Work makes no sense in their blocking of websites

[DisgruntledVirus]

They block sites on a per-site basis, but not always on a categorical basis. For example, they block Pandora and managers/IT guys say "well it uses a lot of bandwidth to stream music." Which is true, but then they leave Slacker unblocked. Along with Youtube, Hulu, Netflix (which used to be able to stream HD until they changed their Silverlight to require content to be able to be downloaded to the system which we can't change), iHeartRadio, etc. Today I come to find out that they block POF, yet allow OkCupid.

While we are on the subject of my company doing things that do not make sense, yesterday we were scheduled to work and the office was open yet the agents that we underwrite for had it as a company paid holiday. So 4 hours into the day they send everybody home because we have no work to do.

 

[GT1999]

Install PacketiX VPN client. It's free. It's hosted in Japan but I still get 400Kbps easily out of it which is enough for surfing. I've been using it at work for a few days now to bypass websense. I only really use it to check facebook. I can go to netflix, pandora, etc. What infuriates me is that other employees have websense profiles that are unblocked. I'm working on setting up a VirtualBOX session within my current one to use specifically for VPNs and I'm setting up a VPN to home (already have actually).

 

[ViviTheMage]

Install PacketiX VPN client. It's free. It's hosted in Japan but I still get 400Kbps easily out of it which is enough for surfing. I've been using it at work for a few days now to bypass websense. I only really use it to check facebook. I can go to netflix, pandora, etc. What infuriates me is that other employees have websense profiles that are unblocked. I'm working on setting up a VirtualBOX session within my current one to use specifically for VPNs and I'm setting up a VPN to home (already have actually).

If you get fired for it, don't blame anyone but yourself .

 

[GT1999]

If you get fired for it, don't blame anyone but yourself .

Our IT dept is pretty lax, websense is just there as corp requires it, other employees use VMs so I'm not worried about it. If they ask me why I'm using a VPN I'll say I need to connect to home to use my files.

 

[ViviTheMage]

They must be VERY lax to allow a user to connect home...wouldn't fly here.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

If your employer is blocking streaming there is a good probability that they'll catch up to you using a proxy. Streaming does cause bandwidth issues, no matter what home users think, and they will eventually have to track it down.




I don't understand why people have to act like little babies over their work computer. If your company makes it clear they don't allow streaming do they really need to block EVERY streaming music site? It's not like you get a 'pass' if you find one that's opened.


And you're paid to do what the company wants. If you don't like coming in then being sent home after 4 hours why don't you start your own firm, and then make your own rules.

 

[twinrider1]

You're at work. Work.

The IT people are just being reactive and not proactive. If a site takes up too much bandwidth, they block it. Why spend time looking for sites to block if they aren't a problem?

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Our IT dept is pretty lax, websense is just there as corp requires it, other employees use VMs so I'm not worried about it. If they ask me why I'm using a VPN I'll say I need to connect to home to use my files.

Good luck with that. Maybe you should, you know, work at work. Then do home crap at home. Man logic to people is brutal nowadays.

 

[nageov3t]

I'd question how much of it is just the result of people complaining.

eg: a manager sees one of his employees on plentyoffish.com all the time and asks IT to block it (thus leaving other dating sites unblocked because no one complained about them).... or maybe your CEO has an okcupid account and asked for the site to be unblocked

we've only got one website on the internet blocked from my office, and that's twitter -- a direct result of a (now-former) employee posting like tens of thousands of tweets over the course of a couple months while on the job, almost all of which were complaining about work. he got fired over it and the website got blocked.

 

[XBoxLPU]

You can't use Pandora on your smartphone?

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

If your employer is blocking streaming there is a good probability that they'll catch up to you using a proxy. Streaming does cause bandwidth issues, no matter what home users think, and they will eventually have to track it down

I don't understand why people have to act like little babies over their work computer. If your company makes it clear they don't allow streaming do they really need to block EVERY streaming music site? It's not like you get a 'pass' if you find one that's opened.

