iPad Monitoring

[Discovery1031]

Hi Everyone,

 

Not sure if this is the correct place to put this. What is everyone doing to monitor their students on the iPads. We do have Smoothwall doing the filtering but SLT want something on the devices and I am not sure this is possible with how restrictive apple are.

[tmoon-mint]

Apple Classroom.

 

What is Classroom? – Apple Support (UK)

[Brimstone]

First question...

 

Do you require a filtering solution or a monitoring solution that can track keywords in content on the device ?(which can not be done on an iPad)

[Face-Man]

You could always go old school and suggest the teachers to stand behind the students and watch what they are doing on the ipads

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi Everyone,

 

Not sure if this is the correct place to put this. What is everyone doing to monitor their students on the iPads. We do have Smoothwall doing the filtering but SLT want something on the devices and I am not sure this is possible with how restrictive apple are.

 

Hi @Discovery1031 - Lightspeed can do this - let me know if you want a chat?

[CHiLL]

Apple are very restrictive and unless things have changed, the only way to monitor Internet usage on iOS is to install a browser from the monitoring solutions provider. For example, you'd need to deploy Smoothwall's browser to your iOS devices and restrict/remove all other browsers (Chrome/Edge/Safari, etc) from the iPads using your MDM. This is because the filtering only works on that specific browser and isn't system-wide.

[Brimstone]

Apple are very restrictive and unless things have changed, the only way to monitor Internet usage on iOS is to install a browser from the monitoring solutions provider. For example, you'd need to deploy Smoothwall's browser to your iOS devices and restrict/remove all other browsers (Chrome/Edge/Safari, etc) from the iPads using your MDM. This is because the filtering only works on that specific browser and isn't system-wide.

 

This is incorrect.......

 

Lightspeed's agent can monitor web browsing history in Safari BUT...only in a 1:1 senario as the Lightspeed Filter is configured to report which user in the MDM the iPad it is attached to, this is not down to Apple restrictions, it's simply because the iPad has no login or authentication. There are ways around this limitation in a shared environment such as using a portal in which each user logs into every time they launch Safari, RM have a solution that does exactly this. There are other solutions from Securly but still require a 1:1 device deployment.

 

Smoothwall's browser solution is absolute PITA and is quote possibly the worst browsing experience on any device I've ever seen.

 

If the OP is looking for a monitoring solution this again only works in a 1:1 senario but it's important to remember that the solution will only monitor apps being used in the cloud e.g. Google Sheets/Word/Excel. It will not pick up keywords for application content on the device. this is due to Apple's extreme levels of personal privacy and security with iOS

[tom_newton]

You are probably thinking of the old browser solution we have from Future Digital days.

Lightspeed uses Apples FILTERING APIs only - this is not appropriate monitoring, and wouldn't catch a student typing in a forum like this for example.

[Mrpower]

Oddly I was going to create a thread on this very same topic. As I am in the same boat as the OP. I have tested some solutions based on that I have available, a smoothwall and perseverance.

The smoothwall app, as a solution to filter learners works OK. However the knowledge of who is surfing the web is still a mystery.

A solution that used apple managed iCloud accounts or MDM logins or assigning the divide to a learner / staff would give some idea to who might be using the tablet. A proxy login method would only tell us ICT manager who login, but not how might be using the web now. As the iPads at my school get handed around to different learners each day in some classes. Being an SEN school some staff would have to login for learners. Or some kinds of iPad ID and filter applied to each device.

I have smooth wall alerts from iPad but I have know ideas what student is using that iPad just an ip address.

[ibpalle]

For the user identification on the Smoothwall iOS browser, take a look at this KB - the user ID section.

 

https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404006049810-Installing-Cloud-Filter-for-iOS

[365Steve]

Hi Everyone,

 

Not sure if this is the correct place to put this. What is everyone doing to monitor their students on the iPads. We do have Smoothwall doing the filtering but SLT want something on the devices and I am not sure this is possible with how restrictive apple are.

 

If you want monitoring on the ipads, we can do this via Securus, and it doesn't require a new browser.

Drop me a DM if you want to know more.

[Wave9_Lee]

Apple are very restrictive and unless things have changed, the only way to monitor Internet usage on iOS is to install a browser from the monitoring solutions provider. For example, you'd need to deploy Smoothwall's browser to your iOS devices and restrict/remove all other browsers (Chrome/Edge/Safari, etc) from the iPads using your MDM. This is because the filtering only works on that specific browser and isn't system-wide.

