How restrictive is your works internet?

[Pawnless Endgame]

Just curious really - during breaks and lunch, are you allowed to surf the net? I'm quite lucky in that our web filter is fairly relaxed. We can access Gmail, Hotmail, internet banking, Argos, eBay, Overclockers, Twitter, Facebook. You name it, you can pretty much access it. What surprises me the most is that it also includes Youtube which is bandwidth-heavy. I've had a few "access denieds" on a few BBC News and Wiki pages though! Web filter is called Bloxx btw.

1. General BBC News page is fine:

2. Click on the Cameron link though and it doesn't like it. So even though the main page had the word pr0n on it, that went through ok but the below wasn't ok?

3. Sometimes I'm just interested in something that pops up on the news and I'll look it up on Wikipedia. First one is the "Anonymous" hackers, but apparently it contains a banned keyword?!

4. You're not allowed to look up victimless crime either:

5. Now you're having a laugh. Even though we're allowed to do online shopping during breaks i.e. buy an iPad, but we're not allowed to look it up on Wiki?! WTF

6. I wanted to look up the word "albeit" as it's used a lot on forums and I wasn't sure what it mean. But no I couldn't look it up because it's apparently offensive:

I know I could have asked the IT dept but I didn't want to raise a ticket for something I only do on breaks. As long as it doesn't affect my productivity, I just want to check out a page or 2 while other colleagues go out for fag breaks. Grateful I am for web access, but I don't like being told by a nanny that I can't view the odd news bulletin. What difference would it make if I whipped out a tablet during breaks and stuck it on 3G?

Oh and before I forget, Speedtest works a charm too! 80Mbit. Shame it's all wasted on Internet Exploder 7 running on a P2.8HT - 2003 spec!

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Jeesus what resolution are your screens to have scroll bars on speedtest.net

I'm partially sighted and only have a small screen, thus 800x600.

no facebook twitter etc. BBC and wiki ok though regardless of words

Yeah that's the more normal set-up I would say for work internet. No social networking but BBC etc are ok.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

A few weird restrictions. I had a block page pop up once for "adult content" on some wikipedia link I'd clicked, which had nothing to do with adult content. I'm always slightly paranoid that it gets logged every time you try to access a blocked site.

I'm wondering if that is what's happening to me on Wiki as well. Wiki:iPad though?!

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I'd be interested in other thoughts on Net policy though, why do you do what you do?

My work is office-based, booking translators / interpreters for clients. 90% done by webmail, the other 10% done by phone. The team I work for is a CS team, so I pick up a bit of the CS as well. My stance in net use is that it is a privilege (not a right), same with smoking breaks. If they're going out for a fag for 5 minutes at a time, 3 times a day, then I'm good to surf a few articles on BBC News or check Gmail. The main thing is that it mustn't affect work productivity. I'm quite lucky in that our net is fairly unrestricted and it's just blocking the odd random BBC page because it found a banned keyword or something.

One of my previous jobs, working in an MOD library, you could only access the company's intranet. It was a blanket ban from the web regardless to whether your work was classified or not