No More Unrestricted Internet At Work 797
Schlemphfer writes: "You can forget about using private email or surfing the web while at work if these bozos have their way. And judging by the Reuters article, it looks like they might. Basically what they're doing is trying to scare senior management into thinking that allowing employees unrestricted use of the net will cripple a company with viruses and lawsuits."
Crippling. (Score:2)
It will. Haven't you ever worked in IT before? Christ, what I wouldn't give to go back to the days of dumb terminals and VAXen, so I wouldn't have to deal with all of these Windows infections.
--saint
Yup. (Score:3, Insightful)
As the sole unix admin there, I mostly got to sit back and chuckle evilly, but half a week's lost productivity is no laughing matter when you're tallying up the balance sheets at the end of the month.
The bottom line here is that you are being paid to work, not to check your personal email, IM your friends, or post to Slashdot. If that seems unreasonable, start your own damn company.
Re:Yup. (Score:2)
-earl
Re:Yup. (Score:4, Insightful)
" While I agree that Admins need to keep on top of patches, Nimda can still spread even with patched servers. It self-propagates through Outlook "
If you're using Outlook, you deserve all you get.
I am the web orientated guy out of a two man IT server admin team. Frankly, I think time would be much better spent upgrading company policy and used programs such that a simple virus such as Nimda CANNOT propergate.
No, not everyone can move away from Windows, but you can't tell me anyone needs to use Outlook or Internet Explorer, or any of the other arse security-bug ridden apps MS releases.
Rather than paying for Microsoft's mistakes with employee moral and wasting IT's time, simply think before making any software purchasing decisions.
Re:Yup. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ignoring for a moment paid software, so we're on a level playing-field with Outlook Express, and remembering that an extra $40/seat or whatever for something as simple as an email client can really bulk the cost of an office-full of machines.
Free email clients which support multiple POP accounts? Not many.
Filter that list for those which support attachments, even fewer.
And those which support PGP (ok I know OutExp doesn't either but it's useful) and filtering rules
Now if only there was something like KMail for Windows, we could all stop using outlook express. But if there is, I can't find it.
Any ideas?
Re:Yup. (Score:5, Insightful)
But that point aside, that's fine I'm getting paid to work, 40 hours a week. The main reason I can work 60-70 hours is because I can deal with my real life issues while at work quickly and easily through net use. Not to mention that my work is greatly facilitated by the fact that if I need software or information I can quickly and easily obtain it from my desktop.
I see your point, but (tech) companies thrive on a particular type of employee, who if he can't read
Re:Yup. (Score:3, Interesting)
The salesman has less to do with the sale than the cashier at McDonalds.
Re:Crippling. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What is the problem?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is the problem?? (Score:2)
Re:What is the problem?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, some of the management types didn't like it. But there are enough of them that understand where their profits come, so I haven't actually seen much real interference.
There was a funny case 6 or 7 years back, when a customer sent us the results of a benchmark of our product against several others. When asked why I hadn't run the benchmark myself, I pointed to a printed policy that prevented me from accessing the site that had the benchmark's source. I mentioned that I'd read about the test, but thought that if I downloaded it, I'd get into trouble for violating the policy. The policy changed real fast after that.
Management that restrict their techies from use of the Net are dummies who are just shooting their own company in the foot.
Re:What is the problem?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What is the problem?? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is mighty handy for somebody running tech support to know about the latest computer virii before it hits the customer base, or even the networks servers, if it is a virus that does not propagate by e-mail but rather by exploiting a server vulnerability.
It's about control... (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally, all mail is screened against the server's pattern file, which tries to update itself hourly. If sometimes passes through mail, it'll be found if on a server, and the client software, which updates its pattern file upon logon, will find things as they're opened.
All with unnoticable performance difference. We haven't had a virus infection in a LONG time now.
Worms like Nimda are a bit more annoying, but we take things like this seriously, and by doing so, avoided Nimda and others completely.
=====
As for net access, we do run reports on the proxy logs occasionally. Employees understand that they have little privacy in the workplace and that if we see them goofing off (except for after hours or at lunch), they do get an email regarding it. But we haven't had to do that in years. They more or less behave, because we trust them and they trust us.
-----
Re:It's about control... (Score:3, Insightful)
In my office, where we develop in Java, the local proxy server blocks site like www.junit.org or Google (usenet) groups. I guess they want to make sure that the programmers don't cheat and use already prepared answers... :-)
There are so many ways around this - I'll just take my laptop to the part and jack-in the open wireless network that's running there...
