Our school's library computers (mind you I was early 20s by then) did not allow people to just sit down and go online, an admin had to log in first.

We did have Notepad though. Notepad -> open file -> explorer -> enter URL -> internet explorer -> internets.

Not long after we both got an operating system installed on our removable drive (which we had to pay like 200+ euros for across four years and we barely used it), and bootable Linux CDs became a thing too so the protections were completely moot.