Lightspeed filter and Lightspeed Alert, can filter, monitor and safeguard iOS devices by the iOS smart agent installed on the device. As the filtering is happening at the device level it captures anything making a web call out, and from there it will alert you on any safeguarding incident that makes a web call out. Much more effective than being limited to a browser.

[Brimstone]

You are probably thinking of the old browser solution we have from Future Digital days.

Lightspeed uses Apples FILTERING APIs only - this is not appropriate monitoring, and wouldn't catch a student typing in a forum like this for example.

This statement is INCORRECT Lightspeed uses BOTH Apple's Filtering API and it's own Cloud iOS Filtering solution, you get the same filtering experience whether on an iOS device or a Windows/Chrome device.

 

I don't work for Lightspeed or Smoothwall and have configured and used both solutions, for iOS Lightspeed does a far superior job.

[Tefters]

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE BUY INTO LIGHTSPEED'S BS ABOUT IPAD ALERTING OFFSITE.

 

I have just noticed this topic having been away from Edugeek for a while (projects etc...)

I will update this post tomorrow with full context as it's late and I need family time but here's my latest email I just sent to their technical support manager 20 mins ago due to ongoing issues since day 1 using their cloud relay and child protection alerting module.

Also see the attached pictures (child name is ok as it's my child's test account), and tell me that the product is sound when it's web filtering side logs the searches but the child protection alerting side shows nothing!

 

--------------

 

Appreciate you've been the butt of my frustration here Ken but as you can see, I'm just plucking words and phrases off the top of my head and they are not triggering. 6 months now and the system has got no better and as for the customer service and technical support, I'm probably best not to comment.

 

 

The worst part in all this is that I have other schools contacting me about your product as they want to go down the iPad 1:1 route as well and are being advised by companies such as Sync and Jigsaw24, 2 of the biggest iPad school retailers in the country, that your product is the leading solution in child protection. I don't even want to think about your current customers in the same scenario blissfully unaware that the product is not working on iPads using your cloud relay solution.

 

 

I'm sure the product may work differently if the relay was an onsite device and we relayed the iPads through that but then that means all the iPad internet traffic coming back onsite to then go out to the internet again which defeats the principle of what we are trying to achieve.

 

 

I have spoken to 2 other vendors today regarding this and they both said "yes of course we can monitor iPad traffic" until I mentioned off-site and when asked to be honest they both said "no we can't without relaying your iPads back onsite through a relay device".

 

 

There is 1 vendor I need to go back to which I looked at alongside yours which got around all these issues, mainly Apple and their security/stance on being anonymous, and there's was an app which is a browser and everything in the app was key logged.

 

 

Creating a word list yourself and going back to your dev team and saying add this is not a solution as that is a simple word match, on top of that what happens if a child misspells a word like suicid etc... Because from what you have just described that is all the product is doing from an iPad perspective, a simple word match...

 

You are also limited to only Google searches. Any search made via DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo etc... cannot be alerted on yet again vendors and your website advertise this as a fully-fledged child protection product for use with iPads which might be with onsite devices but not under our use conditions.

 

 

The product is not working as advertised it's that simple and I personally am not recommending your product to anyone that asks for feedback due to my reasons above.

 

This is child safety we are talking about here and you as a company are not taking this seriously enough and misleading schools with the way the product is marketed to work.

[2ilent8cho]

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE BUY INTO LIGHTSPEED'S BS ABOUT IPAD ALERTING OFFSITE.

 

We have Lightspeed, 1:1 iPads, and use it for offsite monitoring, we don't have an onsite relay, we use only the cloud one. It does and has alerted us. Just a few Friday evenings ago we had a kid searching for how to die painlessly, we got the alert. I get a lot of false positives too such as kids searching for call of duty and the image of the guns or knifes being an alert.

[mattysmith80]

Please don't go near lightspeed whatever you do... they promise it can do it, but you quickly realise they cant... we are actively looking to move away from lightspeed specifically for the fact they advertise it can do things, but in reality its very hit and miss. After multiple support calls and their engineers saying "it should work" and then admitting themselves, "Yeh iPads are a bit tricky" just very bizarre really.

[Tefters]

We have Lightspeed, 1:1 iPads, and use it for offsite monitoring, we don't have an onsite relay, we use only the cloud one. It does and has alerted us. Just a few Friday evenings ago we had a kid searching for how to die painlessly, we got the alert. I get a lot of false positives too such as kids searching for call of duty and the image of the guns or knifes being an alert.

