We have a problem with students/coaches/parents (someone unknown) of at least two other programs accessing our blog on a regular basis. I have been tracking several IP addresses involving Dowling for some time and have since learned of an Indianola student on the blog as well. In making this post, I am making no accusations because it is essentially our fault:
Someone from Roosevelt gave them our blog address as it cannot be found by a search engine.
Over the years we have had the blog, we have expanded it's use to be as efficient as possible with our parents and students. The leak could have accidentally come from anyone with knowledge of the blog address. It could have been as simple as a parent of someone graduated showing it to another parent. I don't care how it got out--it did.
The Dowling users were tracked and found with little effort. Our Dowling "friends" are a very regular visitors to our site. I can only determine IP users not names. I had a friend of mine in the Internet business quietly track some IP numbers. We got lucky.
I was unaware of the Indianola user until I was told this week. But I am not surprised. I have not been able to identify the IP address from Indianola...but, in time, I will. It costs money to block the IP addresses of these friends but it can be done. But all that would be accomplished is to force them to use a different computer. I was aware of the Dowling issue over the summer and wanted to see how long it would go on. I suspect the problem is far greater than we realize. Several posting were made this fall to test outside visitors to the blog. We hit paydirt on one posting when a number of hits were recieved from the same set of IP addresses. We believe (believe being the key word) those hits to have been from within Dowling.
As an immediate result, we will no longer post anything into student resources that involves case work. Once we figure out how to better secure the blog, we will resume those postings. Right now it appears that everything we are giving our students on the blog potentially ends up in the hands of our competitors. In the meantime, we will have to resume paying for copies of some big files each month. That costs precious money and frankly, a lot of time.
Our options aren't good...our blog site can be secured to 100 users but not more. We easily have more than 100 users between students and parents. To change blog sites and move into a secure world requires $$$. It will also take many hours of precious coaches time to complete. It will also involve passwords and maybe other security as well.
It is a shame that our site leaked out. We desperately need electronic communications with both our students and parents because so many of our kids attend DMPS in different buildings and we have (unlike Dowling and Indianola) no forensics class during the regular school day. Thus, we do not see our kids like those coaches on a very regular basis. We live in a very different world than most of our competitors.
So, we will be spending some time trying to come up with a solution that makes life easier for all of us. In the meantime, information on the blog will be limited to essentials and will be quite boring to our "friends" elsewhere.
If anyone has some ideas--I am certainly open to them. Money is an issue--money spent securing a blog site is money that needs to go for judging, travel, etc. If you have any thoughts, please email or call me. Coach Harry
