Necropost but this reminds me of how my primary school would consistently block URLs, but neglect to block what they redirected to.

They blocked "hotmail.com", but when Microsoft started rebranding things to Windows Live, that became a redirect to "login.live.com/?id=2", which remained unblocked and allowed full unrestricted access to Hotmail (lol I memorized that URL and I'm kind of amazed I still remember it all these years later - and that it apparently still works, now serving as a login page to Outlook).

There was another too, they also blocked "google.com/images" (in an apparent effort to block pornography), however not only did they not bother to block Yahoo Images for some reason (???), they also didn't block "google.com/imghp", which is what "/images" redirected to, once again allowing full unrestricted access to Google Images.

I'm sure the technology has gotten a little better now, but in the 2000s school internet filters were incredibly poorly configured.

MattKC wrote: ↑Thu Jun 18, 2026 7:23 pm Necropost but this reminds me of how my primary school would consistently block URLs, but neglect to block what they redirected to.

They blocked "hotmail.com", but when Microsoft started rebranding things to Windows Live, that became a redirect to "login.live.com/?id=2", which remained unblocked and allowed full unrestricted access to Hotmail (lol I memorized that URL and I'm kind of amazed I still remember it all these years later - and that it apparently still works, now serving as a login page to Outlook).

There was another too, they also blocked "google.com/images" (in an apparent effort to block pornography), however not only did they not bother to block Yahoo Images for some reason (???), they also didn't block "google.com/imghp", which is what "/images" redirected to, once again allowing full unrestricted access to Google Images.

I'm sure the technology has gotten a little better now, but in the 2000s school internet filters were incredibly poorly configured.

My freshman year the site blocking software worked really well on the Chromebooks, but the actual desktops it didn't work whatsoever, so I found a torrent client that didn't require UAC (very sketchy but it worked) and would pirate movies on tbe school network. My school had really good internet speed too, so i could have a full 4k blu-ray rip in about 10 minutes. I never got in trouble for it, but im pretty sure im the reason they changed thier security system the next year

MattKC wrote: ↑Fri Jun 19, 2026 11:23 am Necropost but this reminds me of how my primary school would consistently block URLs, but neglect to block what they redirected to.

They blocked "hotmail.com", but when Microsoft started rebranding things to Windows Live, that became a redirect to "login.live.com/?id=2", which remained unblocked and allowed full unrestricted access to Hotmail (lol I memorized that URL and I'm kind of amazed I still remember it all these years later - and that it apparently still works, now serving as a login page to Outlook).

There was another too, they also blocked "google.com/images" (in an apparent effort to block pornography), however not only did they not bother to block Yahoo Images for some reason (???), they also didn't block "google.com/imghp", which is what "/images" redirected to, once again allowing full unrestricted access to Google Images.

I'm sure the technology has gotten a little better now, but in the 2000s school internet filters were incredibly poorly configured.

My personal school's internet filters are working to an extent where it mostly works for people that are a bit tech-illiterate ( mostly because they're so used to using phones ) but for people like me, I've found out some ways to bypass the internet filters. Infamously, the Australian government added YouTube to the list for the under 16+ ban so that led to the blocking of YouTube on the school laptops ( it's blocked even at home and students that are even 16 or older ).

So I found some alternatives like Invidious but that got patched, then I found out that youtube.com was blocked but not "youtube-nocookie.com" ( commonly used for embedding videos on websites but can still be used to watch youtube ) then that got patched. ( yes all of this was found by me messing around in the html of websites )

Then I found something out really stupid but it somehow works. On Google Classroom, teacher-added YouTube videos would play by using "youtubeeducation.com" but it didn't seem to work outside of the Google Classroom so I made a chrome extension to modify the iFrame to play any youtube video by injecting the video ID.


I'm sure there's other ways to get around the school filters ( and YouTube was mostly my goal ) but that's everything I found so far.