As you scroll Pinterest, watch YouTube, and message your friends on your school MacBook, beware: your parents can see it all.

 Northwest has been using the Lightspeed Filter system for six or seven years, according to associate principal Britton Haney. It is used to block certain websites on school computers, such as games and social media. But it also sends weekly emails to parents regarding students’ website browsing history, and gives them the ability to shut off website browsing while not at school. 

Sophomore Adalyn Vandervoort’s mother texted her one day, saying she had been receiving emails from Northwest about Vandervoort’s website history.

 “I was definitely shocked,” said Vandervoort. 

“I’ve heard of schools being able to see your screens during class time, but I didn’t know they were sending and tracking all the websites and just showing it to your parents.” 

The weekly emails consist of how many hosts the student has browsed, the average number of pages visited each day, and the top ten most visited hosts. 

 When going into the parent portal, parents can see every web address connected to a time stamp for each day of the past week. This includes a tab for allowed and blocked websites that their student has visited or attempted to visit. 

This parent portal also includes the “pause web browsing” switch, which allows the parent to shut off web browsing while not at school for one hour, three hours, or until the morning of the next day.