And you're paid to do what the company wants. If you don't like coming in then being sent home after 4 hours why don't you start your own firm, and then make your own rules.

Yeah I have no interest in finding any way around it, because it's work and their choice to block/unblock things. I do know that we have multiple different access levels for different departments however. For example in a previous department they used a white list method for web access. This department is using a black list, but it doesn't make sense to me.

I also don't have any issues being sent home after 4 hours. I am just questioning the leadership rationale behind thinking that we should have been open when our "customers" (i.e. agents) are not.

You're at work. Work.

The IT people are just being reactive and not proactive. If a site takes up too much bandwidth, they block it. Why spend time looking for sites to block if they aren't a problem?

My company is very large and we have one of our datacenters and 3 different call centers in my office, so we have two huge pipes coming into the building. Streaming music/movies/etc will take up bandwidth sure, but I don't think we could impact the core business as we do have throttles and QoS in place that does restrict how much of that bandwidth we can actually use at end stations.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

it does make perfect sense. The sites that aren't blocked are the ones the execs want to use.

 

[Wyndru]

I leave the sites open on our content filter yet limit the packeteer traffic for the streaming category to 1kbs just to piss people off

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

You can't use Pandora on your smartphone?

I can, and have. I have unlimited data, until VZW kills that in some way, and 4g. It's not a question of getting around the blocks, as I've done that for years through tethering my phone to a personal laptop if I need to (for the record, as long as I'm getting all my work done they don't care if I do it). I just question the logic behind it. The dating ones are odd, but the streaming ones make no sense to me. People watch youtube constantly, along with streaming Slacker, Hulu, and even Netflix in the background while they do their work. So why is Pandora blocked when these aren't?

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

I leave the sites open on our content filter yet limit the packeteer traffic for the streaming category to 1kbs just to piss people off

You sir, are an ass of the first degree. And I love it :thumbsup:

 

[Wyndru]

I can, and have. I have unlimited data, until VZW kills that in some way, and 4g. It's not a question of getting around the blocks, as I've done that for years through tethering my phone to a personal laptop if I need to (for the record, as long as I'm getting all my work done they don't care if I do it). I just question the logic behind it. The dating ones are odd, but the streaming ones make no sense to me. People watch youtube constantly, along with streaming Slacker, Hulu, and even Netflix in the background while they do their work. So why is Pandora blocked when these aren't?

I agree with you...why some streaming sites are blocked and others aren't is strange, especially the popular streaming ones you mentioned. Like others have said, maybe people aren't abusing the other sites as much as pandora. I don't agree with the idea that the higher ups want it opened, because it's very simple to segregate who has access to what, even if you need to create new vlans, so I can't see them leaving sites like this open for everyone when only some executives want access.

 

[OutHouse]

we used to block youtube but we got a lot of complints about not being able to view training videos that we unblocked it.

i was all for it because VMware has a lot of good troubleshooting posted as YouTube imbeded links.

but we do block facebook but allow twitter.... so i feel your confusion.

 

[SearchMaster]

I leave the sites open on our content filter yet limit the packeteer traffic for the streaming category to 1kbs just to piss people off

I think that's what they've done at my office. It's fine but there are times when I have legitimate needs to watch technical Youtube videos but cannot because it stops to buffer every 5 seconds or so.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

we used to block youtube but we got a lot of complints about not being able to view training videos that we unblocked it.

i was all for it because VMware has a lot of good troubleshooting posted as YouTube imbeded links.

but we do block facebook but allow twitter.... so i feel your confusion.

Yeah FB, twitter, and all the other social networking sites are wide open. It's really just some odd random ones that are blocked like Pandora.

 

[Wyndru]

I think that's what they've done at my office. It's fine but there are times when I have legitimate needs to watch technical Youtube videos but cannot because it stops to buffer every 5 seconds or so.

It could also be throttled down and it's maxed out at the time you are trying. We have youtube open on one of our vlans, and throughout most of the day it uses the full 20meg we allotted toward that category. It's a high school, so the teachers basically instruct kids all day using youtube.