Password Sharing: A Cautionary Tale

[LeMarchand]

One of my sites, where teachers commonly use the "But it's for the CHILDREN!!!" cry to try to flout various rules and regulations, has recently been pulled up by a supplier who noticed that the one person who had paid for a license seemed to be using it from multiple IP addresses simultaneously. The school has been made to buy an appropriate site license. So - it can, and does, happen to schools.

 

I'm hoping that this will prompt a review of such practices in the school. Please don't wake me from my wonderful dream.

[Norphy]

 

Teaching and learning

 

Oh, and well done. I remember the screams of protest when I blocked streaming networks, especially towards the end of term. I had SLT buy in on that though, so I didn't budge.

Edited November 8, 2024 by Norphy

[Jawloms]

There's definitely a different mindset isn't there. In my last place the Internet stopped working. Eventually we found out the provider had cut us off for not paying the bill and us ignoring repeated reminders. "Don't they know we're a school?" was the business managers response.......

[Davit2005]

Reminds me of my first job in Edu. We had a request from a 'teacher' (teachers were the only ones that could request websites unblocking on our filter) . Though the site looked a bit suspect and found it was a proxy avoidance site, lol.

 

The teacher turned round and said those cheeky kids.

 

There were numerous issues when whole file structures were renamed to childish names, again only possible under staff logins.

Edited November 8, 2024 by Davit2005

[mavhc]

One of my sites, where teachers commonly use the "But it's for the CHILDREN!!!" cry to try to flout various rules and regulations, has recently been pulled up by a supplier who noticed that the one person who had paid for a license seemed to be using it from multiple IP addresses simultaneously. The school has been made to buy an appropriate site license. So - it can, and does, happen to schools.

 

I'm hoping that this will prompt a review of such practices in the school. Please don't wake me from my wonderful dream.

 

What's the incentive to buy >1 licence if the only punishment is to possibly buy the correct number?

[dmj]

Meh. I can top that one. Teacher buys resource, proceeds to publish it on the internet 'for the children'. Company sees this and sues for £20k.

It happens.

[DavR]

This has happened to us before. Our lot tried to get away with sharing a single login (between 30+ teachers), against my advice, and inevitably got a slap on the wrist for it.

 

Our bursars response? Continue to share logins, but, one per year group this time. I continued to advise against and washed my hands of it, but I will say that, so far, they've got away with it.

 

I won't say which site a) in case anyone's listening and b) because I can't for the life of me remember which one it was now

[DavR]

Meh. I can top that one. Teacher buys resource, proceeds to publish it on the internet 'for the children'. Company sees this and sues for £20k.

It happens.

 

Reminds me of the fiasco that was Young Voices, a few years back.

 

The children had to learn to sing a couple of songs, so they could all perform at the Young Voices concert later in the year. Young Voices, however, would only license the practice materials to be used by one teacher login. The resources could not be duplicated, put online, or shared in any way. And yet, the children really needed to practice the songs at home. Publicly available versions of the song were no good either, as the Young Voices versions were simplified, and in an easier key for children to sing.

 

Inevitably, schools uploaded all the resources to their own pages, because the children needed to practice at home. Cue a game of cat and mouse with cease and desist letters from Young Voices, threatening each new school that did it until they took them down again.

 

I won't say how we "resolved" the licensing issue on this, again, I advised against. But in later years, they did finally release home practice versions, I think. At an additional cost, naturally.

[slugshead]

I'll just leave this here

 

https://ce-knowledge-hub.iasme.co.uk/space/CEKH/2576646422#:~:text=Are%20shared%20accounts%20permissible%20under,by%20all%20users%20and%20administrators.