

I've been having a really good poke around and really can't find any holes open to exploit in the toolbar. HOWEVER, and this is a big BUT, the biggest problem lies within the users and toolbars similar to the Sparklebox one. I won't need to explain that too far but I'm sure I'm not the only one that sees a hell of a lot of MyWebSearch infections/toolbars and rubbish/data collection from the likes of aLot.

"If Sparklebox is ok, these look similar, they must be fine"

Simplistic but apparently a very common approach from a non IT literate user.

[soveryapt]

"If Sparklebox is ok, these look similar, they must be fine"

Simplistic but apparently a very common approach from a non IT literate user.

Indeed it is, which is why I've banned the SparkleBox toolbar from all our machines as I'm sick of resetting connections .. so much so, I have SpiceWorks on the look out for the various components just in case someone tries to get clever! lol

[oxide54]

wsgfl blocked it for a while, and made a big deal of it on the atomwide site, then they unblocked and posted that they didn't think it was threat after all.

no-one at our school new cause no one uses it.

[russdev]

Just for peoples information I have unapproved the last two posts and have PM'd people mainly as there is legal case going on and info is confidential and we could get into hot water over it all...

Once the case has been resolved the posts will be re approved and edited etc as needed.

I advise people in YHGFL to contact the LA if they want more information.

Russell Dyas
EduGeek.net Admin

[leco]

Thanks for the explanation russdev, I was going to pass the info to my head tomorrow but will wait for the LA.

[eddyc]

@johnymac, it was just a heads up, but in future I won't bother to waste my time.

[mb2k01]

Without wanting to add to the complications Russ talked of above, I think it would be important to update this thread, as like many of you I've allowed a work around for users to access Sparklebox - but shall be removing that access until instructed otherwise...

Our LA and ISP have confirmed the real reason that Sparklebox was filtered via a letter to all local Headteachers today.

The concerns were not over the illegal running of the company as such - more to do with a second particular concern over individual(s) directly related to the company...

Check with your own LA or Broadband Consortium, who should be able to give you a clearer message. Until then, consider suspending your work-around solutions.

[nathan]

i wont paste the statment here, but one has been released on the YHGfL site - Its under Sparklebox - Update

Click on the View Item Link

Please remove this post if i have broken any rules, although i think that statements now in the public domain to help people decide on the action to take.

Nath

[synaesthesia]

Cat amongst the pigeons now. Without going into any detail, would people feel morally correct to continue using the resources? Would it be available for much longer?
And despite these LA's releasing that statement, more importantly can anyone be certain it is the truth?
They're damned good resources - would using them be akin to "blood money"?

So what are our thoughts on the allegations? As someone who looks after many schools I'm tempted to tell people to expect the worst. Would you tell the reasons? Would those come out anyway?
Or is ignorance bliss?

Please don't misunderstand my post in any way that exonerates the alleged actions; I'm just thinking on behalf of the people that use the resources and protecting them.

[powdarrmonkey]

Cat amongst the pigeons now. Without going into any detail, would people feel morally correct to continue using the resources?

Since the site and materials are no longer available, it is not correct to continue using them unless the copyright owners (last time I looked, Sparklebox Teaching Resources Ltd) have clearly placed them in the public domain or you have a license for them which is still in force.