Or better yet, I'll go to the bathroom and bring a book.
Re:It's about control... (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus the phones listen off of port 80, so watch out for DDOS attacks on those as well.
Re:It's about control... (Score:5, Informative)
At home I use junkbuster and watch all the unlogged internet there is without ads, too. OpenSSH also gives me access to nntp, smtp, and pop over a secured connection between my office and home.
So before you go off yelling about office proxies and you have dsl or cable connections at home, set something like this up and go the distance.
They will still come and get you, a vent. (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other end, the cable companies are now expressly forbiding "VPN". While you may think they are only after the retarded M$ full desktop bandwith hogger, what they really want is your money. The asses that block ports 25 and 80 will get around to 22 sooner or later, regardless of your actual badwith use. My cable company, Cox, just started to block port 21 on incoming ftp request. I'm not sure how they can distinguish that from the AOL client, but they did tonight and my mother got a "blocked by administrator" sign instead of pictures of my baby girl. So clever, they will soon be out of my $65/month I'm paying for a static IP. No the asses are not going to get the $50/month DHCP fee from me either. Snip, bye bye.
The internet is almost the coporate lap dog the entertainment companies, publishers and telcos wanted. If the feds kill wireless there will be no useful net left. I'm fed up with the spam, the adverts, the unilateral contracts, the credit card demands and the whole fuck you.
stranger and stranger still (Score:3, Interesting)
Asside. If your company "firewall" is anything like mine, your users, aka peers, can send anything they want at a ".zip" or anything that is not one of the banned names so frightening to M$ Admins.
Incompetence breeding inconvenience for the rest of us. Nice work, meat heads. It's not going to bother me too much because my job gives me enough time at home to have a life. Some people will not be so lucky and your efforts, or lack thereof, will really burn them. Get your freaking act togeter or go away or expect your best people to pack up and leave.
Re:It's about control... (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, I did it with $0, plus about a few hours of my time.
We haven't either since I installed the virus scanner on the mail server (again, a $0 price tag, plus an hour of time).
I think the whole premise of the article is to find non-"worker efficiency" justifications for imposing nazi-like restrictions on Internet usage at work. The technical/security rationale is flawed, and preventing workers from spending personal time on the web or email is only likely to make them miserable, not more productive.
Jason.
Re:It's about control... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, I'm not in the corporate world right now, but what you say rings true to me. I know the company that cuts off my email and web access is losing an employee.
It was all over the LOC post the other day: productivity isn't measured in code produced, hours at the desk or anything else like that. The internet is my encyclopedia, and if I don't have that not only and I unhappy, but I'm less productive.
So yeah, Right on. I agree.
Christopher
Re:It's about control... (Score:2)
Not true for everyone (Score:5, Funny)
connected to the T1 lines.
There are already a few hundred routes in the
tables... who's going to notice everything from
my workstation misses the filtering appliance?
Oh that's right, it's my job to make sure no one
*else* does this, too.
You'll always have access (Score:5, Interesting)
Here at my company, as a sysadmin, I've been suggesting a policy of completely unfiltered web access *and* completely unfiltered proxy log access.
From the CEO all the way down to the temps.
(Except for *me* of course...)
We already filter out dangerous attachments from email and have good virus software. We really don't have a problem in that respect.
The thing is, once you take something like this away from your staff, you are saying "We don't trust you. We think you're slacking."
In my office, people work damn hard and are pretty happy in their work. We have a good atmosphere and no real division between workers and management. Once a company starts doing this kind of thing, the mood changes and people get resentful.
How many people in how many companies have said "This place really started to go downhill when they took away the free soft drinks..."?
Just my 2 yen,
Jim in Tokyo
what's wrong with these guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
seriously though, i'd go crazy if i had to work 8 hours straight without any distractions...so, what if i shoot over to Hotmail to check my personal e-mail, or over to ESPN to check out the latest sports news, or even here to post my thoughts on the latest tech news topics...and that doesn't even count the numerous times i use the internet to look up java related things on Sun's website or trouble shoot my Websphere problems over at IBM...
what's the point of having all that information available at our finger tips if we can't use it...
Re:what's wrong with these guys... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, that sounds so secure! Ohter than the fact that you're not doing the work that's probably expected of you, I don't think employees in any large company can be trusted to not find themselves a virus.
