block hotmail?

[adamyoung]

Has anyone blocked hotmail, yahoo etc (for students not staff) and forced students to use the school email system, which can be filtered to make sure everythings work related?

[webman]

Yes, we have recently. We notified the staff first so they could switch, and then removed them all completely.

[adamyoung]

What sort of reception did you get from students/staff?

[webman]

Initially a few members of staff didn't like the idea and were given a little longer to adjust. Thankfully it wasn't too much of a problem as most of them were using our webmail anyway. The students obviously didn't like it at all. As punishment, we somtimes withdraw their access to our webmail - this just spurred them on to use their own Yahoo accounts or similar. Now they can't do this, we can better monitor emails as and when necessary and ensure that security is maintained.

 

You could provide reasons for the actions such as "new policies" and "security - external webmail are more prone to carry infectious messages and is out of the school's control".

[Jake]

We havent had a choice , our LEA has banned all web based email. So yahoo, gmail, hotmail etc have all been blocked.

 

Got to say , that our staff despise it and complain every day

[webman]

They'll complain at anything, they're so used to getting their own way all the time

[Jake]

hehe true !

[Disease]

The LEA told us that it was a BECTA requirement that Hotmail and other web based email is blocked. I called Becta and spoke to the ISP Accreditation Manager and he told me is was a Crock of S**T. When I challenged the LEA about it they refused effectively to change their stance on it.

[Michael]

I have the same problem at my school. Staff tell me what's the point of school e-mail addresses when they already have Hotmail, Yahoo etc

 

It is a problem and it's interesting to hear other admins experiences that the only way is to force and block hotmail. I do agree from a monitoring and security point of view it makes good sense as I regularly get junk mail on my hotmail account offering me various products.

[webman]

Very true.. I don't like the way LEAs are reported to quote BECTa on policies for this that and the other and turn out to be lying about it. Grrr!

 

Hotmail was blocked years ago when the school got their first proxy server (2000 I think?) due to a student getting an "inappropriate" message (just spam). Since then it has become the norm for Hotmail to be blocked but all other continued to be allowed access. We got our own email server about a year ago.

[Disease]

Student use of Hotmail is not a problem as we use a whitelist so pupils can only access sites we open up. Our problem is with the staff who use hotmail a lot and have built up numerous contacts over the years with it. One of Portsmouth LEA's excuses is that hotmail is insecure and virus ridden, which again is a load of crap.

[adamyoung]

i think there is a need for it, we see alot of example of kids abusing the piczo service to bully etc, makes me think jst what there sending to each other during lessons on hotmail

[MkII]

Local Authority blocked here - yes - monitoring is the highest concern, and a requirement as far as I understand.

 

We have our own webmail system, availabler externally - both council employees on the WAN and in our4 school. Everyone uses those and commonly have given up any other email system they used.

[Guest richard]

We have just blocked hotmail here for students as a parent complained about explicit emails being sent to their daughter by her boyfriend during lesson times. I am in the process of adding yahoo and others to our blacklist of sites for students. I don't block it for staff as if I did I wouldn,t live to see out the day.

 

Just out of interest we only give our sixth form students and staff access to email. The rest of the school used to have it until a year or so ago when somone sent an obscene email about the head to everyone in the school.

[Ric_]

I did it at my last place and it proved worthwhile when trawling the internal system and coming across a group of 14-year olds planning after school sex orgies!

 

I unblocked access to hotmail and yahoo mail for staff but only as it was asked for and most people understood the reasons behind it.

 

Remember you do have a duty of care for the little darlings so you should make best efforts to prevent bullying, etc. via electronic means.

[RichCowell]

I've blocked hotmail and yahoo etc for the pupils, but not for the staff yet.

Might consider that to try to get them using the school email system.

 

I thought every pupil had to have a school email account now? I could have sworn I'd seen and heard that from a few different sources.

[Face-Man]

Hi,

 

We block webbased mail about a year ago for all users for the reason mentioned and after some intial grumbbling got everyone on board. As a compromise though We have opened it up before 8:30 and after 4pm especailly for the Austrailian Staff....

 

On a differnet note I have also had to block all the free webspace pages as students start to bully other pupils and arrange fights with other schools on their blogs. They have also posted happy slappy vids and inappropriate images.. So I waiting for the teacher who comes up with a reason to want to open them back up....

[alan-d]

Could we have a list of such sites on here somewhere?

 

I have some and I'm sure there are hundreds more, if we produce a list we could cause country wide misery for all kids (and some staff).

[Jake]

Piczo and rateyourteacher or whatever it was called were the 2 we had the most problem with. Blocked now of course

[adamyoung]

Could we have a list of such sites on here somewhere?

 

I have some and I'm sure there are hundreds more, if we produce a list we could cause country wide misery for all kids (and some staff).

 

Good idea!

[Geoff]

http://www.urlblacklist.com

[adamyoung]

I think there are alot of sites which are considered ok by blacklists, but in a school there not educational so not wanted.

 

I think an edugeek site block list would fill the gap.

[adamyoung]

Just a quick update

 

the filtering has caught some very disturbing goings on during kids conversations!

 

Response has been ok, kids are finally getting used to it, although you do get the odd one 'My teacher has given me permission to get my hotmail' thinking they can get round the ban - of course this has no effect!

[MrDylan]

I've recently rolled out Firefox so our students and staff CAN access Hotmail.

 

I don't see the point in blocking it, they'll only find some other web based email provider.

 

Also, we've had more trouble with our internal email, which has been banned for anyone not in year 11 or up.

When it's enabled for lower years they spend all lesson emailing each other rubbish, but they don't seem to bother doing that on hotmail, presumably because they don't know the little girls address they want to abuse.

[beeswax]

as the staff here use hotmail, and pupils are allowed to send work home, or download it from home, it's a constant battle to see who's legitimate or not.