Is Bradford Persistent Used to Spy on Students Visiting Porn Sites?

I have been reading that some schools, such as St. Mary's College, require students to install a monitoring application called Bradford Persistent. They officially state that it is a way that they can monitor updates and insure that student computers comply with software requirements for interfacing with the school system.

I have also seen that some students are concerned that the school uses Bradford Persistent to monitor whether they are visiting porn or other disallowed sites. The school says that it is not monitoring student activity. I don't know if this kind of thing is possible with Bradford Persistent, but I was curious if anyone had any insight.

 

Supposedly, Bradford Persistent Agent only ensures that your system software is up-to-date, and that your anti-virus protection is enabled. The idea is to prevent computers with viruses or other malware from logging into the network and affecting other users.

One interesting point is that some schools, like the University of Arkansas, only require Bradford Persistent Agent to be installed if you use a Windows PC. They specifically exempt Unix-based PCs (e.g. Macintosh or Linux) from the BPA requirement.

Now, if the real purpose of BPA was to monitor web browsing, then obviously it would make no sense to exempt Mac and Linux users. If, on the other hand, the real purpose of BPA was to keep out viruses and malware, then such exemptions would make sense, because Unix PCs are much less vulnerable than Windows PCs.

In cases like that, it does seem clear that BPA really is only intended for purposes of network security. But this argument does not apply in all cases, because other schools require BPA to be installed on all PCs, regardless of operating system.

 

A lot of schools use the "Cisco NAC Agent" (NAC = Network Access Control), which does the same sort of thing as the "Bradford Persistent Agent".

Again, it turns out that some schools (like Southern Connecticut State or University of Guelph) only require this software on Windows PCs. And again, this policy only makes sense from a network security standpoint. If someone really wanted to monitor your web browsing, they wouldn't care if you were running Windows or Mac or Linux.

 

That's what you get for visiting MrNaughty.com while taking your online exams Surf - Nervous, apprehensive concern that you'll be monitored by BPA.. "some students".. yeah, right

 

And this thread reminds me: there was discussion here a while ago about the live tv camera device that some schools (Troy?) were requiring home study students to install in their homes, so that someone at the school could watch them take an exam, a bath, or whatever. What ever became of this? Still in use? Controversial? Growing in acceptance?

 

St. Mary's College of Maryland has a pretty detailed explanation of what they can see from BPA users, to include screenshots of all screens the network admins have available to them:

Campus Technology Support Services

 

There certainly *is* software that can be installed on PCs for "monitoring" purposes, like SurveilStar. However, Bradford Persistent Agent doesn't appear to fall into that category.

In practice, it may not really make sense to monitor the web history of every network user. This would generate a huge amount of data for review, and even if you did find evidence of objectionable activity, you would only catch it after it had already occurred.

A simpler and more effective approach would be to simply install a central web filter to block objectionable websites. In practice, schools (or other organizations) that are concerned about web activity usually employ this approach instead.

 

Hardy, har, har. :grumpy:

 

There is no need to install anything on someone's PC to track which local ip, or even machine specific mac address, is sending requests across the internal network and out to which wan ip addresses.