Re:what's wrong with these guys... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally, employees should be gauged on performance items: do they do the work they're given, does their work reflect a high level of quality, does the employee both fill their job description and give that extra 10% (participating in meetings, giving a shit about the product, etc) you expect from employees, etc.
Things like monitoring web access are on the other end of that. This is more on the level of companies that rate their employees by how many hours a week they spend at their desk or who eats lunch in the office. These things are quantifiable, but in the end are a lot less meaningful (for example, at my last job there were people who'd spend 14 hours a day at work, but who couldn't make a deadline to save their souls).
But hey, it's tough find good managers. And even when you find them, they tend to be expensive. It's much cheaper to hire people with degrees in business from state colleges and experience bossing their dog around. I'm looking at you, Nadir.
Security in the workplace (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly, there's room for an ebb and flow of security standards, but they're a limit to how oppressive they'll be, at least to the engineers. If things like web surfing have a few legitimate uses (eg. looking up technical documentation), there's no way it'll hampered much, because managers would quickly start complaining on behalf of their workers.
Foolish. (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember being in a school that had open internet access, then going to another school that had limited internet access and constantly being frustrated by the limitations imposed. I couldn't download the application I was working on and test it on a new machine, I couldn't go to a website talking about Middlesex county. There were a lot of legitimate things that I wished to do that I was blocked from, yet I could go to satanic websites, pro-life websites with all sorts of horrid imagery, and more.
Most attempts at controlling content end up being failures. Bring this to the attention of those seeking to control the information you recieve and you'll get a confused look, they'll pause and say "I don't know why you couldn't access that site. You should be able to."
I think it would be better to leave things open and dock the pay of any employee who violates "Guidelines". Let 'em hang themselves. Set up the "filters" not as filters that block the person but as flags that flag the IT staff regarding potential illegal use. The IT staff could then investiage and initiate a "three strikes" scenario. Strike one- warning, strike 2- docked pay, strike 3- no more internet access no way no how.
-Sara
Re:Foolish. (Score:4, Insightful)
Screw notifying the IT guys. That's an HR job. I want no part of it. Let the guys that chose "business" and drank too much in college be hated and vilified. I'd like to be able to eat lunch with the people I work with and not have them be careful about what they tell me. When they come back with 4 hand grenades and an uzi, I'd rather not be the face of the Oppressor.
Wasn't yours to begin with.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Due to viruses and other problems I've blocked any attachment capable of carrying a virus. Yes, it's sometimes a hassle but that's the way it is now. Management has requested we monitor the type of sites people visit just to make sure there isn't a big problem. So far they haven't requested user lists or specific sites. They won't until XXX sites start getting out of hand.
Viruses, security holes, and loss of productivity have caused these limits to be placed. Want to surf for fun, do it at home.
Re:Wasn't yours to begin with.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds fair. Now, of course, I'll just stop doing any sort of work outside the contracted time. Inspirational idea in the shower? Too bad. Clever way to save the company money thought up during the commute? Guess someone else will have to think it up during approved times.
This is part of the insane attitude that one's workers are one's worst enemies. Letting people do these little things is far from bad for business. It is most likely actually good as it creates an environment where people feel invested and where they have the wild concept that maybe their employer sees them as more than "production units".
But of course that assumes there's actually value in labor, and that's anathema to the modern capitalist.
Re:Wasn't yours to begin with.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, "lost productivity" isn't really an IT or technology issue. ("Let's get rid of the coffee machine and water cooler. Too many people standign around when they should be working!") But it should be pretty obvious to the dumbest PHB that unrestricted Web access makes people stay in the office longer --- and unlike foosball tables or a refrigerator full of beer, it doesn't cost much. Note that I'm only referring to WEB access here: Morpheus and Kazaa can bring a network to a halt, and I wish my company would do more to block spam. (I get far more at work than at home, thanks to our Webmasters sticking prominent "mailto" links on the company site.)
Re:Wasn't yours to begin with.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is part of the insane attitude that one's workers are one's worst enemies. Letting people do these little things is far from bad for business. It is most likely actually good as it creates an environment where people feel invested and where they have the wild concept that maybe their employer sees them as more than "production units".
As I read the article, the point isn't "Joe smith just spent 10.3 minutes reading slashdot when he could have been working".. It has more to do with "Joe Smith just downloaded a pirated version of Photoshop to run on a company owned PC". Your doing some online shopping or checking your Hotmail (possibly) hurts your productivity, but NOT the productivity of others. Now imagine you're pulling up porn in your cube and Cindy M. Biblethumper happens to walk by... Or when you open your outlook and unleash the latest win32 virus on the network. This cost the company serious money above providing net access.
