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viewerx3 t1_iy4cfgx wrote

What I would like to know is, do these certificates pose a privacy risk? Can they be used to track activity (such as what you search behind a VPN)? Or is it just for user authentication?

What features or information does the school IT gain by having their users install these web certificates?

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ctaetcsh t1_iy4ebti wrote

If there is an SSL certificate in there then yes it would allow the school IT department to monitor HTTPS traffic. However, as a VPN encrypts your traffic, they wouldn’t be able to monitor it.

As for why, many areas have laws requiring schools to filter internet traffic. Many of these systems have block pages that tell you why the page you tried to access was blocked. However, because of HTTPS, these block pages cause the browser to throw an HTTPS error because the certificate it received was invalid. Adding this cert will allow the block page to show without an error (but thats speculation on my part). I use NextDNS for personal filtering of ad domains and the like and because I have a block page enabled, I need to install their certificate so it shows up without an HTTPS error.

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Reasonable-Ad9987 t1_iy4hym5 wrote

I “hack” (bypass school filters and chrome extensions) for $5 and tell people how do it. Not that hard really

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ctaetcsh t1_iy4i7jx wrote

Yeah it’s not hard at all with most setups, especially on personal devices. My school used a system that just acted as a DNS sinkhole if you didn’t have the Chrome extension so using my own EDNS got around that.

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