CMU School of Drama


Saturday, September 13, 2008

University Bans Access To Facebook; Claims It's A Security Issue

Techdirt: "We've seen plenty of stories of silly politicians trying to ban access to social networks in high schools, but in colleges especially things like Facebook are basically the way students communicate with each other. So it's rather surprising to find out (via Michael Geist) that Concordia University has banned access to Facebook on any computer connected to the university network via a wired connection"

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is extremely bizarre. I guess I can see their "virus" issue, but there are viruses all over the internet, like this website states. Banning Facebook isn't really going to solve this issue, it may just reduce it a little bit. Also, these are college students. They are paying a lot of money to live at the college, and should not have basic rights like which websites they are allowed to visit taken away from them. I would be surprised if this rule is not soon revoked.

arosenbu said...

What I find strangest is the reasoning as to why it was banned. THey say its because of bugs. But why restrict it to all wired connections? If they didn't want certain websites on cluster computers, thats different, because its not a right that students get access to them. Granted it SHOULD be, but the university can control what they allow on their public computers. BUt restricting usage in homes is unconstitutional. Unlike CMU, most universities don't have wireless connections throughout all dorms, so most students WOULD be on wired connections. Why take away facebook? it is indeed how we communicate mostly.

Anonymous said...

Admittedly, Facebook does have some security flaws (not to mention policy flaws; they keep your information in database long after you request to delete it) but it's nothing to compare to some of the other malware the internet loves to share. Myspace had a compromising worm two years ago that left many users' personal information exposed. If you're going to ban access to a website of any sort, then why not porn sites? Why not P2P service or emails sent from outside the university? It seems completely misguided to ban Facebook for "security reasons" and not make a network-wide attempt to restrict web access as much as possible. Then the university would really be in an uproar; censoring the internet is practically death to free speech.

weandme said...

This is ridiculous, yes, but I can see how it happened. The decision was most likely made by a member of the older generation, and no offense to members of these "older generations," but I don't think most truly understand why Facebook is used and how. The decision was probably not that big a deal in their eyes, because it was just another virus producing website in their eyes, but I know that the students their are seeing it much more differently.

Anonymous said...

This seems like whoever was over in IT at Concordia when this decision was made must not know a lot about how the internet can penetrate a network. That or there is some other issue here that the university is completely avoiding. I know in high school we had facebbook blocked, because it was a distraction and because that was school time whenever we were on the school network, the school was justified in saying that facebook was a distraction from our education and we could just go home to use it. In college a lot of students live on campus and have their home internet connection through the campus network, preventing those students from accessing facebook, even at home. The whole wireless thing just makes absolutely no sense. Unless their intention is to force students onto the wireless network for their internet needs, which would most likely cause the wireless network to grind to a halt.

Anonymous said...

The reasons are bullshit, pardon my french. They probably just got tired of people monopolizing the computers to use facebook and wanted to ban it. Facebook is not really much more or less secure than the rest of the internet. A network is only as secure as its users behave.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, this is really weird. You would think that if they were trying to protect their network, they would ban other troublesome sites. Also, you can get viruses through any internet connection, so it makes no sense to only restrict the bannings to wired connections. Thirdly, if the kids wanted to get into the site bad enough, they can always find ways to get around the restrictions.

AndrewLeitch said...

No! Not FACEBOOK! My life would be in ruins.

Seriously though, the fact that the university would block a website network-wide like this. Blocking it from the clusters would be fine, since they're supposed to be used for academic use anyway; but, blocking it on personal computers is far fetched. They should spend their time blocking real threats.

Dave said...

I'm sure they only blocked facebook from wired computers is because most of the wired computers are school computers and all of the wireless computers are going to be personal computers. They don't want students (or administrators) monopolizing school computers with facebook and they may not have the capability to block facebook form school computers only so they have to block it on all wired computers.

Anonymous said...

Dave has a really good point that they only banned the F book on wired because they don't want people going on school computers and loggong on. Personally I could care less if they ban facebook here. It is useful sometimes for organizing groups or messages sent to a large number of people esspecially with the new instant messaging features but honestly most people use it to put up drunken pictures trying to show how hot they are. It's pretty stupid and everyone knows that Facebook is used for that purpose constantly.
Also there are most definately virus' on facebook. People's facebooks gets hacked from the applications and since the applications get your password once you get them they can do anything they want with your account.

David Beller said...

I believe that this kind of action is completely unnecessary. First of all, a university should be able to protect their network regardless of who is accessing what. Second, although I believe that over-using facebook is a bad thing, it is a really well structured communication device. There are some people whom I would no longer be in contact with if it were not for facebook.

dmxwidget said...

I am sure this will only last for a little while until the school gives in to the students requests and persistence to get facebook back. There are many useful features to facebook that would be lost when it is banned. Even though there are viruses, spam and other flaws to facebook, the internet is full of worse and more lethal than just facebook. maybe they should just ban the internet completely and then there won't be any problems.

BWard said...

didn't they do this last year too?

actions like these really show the ignorance of people in regards to technology and the internet. I bet the same people who made the decision to block facebook also get thousands of spam emails in their inboxes and have popup ad viruses that destroy their productivity.

it's one thing to remove the source of problems within a computer network - it's another thing to educate people on how to avoid these problems altogether.

i get maybe one spam email a year in my inbox and i never see popup ads, but thats because i took the time to learn how to prevent them.

blocking facebook on a network segment isn't the solution - wireless is the same as wired as far as viruses are concerned. it was designed to be a completely transparent technology.

Anonymous said...

I'm not so sure that I agree with this ban. I do agree that certain applications on the internet are dangerous to the security of the network but really to ban this kind of thing when you're using a computer on campus in your personal time is a little ridiculous in my eyes.

Jacob Jimenez said...

I can see why they banned it. I have been seeing a lot of spam and viruses being spread around. Also, It is more likely that if a computer is running on the network via Wifi that it is a student's own personal computer; they simply would be going on at their own risk. I really don't see much of a risk though seeing as to how you can just be cautious of what you open.

MichaelSimmons said...

This is ridiculous. Facebook is just a way of communication, and can be just as unsafe as any site on the web. And I agree with what someone said above me, a university should not have the right to tell it's students what it can and cannot read or use online.

Anonymous said...

my high school did this years ago, and the reaction was much the same. It makes sense though. even though many say that it is a matter of maturity and whether or not people are going to spend too much time on it, it is a distraction that exists. and because of the purpose it serves, it should be limited to personal computers.