The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - Is My Company Secretly Blocking URLs?

Is My Company Secretly Blocking URLs?

Okay, for dudes who know about this stuff... If we attempt to navigate to a po rn site or something, we get a screen that displays an ominous "Access Forbidden" message. I guess that's pretty much standard, but the interesting thing is that if we attempt to navigate to the most popular local search engine, the browser simply times out. Same thing if you try to go to Yahoo! games. (BTW, I've called a buddy who works at a different company, and he was able to get right through, so it's not congestion at the source.) Is my company doing this do you think?

anon
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Dude, you're going to get fired.

Elephant
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Anon, funny you mentioned. I've been having similar problems since the last month and a half. I guess it's some virus or something.

Any site I visit more than n number of times during the day gets blocked for the next 2 to 3 days, after which I can access it again. I got the same message, access denied, for JoS, FogCreek, and all the sites I go to many times a day.

So I started accessing JoS through anonymouse on a recommendation of using a Proxy given by Scott Doyle, one of our friends on this forum. Scott helped me out.

Two days back I ran the anti-virus for MyDoom or MyDom if it is so called. I don't have the problem now.

Sathyaish Chakravarthy
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Ask your company?

Mr Jack
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Microsoft making the internet reliable for all no doubt.

Krag
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

To digress, it'll be the chicken and egg puzzle, as a few recent newstories have told us. Bad guys are after the patches.

Sathyaish Chakravarthy
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

>> "Ask your company?"

<sarcasm>
Good plan... Hey, boss. What's the deal? I'm trying to look for a new job on company time, but it's like you people have the nerve to try and stop me! What gives?!?
</sarcasm>

;-)

888

anon
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

"If you're looking for a new job on company time"

I just *love* the ethical standards of most members of this profession....

How about doing it from your home machine instead? You're still getting paid by your employer, even if you don't like him.

Robert 'Groby' Blum
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Let me withdraw the "most" part. That's probably not true. Replace by "significant amount of".

Robert 'Groby' Blum
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

>> "'If you're looking for a new job on company time'

I just *love* the ethical standards of most members of this profession...."

Really, this topic has been done to death on this, and other forums. My company doesn't pay me for all the hours I sit at home and think about their software/database design. Nor do they ever pay me for overtime since I'm salaried, so I really have no ethical problems spending some work hours on the internet. I just don't think it would be a wise thing flaunt in their faces.

anon
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

anon,

"...but the interesting thing is that if we attempt to navigate to the most popular local search engine, the browser simply times out."

Quite frankly if your company is so anal they get arsey over a question about that it's time to look for a new job - preferably on their time.

Mr Jack
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

One university's policy on blocking BitTorrent traffic is to halt any http transmissions containing the word 'torrent'. So you can go to Google, search for 'bittorrent', and get most of the header on the results page, and then the arrow+hourglass, forever. The worst part about this is that for a while we just figured Google was slow. Heresy, I know.

So anyway, it's entirely possible that you have a similar filter.

..
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

That's stupid. What if you're looking at a weather report? (Torrents of rain on Saturday...)

scruffie
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

[plug]
http://badblue.com/helpofs.htm
[/plug]

check out office-surfer. it will proxy (and do some disguising of) URL's - so surf to your home pc, then go out from there. but remember to read the section on your responsibilities... you should obviously not violate company policy w/it (e.g., surf pr0n or whatever).

dir at badblue dot com
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Sorry, I missed that - anything containing the term 'bittorrent' was/is blocked. So that includes the Slashdot front page if they happen to mention a bittorrent link for the new RedHat iso's.

..
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

what is your university's free speech policy?

mb
Thursday, March 4, 2004

I know. It's a blatant act of censorship, without actually admitting to censorship, which is something of a legal no-no. I'm not going to tell you what my university is.

Plus, I was totally working the Bittorrent for 'illicit activity', etc, so I don't really have a complaint. They've got a new policy now, and I'm out of the dorms, so it's a nonissue.

..
Thursday, March 4, 2004