 

Thats odd then, i've just got off the phone with them again this morning and they are now raising an internal emergency incident as its not alerting for us as per the screenshots in my previous post. They also confirmed to me that they have tested this and it is indeed not alerting.

[mattysmith80]

Sound very "lightspeed".... We wont have alerts so I make a call, they are then "oh your not the first person to report that".... Alert then kind of works but then doesn't really and essentially support just stop supporting you and you go round in a loop....

[Tefters]

Sound very "lightspeed".... We wont have alerts so I make a call, they are then "oh your not the first person to report that".... Alert then kind of works but then doesn't really and essentially support just stop supporting you and you go round in a loop....

 

Yup. So i'm leaving them to investigate and fix while I look at other vendors.

So far, not found any that can accomplish a full iPad solution. Have 2 big maybe's but i need access to demos and trials along with tech people and everyone is at BETT

[mattysmith80]

Leaving them to fix it

 

Ive done that several times and they just close the ticket after a few weeks...

 

The support if pretty poor like.... if you get onto your account manager, you end up speaking with a Technical Sales person who are really good and they then take it "away" to investigate... then it falls into a black hole... and then the cycle repeats..

 

I have a demo of Imperos new "Content Keeper" which they have just brought over from the states, we also use Senso so im banking on them releasing a decent filter that can then tap into the rest of their producsts.

[ITGuyNW]

How about shared ipads? At the moment, pupils log in through a smoothwall page. Is there a better way?

 

I looked at the whole shared ipad apple setup but I keep hitting hurdles along the way so knocked that on the head.

[DGardiner]

How about shared ipads? At the moment, pupils log in through a smoothwall page. Is there a better way?

 

I looked at the whole shared ipad apple setup but I keep hitting hurdles along the way so knocked that on the head.

 

We used ipads in shared mode, Smoothwall browser with the app configured to store the login in icloud - this makes the login a one time deal.

 

custom browsers are horrible though, causes issues with webclips and stuff so gotta weigh up the pros and cons, its a shame the ipad cant just be made to ping the idex with the current user or something like that atleast for onsite or a pseudovpn that does the ident/scanning stuff like an adblocker

[Brimstone]

Yup. So i'm leaving them to investigate and fix while I look at other vendors.

So far, not found any that can accomplish a full iPad solution. Have 2 big maybe's but i need access to demos and trials along with tech people and everyone is at BETT

 

If you are looking to track non web traffic and on device keywords, this can not be done on an iPad.

 

Sounds like you have just had a bad experience with Lightspeed, can I suggest you speak to de Ferrers, who have been using LS to manage and filter the 2,000 or so iPads all since 2012?

 

https://www.deferrerstrust.com/119/11-ipads

[Tefters]

If you are looking to track non web traffic and on device keywords, this can not be done on an iPad.

 

Sounds like you have just had a bad experience with Lightspeed, can I suggest you speak to de Ferrers, who have been using LS to manage and filter the 2,000 or so iPads all since 2012?

 

https://www.deferrerstrust.com/119/11-ipads

 

I was dragged there a year and a half ago before we did went balls deep with our project to see what they were doing... Lets just say they were doing thiings the old fashioned Apple way and didn't even have the new apple school manager inplace.

It was very messy, showbie was showing how its not suitable for secondary school use to due zero automation from a technical perspective and their app purchasing was on individual accounts.

 

I need to look into Smoothwall Monitor as Exa have just partnered with them and I want to rig up a test with the Surfprotect Quantum solution as that can be used offsite on any device now, its being dubbed "Protect & Connect".

 

I just need to find the time to sit down, rig up a trial with it all and do the basic testing like I have with Lightspeed where simply googling phrases such as "depression", "suicidal thoughts" and other such terms with alerts coming out the other end. Not really asking for the moon here...

 

P.S. Lightspeed still absolutely nowhere close to a fix and an apology email this week regarding progress and no updates...

 

It's ok though, iPads are great for education! (as long as you dont want any safeguarding or alerting when their offsite... )

Edited April 21, 2023 by Tefters

[ITPROF]

My first time on this.

 

We have had problems with iPads for years. As @mattysmith80 stated we have had a demonstration from Impero.

 

We was very impressed, we are trialing the solution, it can filter across the iPad as actually report for the Safeguarding team.

 

I will add to this channel our findings.