- Consumer Information Center

E-lessons raiding

Distance education is a novelty that we have been dealing with since our lives moved into the virtual world. Starting online education is a test for teachers, students, parents and it brings with it a lot of stress. Overnight, everyone had to find themselves in a new reality and deal with technical and emotional problems and challenges. When everything was organized, better or worse, another problem emerged.

“E-lessons raiding”, that’s the name of this activity, is joining a lesson and making it impossible for the teacher to conduct it. Third parties join on-line lessons and disrupt them in a reprehensible manner. Many recordings of this kind of attacks are published on Youtube, Facebook or Instagram.

During such a "raid", loud music is played, teachers are being insulted, attackers send offensive pictures or gifs and in general it disorganizes the lessons. The teachers are unfortunately helpless, because often the students themselves provide links to lessons asking for a "raid" for fun. In one case, children attending an online class saw a pornographic film instead of the material prepared by the teacher. The prosecutor's office had to be informed about the incident, because sharing pornographic content with minors is prohibited. According to information found on the Internet , the police has already received the first cyberbullying notifications regarding e-lessons. On social media groups of people that organize, register and share rallies for e-lessons have appeared on social media. The “E-lessons raiding " group disappeared from Facebook after a few days. It may have been removed or has a new and less obvious name and is still functioning. Instead, we can find another group "E-lesson - e-lessons raiding Section", which works in the same way. Opportunities to purchase  access to e-lessons have also been appearing. Such offers can be found on popular auction sites. Does anyone use it? Hard to tell.

Both teachers and children are victims of the Internet trolls and patostreamers. Some of the young people enjoy it, but for the most part it is vandalism that further complicates the tough situation and makes learning more difficult.

How to protect yourself from this, how to prevent it?

It is very important that teachers conducting online lessons remember basic principles of safety:

• Invitations to such a lesson should only be sent to students in a given class. They should not be made available to the public., e.g. by publishing on the school's website or fanpage.
• When creating a lesson, one must choose the settings allowing only invited people to participate.
• Only the teacher should conduct and manage the lesson by presenting the screen or muting participants.
• Classes should not be conducted from a private email account or on a social networking site.

The teacher should establish rules of cooperation  with the students, and remind them that they also apply during the distance education. You should react to violence during distance learning, making ones image public without permission or impersonating others. In the event of an outsider intruding on an e-lesson, the teacher should block that person. That is why it is so important to use appropriate tools that give such a possibility and allow students to be identified.

Any incident of a “raid” should be reported to the school management. The teacher has the right to report this behavior to the site administrator or even the police. Parents who are at home and have the option of monitoring their child's online lessons can also report such cases. First of all, parents and teachers should talk to children about the fact that this form of "entertainment" is cyberbullying, which is one type of violence.

The first case of a "criminal" being caught for invading an on-line class and berating students has already been reported. It turned out to be a 13-years old boy. He joined eighth-grade students from a school in Gdańsk-Oliwa. The school director handed the recording of the lesson to the police and they managed to detain the perpetrator. The teenager will be held accountable to the juvenile court for unauthorized access to the teleinformation network and insults.