Shooter Grrl Posted October 12, 2002 Share Posted October 12, 2002 Well it finally happened... I was happily surfing be.com this afternoon at work, on my own time, when I got an error message that said "Your access to this site has been blocked - websense found the use of the banned word "weapon". If you have any questions please refer to company policy blah blah" Talk about annoyed, disappointed and just plain pissed off - I was in the middle of a thread even and was just trying to go to page 3!!!! What really frosts my butt is that the company is in serious financial difficulty and has laid off THOUSANDS of employees... how can they justify spending money on this kind of under these circumstances? Do they really think that those of us left actually have time to spend all day surfing the net? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gm iprod Posted October 12, 2002 Share Posted October 12, 2002 Makes you wonder what else that are checking on???? They are to busy keeping you under control they forgot about the fact that you may actually make them money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted October 12, 2002 Share Posted October 12, 2002 Having been "big brother" at my workplace for several years I can see both sides of the issue most of the time but it sounds like your place is going a lot too far. I can see watching for activity that might get the company sued like an employee who is looking at porno and getting a million complaints to HR from people who are offended. It just makes sense to quell that! But content filtering isn't the way to go because you end up blocking access to places that you really don't mind the employees going. If you know one of the network admins you could ask them if there is an exception list and that might help. I guess it depends on how your company views use of the web at break time, lunch, etc... I know some let you play and some don't. -jhgtyre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted October 12, 2002 Share Posted October 12, 2002 SG, See if you can rig up a modem and dial out. There's nothing they can do to stop you then, aside from cutting the phone line. BTW, don't you work for a defense contractor? If so, that would strike me as just slightly hypocritical. E (Edited by EricW at 10:11 am on Oct. 12, 2002) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted October 12, 2002 Share Posted October 12, 2002 The modem idea would do the trick. You might have to ask to have an analog line put in to do it though. If you are close to a fax machine you could split its line and use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted October 13, 2002 Share Posted October 13, 2002 Around here bypassing the firewall via modem might be frowned upon if discovered.. you may get more traction by finding some moderately-work-related sites that have the 'w-word' on them as in "This XYZ gadget is the latest w**** in the fight for customer service" or something, then bitch about that. Everybody that surfs ESPN at work should be hitting the same block, and enough pressure will get words removed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shooter Grrl Posted October 14, 2002 Author Share Posted October 14, 2002 BTW, don't you work for a defense contractor? Not quite - we manufacture COMMERCIAL satellites Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted October 14, 2002 Share Posted October 14, 2002 Quote: from Shooter Grrl on 6:35 pm on Oct. 13, 2002 Not quite - we manufacture COMMERCIAL satellites Why not just have David rig you up a satellite uplink and cut out the middleman? I'll bet you can even expense it as overhead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianH Posted October 15, 2002 Share Posted October 15, 2002 how can they justify spending money on this kind of under these circumstances? Probably so the managers can keep their coffee station and Friday dougnuts..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted October 30, 2002 Share Posted October 30, 2002 Ok, here's an idea I thought of for SG-- Try surfing BE.com through one of those 'translator' web sites-- you know, the ones that convert any web page to swahili or jive or redneck or valley-girl or whatever. I'm sure it wouldn't look too different some days.. here's BE.com in Redneck (you have to click the 'Dialectize' button, and there seem to be technical problems surfing, but it's very entertaining) I'm trying hard to refrain from comparing BE on the 'Moron' setting to Glocktalk.. (Edited by shred at 10:57 pm on Oct. 29, 2002) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianH Posted October 30, 2002 Share Posted October 30, 2002 Thanks, Shred. I haven't laughed that hard in I don't know when!!!! Try "jive". I laughed so hard I almost got sick!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3quartertime Posted October 30, 2002 Share Posted October 30, 2002 Too funny shred!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErikW Posted October 30, 2002 Share Posted October 30, 2002 [Airplane] Excuse me stewardess, I speak jive. [/Airplane] Funny how redneck and jive are so similar. ShooterGrrl, is Websense an application (service) running on your machine? Reconfigure it to not filter sites, or disable it entirely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianH Posted October 31, 2002 Share Posted October 31, 2002 Or keep "cleaning up" your hardrive until the MIS gets so sick of you, you can strike a bargain..... "uninstall this crap and I'll stop deleting those .DLL things....." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shooter Grrl Posted November 3, 2002 Author Share Posted November 3, 2002 This SO sucks! In case ya'll haven't noticed, I haven't been around much I can't remove, delete or install anything on my computer. They've got us running NT 4.0 with all the software files on the server - with rights whatsoever on my login. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlos Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 One creative way to fight this might be w/ political correctness . . . try joining a "breast cancer information/support/charity group. The filter will likely object to the word "breast" as related to porn - this happened to AOL a while back. When you get the filter response, storm up to the most senior person you can find and demand an official appology for accusing you of viewing porn, demand everyone in the computer dept, be sent to mandatory sensitivity training, claim you feel "violated" by a soul-less computer (and maybe just throw in the demand that the filter be removed entirely). Management will seek the least expensive way to shut you up - remove the filter. They could also fire you, but that might risk a discrimination suit which might ultimately prove expensive. Fight the power! - BTW, we miss you around here. D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talon Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 Websense is an application running on a separate machine that filters the traffic. They also provide a service that updates the sites to be restricted. The admin among other things chooses what categories of sites to block. If you look at the logs generated by websense at a major company you might be surprised what kind of surfing is taking place. I personally don't think tools like websense are the best way to manage your employees. Quote: from Erik Warren on 11:02 am on Oct. 30, 2002 [Airplane] Excuse me stewardess, I speak jive. [/Airplane] Funny how redneck and jive are so similar. ShooterGrrl, is Websense an application (service) running on your machine? Reconfigure it to not filter sites, or disable it entirely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 "I'm trying hard to refrain from comparing BE on the 'Moron' setting to Glocktalk.." Ooooooh. GOOD one! (Edited by Duane Thomas at 10:07 pm on Dec. 23, 2002) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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