Ads plaguing student laptops can be blocked, OCPS says

As if those unwelcome advertisements that suddenly pop up on your screen weren’t annoying enough, some of those ads have recently found their way onto students’ school-provided laptops.

A few Bridgewater Middle School parents voiced strong concerns about the advertisements on Facebook — some of which display inappropriate or lewd content as students attempt to do their homework.

“He was just doing homework, and he was like, ‘Mommy, come over here and look at this,’” said Marta Raquel, a Bridgewater parent. “And it was a pop-up ad showing girls who were in bikinis and one of them was topless, and they just kept coming up. It freaked me out, and I immediately went onto Facebook groups to ask if anyone else has had this experience. Then the next day, the ads kept popping up for like an hour, and some of them you couldn’t even click out of, so I told him to just close his computer and not do his homework.”

Bradley Shreffler, digital instruction coach at Bridgewater, said the ads are popping up more often because some websites that make money from ad views have started using Google Chrome notifications as a way to deliver them. 

“The majority of student situations we have seen so far are a result of using internet services known as proxy servers to try to circumvent our district internet firewalls,” Shreffler said. “When the students visit the site, they click ‘allow’ on a message that asks for permission to use notifications, which allows these sites to send notifications even when the students are no longer on the offending website. Windows then receives the notification from Chrome and displays them as they should.”

The ads are popping up more often because of a recent change in how Google Chrome pushes out notifications, Shreffler said. The change came in July, when Google Chrome began gradually releasing an update that enabled Windows Action Center notifications.

The Chrome update can make any Windows computer vulnerable — not just computers provided by Orange County Public Schools, Shreffler said. Although the district constantly reinforces its firewalls and security measures, it can be challenging to keep up with all the sites causing pop-up issues.

“The thing to remember is that the people who make these sites make money off ads being viewed, so they are incentivized by getting around our security So when we block one site, another one can often pop-up,” he said.

Shreffler advised parents to monitor their child’s laptop use by checking the browser history and reminding their child that using a proxy service – such as Proxy Croxy – to bypass the district’s network security is a policy violation.

“Trying to bypass district internet security is a violation of the Acceptable Technology Use Policy, which all students sign when they receive their device, as well as a violation of the Student Code of Conduct, which all students sign as well,” he said. “Violations are handled per the policies and procedures outlined in the Student Code of Conduct.”