Pornography Bombing - Why Can’t your Content Filter Block It?
- Kevin Kuckkan, M.Ed.
- Oct 8, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 2
Barely a day goes by without another school reporting incidents of pornographic content being shared with students. It’s been well documented since the start of COVID-induced distance learning that instructional delivery platforms are being raided by uninvited attendees.
What Is Zoom Bombing?
Also referred to as Zoom Bombers, it's when uninvited users attend a virtual meeting, most commonly on the Zoom platform (to be fair, ‘bombing’ happens with Google Meets and other virtual instruction software as well).
How Does Zoom Bombing Disrupt Online Instruction?
These unwanted intrusions pose challenges to schools to better safeguard students in distance and hybrid learning instructional models. Fortunately, in most cases, teachers can kick the intruders out reasonably quickly.
Lost instructional time
Yet the disruption itself has immediate effects. Namely, the obvious disruption to class and the resulting lost instructional time combined with a potential domino effect of events for the school district - explaining to parents, investigation of potential perpetrators (who are often students) and the resulting publicity as news of the incidents reaches the public.
Exposure to pornography
These incidents remind us that schools have very little control over students sharing Zoom or Meet login credentials. ‘Raid my google meet class’ or ‘Join and show porn quick’ social media posts from bombers using hashtags like #ZoomRaid or #MeetCodes provide countless opportunities for uninvited attendees to enter classes.
How Schools Are (Kind of) Defending Against Zoom Bombings
Videoconferencing companies have attempted to develop additional safety measures in an effort to further enhance security in K-12 live synchronous instruction. To prepare already over-worked staff, some districts are opting for additional professional development to get instructional staff up-to-speed on practices to better safeguard virtual instruction.
But quality and effective PD takes time to develop and implement
And it costs money.
And it takes time.
Why Legacy Solutions Still Struggle Against Disruptions
Teachers are not IT directors
A teacher's primary focus is on locating, developing and implementing effective curriculum to give their students the highest quality educational experience possible.
Will teachers become Zoom or Meet security experts? Probably not. What’s been occurring in schools regarding pornography bombing is analogous to leaving the school doors wide open during the school day - and then scratching our heads in perplexed disbelief when a complete stranger wanders into a classroom, sits down and promptly disrobes.
Non-existent basic IT training
Who will conduct the training for teachers? The IT team (with all their non-existent free time)?
As much as we’d like to think teachers should be experts in these applications, the fact of the matter is that unless they’ve been involved in distance learning previously, they’re not.
Yet even with safeguards in place and even if teachers became experts in Zoom or Meet, how long would it take for hackers to figure out how to bomb classes again?
Bombing Isn’t Really a Training Problem. It’s a Filtering Problem.
Maybe you’ve asked yourself:
‘Why can’t our content filter keep kids safe during synchronous live instruction?! The kids are online…and it’s a web filter, right? Why can’t web filters work on Zoom or Meet?’
Here’s the thing - Legacy filters were originally designed for the static internet of the 1990s, so it's no surprise they struggle to keep up with today’s dynamic web, comprised of social media and user-generated content.
Filtering images and video during synchronous live instruction requires AI filtering at the browser level, done in real time.
(And Cough Cough, Deledao is the only company that filters images and videos in real-time at the browser level.)
Why Legacy Filters Fail to Filter Out Zoom Bombers
Legacy filters are helpless when it comes to filtering Zoom, Meet or any other videoconferencing software primarily because they’re reliant upon two obsolete methods of filtering.
They filter on the proxy level
Many filtering solutions use this. But 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.
Blur inappropriate pics while conducting a Zoom class? Nope.
They filter using a database of domains and keywords
Other legacy filters rely 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.
Mute and blur pornographic videos bombed during a Meet class? Not a chance.
But help is on the way.
Why Schools are Switching to Browser-Based AI Filters
Browser-based AI technology, like Deledao’s ActiveScan™, represents an entirely new filtering architecture that’s designed to filter the dynamic internet of TODAY. And it does so in real time.
ActiveInstruct™ detects and blocks Zoom bombing
Filters like Deledao ActiveInstruct filter in real-time, such as a Zoom class that’s been bombed with inappropriate videos. AI technology blurs and mutes a video shared during a Zoom class
ActiveInstruct™ detects Inappropriate images
Static images are blurred in real time as well! Deledao's ActiveInstruct™ filters inappropriate pictures shared with a Google Meet class
The internet happens in real time…
Your filter should as well.
See how Deledao can help keep your students safe during Zoom and Google Meet live instruction sessions.
