Your School's Web Filter Isn't Effective for 1:1 Devices that Go Off Campus
- The Deledao Team
- Jul 21, 2020
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 10
Sure, your current solution is filtering off campus. But is it effective?
Consider Four of the most common situations IT admins and teachers go through:
Situation 1 – Blocking games to keep students focused
You already know it. Sneaky games that are embed in search engines. Like this:
Situation 2 – Figuring out what students are really doing online
Sadly, most reports from web filters only show the URLs, and maybe a genre. Wouldn't it be great if reports showed more info like what was on the page, or what the google search was?
As you're deep in analyzation mode like:
Your students look like this on Google Meet...
...but have another tab open on Netflix.
Situation 3 – Filtering “adult” content to be CIPA-compliant
Adult content slips through the cracks with traditional filters. And when it happens, the things students see stay with them forever.
This 2nd grader searched "kissing." Then this happened:
Adult content can traumatize children, yet how do students still manage to bypass your web filters? Her mother doesn't even know how she did it:
Situation 4 – Using VPNs to bypass your proxy filter
Then nothing gets filtered.
Utilizing a AI-powered Web Filter: The Only Way to Avoid All Four Situations
An AI web filter, like Deledao's ActiveScan, uses AI to autonomously detect and block distracting content in real time, the moment it appears on the screen.
Not to mention, Deledao is recognized by EdTech Digest in 2020.
No web filter is 100% successful, but using AI-power filter is the only sure-fire way to prevent all four situations from occurring.
Don't believe us? Let's revisit the same four situations, but this time with ActiveScan, Deledao's AI-powered web filter.
Situation 1 – Blocking games to keep students focused
Artificial intelligence doesn’t rely on blocking keywords.
AI understands context on a page like a human would.
Situation 2 – Figuring Out what Students Are Really Doing Online
AI web filters reports where, what, and when students are online in greater detail.
Deledao's Classroom management software also monitors engagement in both physical and remote classrooms.
Situation 3 – Filtering “adult” content to be CIPA-compliant
Filter adult content as it displays in real time.
Situation 4 – Using VPNs to bypass your proxy filter
Browser-based filters are VPN-proof!
Why Traditional Web Filters Aren't Enough to Protect Your Students
There are two main reasons why your current solution isn’t enough to protect your students and keep your school humming.
They filter at the proxy level
Unfortunately, the sheer amount of data that passes through your proxy means that it is not technically feasible for the filter to see details of what’s on the webpage.
Without the browser rendering the data first, the proxy-level filter only sees individual HTTP objects and cannot see the page as it’s displayed to the student. If your reporting shows only URLs, it’s because that’s all the filter can see at the proxy level.
They rely on a database of domains and keywords
Your typical filter relies on a database of pre-categorized domains and keywords to determine if content is blocked. That database may contain a list of 10 million, or even 100 million, domains/keywords and it may be continuously updated, but it simply can’t keep up with the volume of newly created content.
2 Real Situations Traditional Web Filters Cannot Deal With
Websites often expand their content offerings. Content may change dynamically within a website and oftentimes within the webpage itself. The ever-changing internet of today requires schools to accurately filter what's being shown to the students in their browsers.
YouTube
While youtube contains vital educational content teachers use, it's also contaminated with a plethora of distracting content such as games, drama, and cute cat videos. Traditional web filters struggle to parse and identify which content is good based on URL and keywords.
We have 500 hours of video uploaded every single minute to YouTube.
This is where Deledao’s real-time AI filtering shines. Because it sees what students see on the page, it understands context and meaning like a human would.
"The History of the Atomic Bomb" – ✅
"How to Make a Bomb at Home" – ❌
Analysis is more accurate and reporting gets into granular details.
AARP: Is it a game site?
AARP calls themselves a "non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans aged 50 and over to choose how they live as they age."
Yet several pages on AARP's website provide free games to play.
Traditional web filters have no way to block these games while keeping the rest of the site accessible. But AI-powered web-filters can do just that; blocking just the games while keeping the site unblocked.
You may be thinking: "My web filter already uses AI or machine learning. It is already deployed at the endpoint, so my reporting is suitable for my purposes. Why switch to Deledao ActiveScan?"
3 Reasons Why You Should Switch to Deledao
There’s a lot of buzzwords being thrown around out there. It seems that everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of “using AI” or “using machine learning” and filtering in “real time”.
Just because a filter uses AI, doesn't mean it's filtering in real time
You’ll need to do a little digging (and testing!) to figure out the nuances of what each vendor means.
Deledao's AI-powered filter is NOT the same as an AI database
The buzzwords like “AI-powered”, “AI-based”, or “AI databased” are thrown everywhere. As of June 2025, there are only two main ways AI is used in web filtering.
AI database
Uses AI or machine learning to pre-categorize websites and keywords to compile a database. It runs into the same problems as the typical database described above. It cannot comb through all the new content uploaded to the web and doesn’t account for the various ways that content can load on each webpage.
AI-powered filter
Uses AI to comb through all the new content uploaded to the web and analyzes the various ways content can load on each webpage. This is how Deledao's ActiveScan works.
Regardless if it's an endpoint solution or not, if your "AI" is filtering at the proxy level, it is using an "AI database." Some endpoint solutions simply pass information back to a proxy-level filter. It is not technically feasible to have an AI filter at the proxy level due to the amount of data that passes through at that bottleneck. Claims that AI is being used at that level probably refer to an AI database.
Deledao AI-powered filter truly blocks in real-time
Let's say your current solution filters in "real time" by continuously scanning the page. However, without AI, how can your filter accurately understand what's happening on the page? Without AI, humans have to do the work of continuously updating rules for the filter to understand the context of a page. Humans can not do this work as quickly as AI.
For example, a filter has the rule of blocking the word "adult" to block mature content. Sure, you are blocking "adult movies," but you're also blocking "adult education." Because you don't want to over-filter, a human (maybe that's you) will have to set up an exception for the term "adult education." But what about "adult size bikes" and "adult vitamins"? There are plenty of more terms that need to be entered as exceptions.
The conclusion is simple. AI and real-time filtering go together. AI filtering must run at the browser level to achieve real-time filtering. You cannot harness the full capabilities of AI without using AI in real time.
Deledao's AI filter runs on all different devices and operating systems
Why should it only work on some devices but not others? If you’re paying for “real-time AI filtering,” you deserve more.
Solutions on iPads are particularly difficult to achieve. Some solutions utilize a combination of static lists of blocked items installed on the school device and PAC (Proxy Auto Config) files to direct some traffic to a cloud proxy for filtering. In this case, all the problems with proxy filtering still apply.
The best way to sift through buzzwords is to test out the solution for yourself.
Consider Deledao ActiveScan for your school
Deledao's ActiveScan is an AI filter that screens through each webpage in real time to analyze words, images, and videos in context. It works on iPads, Chromebooks, Windows, Mac OS, and tablets.
