Someone gets owned, tells disabled person to go home or use hot spot to get work done

Its time for a musing. I’m not here to complain about how one uses social media, and usually I read and move along. This, however, caught my interest as a tech person, and nothing more.

I normally don’t comment on things on social media, but this is a little much. As you’ll see, the issue is going to get itself resolved, and I’m not going to say that it was a mistake of the college or anyone else. That’s for them to decide and not for this blog.

Blocking domains without proper notification of policy violations is not going to go well with folks. Especially if you don’t even know there’s a policy to begin with and its allowed.

This can be for anywhere such as a college or even an employer at work. I believe that blocking should be told to the users, and should be done before it is to take place unless its against policy which you agreed to when signing up for the employer or college or even school of any type.

Here’s the first toot, mind you, there will be strong language and I’m not going to edit what they say.

Munchkinbear: wait, what the fuck, I come back to the colege, log onto the network to find they blocked trailhead.salesforce.com, login.salesforce.com and canvas.instructure.com. I call the help desk to file a ticket. Their response, we don’t care and aren’t gonna fix it, it’s not a college resource, if you want to do something from those websites go home or use a hotspot. and not ours. your not allowed to do courses unrelated to the college on this network anymore. What a crock of shit.

While I don’t blame this individual for posting on social media, I have seen too many of these types of things through the years. No, I don’t have any control of any social media, but this got me interested slightly on what was going on.

Posting later, they toot:

Munchkinbear: so connect to the VPN at home, and the sites mentioned previously work, because now the college firewall can’t distinguish the traffic because all it sees is the encrypted VPN tunnel. That doesn’t make what their doing morally right, nor does it mean I’m gonna stop screaming and crusading to get the stupid, unwritten policy they implimented without a single notification to students overturned, it just means I have a work around for now.

In the meantime, they send an email somewhere to file a formal complaint about the block with no knowledge to students or staff, and this is where someone got owned.

The toot says:

Munchkinbear: whoops! Someone is about to get owned.
From “ISNS, Lorain County Community College”

To “Popplestone, Shane”

Date 5/9/2023 1:15:46 PM
subject: re: blocking specific domains, a policy now? and treatment by help desk representatives.

Dear Shane,
Thanks for reaching out to ISNS with your concerns. Firstly, how you were treated by Michael at the help desk is most certainly not how you should have been treated and I’ll personally be speaking to that individual today.
As for blocking those salesforce.com and instructure.com domains being policy? This is incorrect and will be resolved immediately. We do not discourage students from taking courses and learning outside the college, and you being told to basically go home or use a hotspot to get your work done? Is also most certainly inappropriate.
These restrictions will be removed by the end of the day, and all staff involved in this behaviour will be disciplined.
Thank you for letting us know of this issue.
Sincerely,
John at ISNS

Now, I have had dealings with Shane, who is identified here, and people can say what they want about him. But this isn’t about him. He has a right to be mad, post if he wants to social media, and let people know about what is going on in case he has followers in the same boat at the same location.

By this toot, sounds like someone is going to get owned, as there didn’t seem to be any policy, the work is getting done on free time and probably not during class time, and nobody told anyone about the policy change.

I would highly suggest that if you are going to block a domain on your network, tell people about the policy change and give people time to read it. Otherwise, there’s going to be backlash like this. Whoops!

I did tell Shane, that regardless on what people think of what they do on social media, sending an email was the right thing to do. I personally wouldn’t have done it this way, but then again, social media isn’t my life. If I chose to write about it on my personal journal OK, but even then, it would be done afterword.

Shane did respond that a pinned post and his bio indicate that he’ll vent, and if people use social media for that, I’m OK with it. Just write the email, get it resolved, and that’s what he did. I know one thing, I wouldn’t have blocked domains without letting my people who use my network know, that’s for sure.

End of Muse