Advanced ITSEC Specialist
Based in Cambridge, England, Elizabeth has held notable positions for a range of high-profile vendors and clients in the European IT Security and Communications Sector. As a former IT Trainer, Technical Specialist, and Product Manager; she transitioned into the role of an expert IT Copywriter in 2015. Since then, her works have been published globally, and she continues to help people easily decipher complex technical challenges and make informed decisions about their digital lives.
How to Unblock Your School Wifi Network with a VPN?
If you find yourself bored at school but cannot access sites such as Facebook (or any social media) then there is a pretty neat way of overcoming these blocks. Read the guide below to find out how o unblock your school wifi and access any website unrestrictedly.
How to unblock your school's wifi
In order to unblock your school wifi and access websites such as instagram and soundcloud at school, you can install a VPN (Virtual Private Network) on your device.
The VPN will create a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN company’s servers. Once you’re connected, all your internet data flows through this VPN tunnel.
Because the connection will be encrypted, your school’s network will not be able to detect which websites you visit. All the data coming and going through your device will be gibberish from the network’s perspective.
Only the device using the VPN, and the VPN company servers are able to decipher that data and correctly display it on your screen.
So, in other words, your school’s network will have absolutely no idea at all what kind of websites you visit. It will just see encrypted data.
As such, you can visit blocked websites such as YouTube, SoundCloud, or visiting banned websites will not trigger any content filters whatsoever. It will be impossible for any system your school uses (even human evaluation) to see what websites you visit.
This way the content filters will be fooled and will let you have access to the banned sites.
How to use a VPN to unblock a school’s wifi?
First, you will have to download a VPN application and install it on your device.
I strongly recommend NordVPN because it has super fast servers meaning you will be able to watch HD videos on YouTube without any buffering issues. This will also allow you to play games without experiencing latency. Free VPNs generally don’t offer anything like the speeds you get from a quality service.
If you’re just looking for a great VPN for your mobile, check our full reviews of the Best VPN for Android or Best VPN for iPhone.
After you have your VPN app installed in your device just load it up and connect to any server you want. Best is you connect to a sever located in the same country you are located in order to get an additional speed boost, as you only intend to unlock your school’s wifi and not access sites banned in your country overall.
After you have connected your device to the chosen server all you will have to do is to access the websites you want to visit and they will now be accessible to you.
Will I be detected if I unblock a school wifi firewall?
If you use a VPN you will not be detected.
VPNs such as NordVPN have advanced encryption and most importantly store encryption keys locally on your device. This means that without physical access to the device it will not be possible for someone to detect what websites you actually visit without very advanced technology that is only available to the government.
This is also why a VPN can bypass your school’s wifi firewall. It hides the actual content of the data you send and receive over the internet so doesn’t trigger any filters.
It’s also not possible for any human, such as your school’s IT people, to manually detect the websites you are visiting.
Will I be detected if I use a school computer?
A VPN app is a very lightweight application, usually around 50-100 MB only. Every time you’re using a school computer you can install the VPN app on the computer and log into your VPN app with your username and password that you have previously created.
Once you are done using the school computer you only have to log out of the VPN app, and if you want to be extra careful you can delete the entire app too. As said, usually such a program is just a few megabytes large so you can re-install it next time you use a school computer.
Now, another reason I recommend NordVPN is because it has a zero-logs policy, meaning that it keeps no logs of the websites you visit or content you send or receive over the internet.
Why do schools block certain websites?
Schools and teachers want students to pay attention in class and not get distracted by social media or funny videos. As such, they have set up their wifi firewalls to block a list of sites, usually sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and similar.
What most schools however don’t know (and there is nothing they could really do anything about it either) is that it’s extremely easy to bypass these firewall content blocks with a VPN.