NIU’s new Internet filter isn’t meant to prevent students from tweeting, using Pinterest or reading Wikipedia, despite some reports, said university spokesman Paul Palian.

Tech blog BetaBeat reported Wednesday that NIU was banning its Internet users from accessing websites based on the university’s acceptable use policy, which prohibits state and federal employees from using the Internet for social media and political activities, among other things. The report was based on a post from Reddit user darkf, who shared a screenshot of a filtered Wikipedia page with a post titled, “University adopts internet policy that bans and censors political, social media, and ‘obscene’ content for residents, students and staff.”

NIU’s acceptable use policy dictates that “acceptable use of NIU information technology resources is based on common sense, decency, ethical use, civility, and security applied to the computing environment.” The policy applies to “all individuals, including, but not limited to, employees, students, customers, volunteers, and third parties” who use the Internet service. But, the filter is only meant to apply to employees using the Internet during work and not to students who are not employees, Palian said.

“Most students are not university employees and so … the ethics provision does not apply to that,” Palian said.

A warning will pop up for users on some websites that have been flagged by the filter NIU uses, but users are able to bypass the warning. Palian said the university flags pages that contain “unethical” content, like websites “that [are] just calling for hateful things … .”

Sites with malicious code are blocked as a security measure, Palian said.

“In general, the [sites] that can’t [be accessed] are ones that have been found to contain malicious code, i.e. phishing sites or illegal websites,” Palian said.

The university has used its Twitter handle to respond to questions about the filters and Palian said a news release with more information will be available Thursday.

Contrary to reports circling the internet, NIU does not have a ban on Wikipedia, social media or political websites.

— NIU (@NIUlive) August 20, 2014

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