What is banned on your works network

[skipepsi]

As it says on the tin really, prompted by a look at the jokes being stopped as this part of the forum is banned by the county council. Are the jokes that bad?

[Coldgunner]

I can understand the likes of Facebook being blocked as they are like black holes, people get sucked in. At my old work stuff like tech forums were blocked as well as Ebay. Lastly Hotmail was blocked too, but oddly enough live.com wasn't lol. You'll probably find your work uses a blocking system based on points, if a site contains certain content its given points and if a page exceeds a certain amount it will be blocked. Try again another day, you may find it will then work.

[Talltim]

What I decide is blocked is blocked

[Guest]

We're not allowed to look at amazon.com during work hours. However we can stare at amazon.co.uk all day long. Hooray for US-centric censorship

[The Stationmaster]

When they started putting internet access on our computers at work in the late 1990s I asked the IT Dept why it was being done as for most people it was totally unnecessary. they said it was to allow email but they couldn't explain why apart from saying that the ex BR Micromail system (which we used very heavily) was 'too expensive'. In retrospect I wonder if the staff time lost surfing the 'net by people who don't actually need internet access to do their work has ended up costing more than was saved by ditching Micromail for those who did use together with the added cost of physically transferring files which are too big for email but could be handled with ease by Micromail?

 

Mind you as long as it does come out of my pension why should I still worry about it?

[beast66606]

More modern proxys - and forward thinking companies perhaps - will allow the user (IP address or user based) to surf most (ie non dodgy) sites for a maximum of say, 60 minutes, per day, accepting that people will always do it so limit rather than ban is preferred

[John B]

Current client is in the High-Tech sector (storage & data security). They ban:

• All personal email (Gmail, yahoo, msn etc)
  
• Any other company mail (my own company's secure email server, for example)
  
• Farcebook
  
• All photo storage (Flickr etc)
  
• Any pop-ups, or external banner ads (yay!)
  
• LinkedIn
  
• Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling Online
  

They allow:

• RMWeb
  
• BBC Sport
  
• eBay
  
• Twitter (with Beast's "60 minute usage warning")
  
• FRMW
  
• Hattons
  
• Blogspot & Wordpress blogs
  

[skipepsi]

Mind you as long as it does? come out of my pension why should I still worry about it? I suspect it already has.

 

The thing that struck me was RMWEB is allowed but the jokes were not.

[PLD]

As we (NHS) are dealing with a lot of sensitive data, the filtering is as much about stopping that data getting out into the wrong hands as it is about stopping time-wasting. Therefore virtually all sites where data could potentially be uploaded to or sent insecurely (all 'social networking' sites, file sharing sites, 'cloud' storage sites, U-tube and similar, most Web-Mail sites and many photo sharing sites) are blocked.

 

There are also cases of sites which we can access but certain functionality is restricted; such as most newspaper sites and bloging sites we can view/read but can't add comments or upload files, some forums we can read but not sign-in, and many shopping sites (including thetrainline.com and Hattons as I recently found ) we can browse but not purchase ...

 

The capability does exist to grant individual users access to specified sites - prime example is our sexual health team having access to some sites that most reasonable people would not even dare visiting on company time for perfectly ligitimate research!

Edited September 29, 2011 by PLD

[Removed a/c]

I have access to every single website, well I do work for an Internet provider.......we call it research

[beast66606]

As we (NHS) are dealing with a lot of sensitive data, the filtering is as much about stopping that data getting out into the wrong hands as it is about stopping time-wasting. Therefore virtually all sites where data could potentially be uploaded to or sent insecurely (all 'social networking' sites, file sharing sites, 'cloud' storage sites, U-tube and similar, most Web-Mail sites and many photo sharing sites) are blocked.

 

I'd be more concerned about what Doctors and Consultants take home on their laptops if I were you Paul ...

[Southernman46]

I start with Amey soon and as long as RMweb / eBay / Hattons / MRD are allowed then I'll be happy. The GW main line runs past my window so plenty of entertainment there too

[Mod5]

If it was that bad in the jokes it would be removed. We do check them you know.

[The Q]

At the company I work at, at tea break and lunch, you can look at (offically) anything that is politically correct, ie no porn, racist sites/ jokes etc. but it isn't actually blocked in anyway..

The Q

[JeremyC]

At one point we had the curious situation where our own department's website was blocked.

 

Jeremy

[AndrewC]

Depends on which client site I'm on. Some are wide open. Others vary. A few of the real secret squirrel ones have no external web access and my mobile goes into a sealed envelope when I arrive for the day.

[Guest Max Stafford]

If it was that bad in the jokes it would be removed. We do check them you know.

 

 

Aye, but only after you've had a good laugh at them!

 

Dave.

[Horsetan]

.....The thing that struck me was RMWEB is allowed but the jokes were not.

 

Maybe they thought RMWeb as a whole was a sufficient joke?

[Gwiwer]

Blocked by default:

All proxy sites such as Proxify

All personal email sites

All social networking sites

Some national eBay sites including the US

ABC Australia news service (but no others - no explanation offered)

All "live" chat and similar services

All "adult" sites or pages

Links to the above embedded within permitted sites

 

Blocked on an individual basis usually based on excessive time logged on to a non-work site or arising from a manager's request due to poor work performance:

Any and all sites or pages specifically requested to have a ban applied in respect of named individual(s) up to and including a full ban on internet use (only Company intranet pages would remain)

 

Not blocked except as above:

Hobby and leisure forums except for "real time" chat functions

Most eBay national sites

News (except ABC Australia for reasons not made known) and weather sites worldwide

Non work-related sites where "fair use" may be reasonable such as banking and personal (including hobby) shopping sites

For all non-work activity a "fair use policy" applies. Limited use may be made of the internet and only in non-work time such as rostered breaks. "Limited" is not specifically defined.

 

Permitted without restriction:

Access to sites which support the work task but are not internal Company pages such as Google Maps and those of competitor businesses in the same field.

All pages under the direct control of work via the intranet but only on a "need to know" basis. Accessing areas not required and which may contain sensitive or confidential detail can be a dismissal offence.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Gwiwer

[Welly]

I can get RMWeb OK ( yet it downloads like porridge through straw on my workplace network! ) but not ebay. I couldn't care less about Tw@tter or Farcebook which are blocked anyway.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Welly

[Guest]

All pages under the direct control of work via the intranet but only on a "need to know" basis. Accessing areas not required and which may contain sensitive or confidential detail can be a dismissal offence.

Surely it shouldn't be _possible_ to access confidential data you're not allowed to see?

[Tim V]

RMweb is blocked, however, I spend too much time on that already - so it's no great loss. After all, the world isn't going to stop if I don't reply.....

[Gwiwer]

Surely it shouldn't be _possible_ to access confidential data you're not allowed to see?

Customer's personal information is held and managed in accordance with our Privacy Act and data protection legislation. How those records are viewed and used depends upon ones' position in the organisation. In my area we cannot access a large part of the financial transaction history as we don't need to do so. The provisions are there in case someone decides they know better and attempts to (or succeeds in) gaining access to the details they don't need by what ever means. It is also possible, in theory, to hack into commercially sensitive business information which is not normally available to us and there is a written process in place to cover any such attempt. The words Summary Dismissal are writ large and in bold.

[Danemouth]

Customer's personal information is held and managed in accordance with our Privacy Act and data protection legislation. How those records are viewed and used depends upon ones' position in the organisation. In my area we cannot access a large part of the financial transaction history as we don't need to do so. The provisions are there in case someone decides they know better and attempts to (or succeeds in) gaining access to the details they don't need by what ever means. It is also possible, in theory, to hack into commercially sensitive business information which is not normally available to us and there is a written process in place to cover any such attempt. The words Summary Dismissal are writ large and in bold.

 

Viewing data you are not entitled to see also constitutes an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990

 

Dave

[Gwiwer]

Legislation differs between nations. That's not one we have here.