We're reached this point at my company. As the network admin I've taken to explicitly blocking any e-mail with a .exe, .vbs, or any one of a 100 different virus-carrying file-types across. I still allow .gif's, .zip's, .doc's, etc, but scan them before delivery. If they get upset because they can't receive dancingbaby.exe from their cousin in Toronto, that's too bad.. Let them download it home their home computer and infect it.
The same thing is happening with spam. For 5 years now our policy has been "we can't do anything about it", because we didn't want to be responsible for attemping to filter the incoming e-mail stream. It has reached the point that our CEO is receiving 15 - 30 porn spams a day and has had enough. We have to pay the costs while he's travelling in europe and dialed in to our 800 number at 28.8 downloading this shit. We're about to deploy spamassassin [taint.org] site-wide, and if it happens to catch someone's birthday card from his step-mother, that's too bad.
Shayne
Re:Wasn't yours to begin with.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the reason we're the #2 consulting company and you have to block
Re:Wasn't yours to begin with.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This "productivity loss" is a bunch of horse shit anyway. People with a strong work ethic will do the job regardless, and people without won't. You're not going to turn a bad employee into a good one by removing net access.
Whatever (Score:2)
If you are unhappy with the fact that your evil corporate money-grubbing employer doesn't want you dicking around on company time...well, good luck in getting a new job.
-Waldo Jaquith
The folly of this BS (Score:3, Insightful)
This won't work for people who do more than automaton work. If you restrict net access or filter sites in any way, you risk employee burnout, employee morale, and employees' ability to research job-related stuff. If my company used filtering or blocked my internet access, I might not be able to get the information I need to do my job. What happens when I need to look for API documentation?
This is kind of like curing athlete's foot by amputating the patient's leg.
Re:The folly of this BS (Score:2)
You have MSDN (or whatever the documentation is for your API) installed on your hard drive.
Yes, I sometimes look up Win32 API calls on the internet, but usually when I am out doing a contract somewhere and haven't got MSDN docs installed anywhere.
graspee
Re:The folly of this BS (Score:2)
How about banishing Outlook? (Score:2, Interesting)
Never mind...
Back to the Future (Score:2, Interesting)
In the 19th and early 20th century, at the heart of the industrial revolution, working conditions were appalling. There were no government restrictions on what employers could require from employees.
As a result of the socialist labour movements, both through their political arms and through strikes and other actions, work place reforms were put in place.
Age limits were raised, limitations on salary cutting was introduced and dangerous machinery was forced to be made safer.
Now, at the beginning of the 21C, we have forgotten those gains and how they were made. We have forgotten that employers must be kept in check by organized employees.
If you stand alone, they will monitor every aspect of your lives, from email to web surfing, to drug use. The actions in this article are only the beginning.
Remember that old saying, which is now so relevant - in Union is Strength.
Typical Use Just as Bad... (Score:2)
These e-mail filters from outside companies might make it harder to be sued for sexual harrasment because you are showing an active pursuit of purity but it does not prevent the porno from making its way into your system 100%. You can protect the inside of your company so it doesn't go out but its hard to protect it from those people outside of your network that want to pass on the "funny, dirty picture" with one of their friends that happens to be your employees.
Web filtering is a lot easier to do and doesn't require and expensive commercial package. Squid + SquidGuard have been a perfect match for my purposes.
My solution when C-level management calls for these sort of filters is by giving them what they ask for -- all the way. After a few days, they will always want them relaxed. I always find it funny its never the grunts that are the ones abusing e-mail, its always the suits! :)
Limited resources (Score:2, Informative)
I am the system administrator at a college here in Australia and if we did not filter/limit the kids access to the internet then all the bandwidth on our (meager) internet connection would be soaked up by kids wasting time on MUDs, IRC, HotMail, Chat, Online games, Warez sites, and other such activities, and the staff and students who actually try to do some work (research/E-mail etc) would have a hell of a time trying to get anything done.
So whilst I agree that private use of the 'net should be allowed, there is limits that need to be put on WHAT private use is allowed. Not only to free up the bandwidth for legitimate uses, but also free up computers for thos that wish to work rather than just waste their time...
Is this so bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course their are exceptions...Not allowing developers access to the internet for research and such is suicide...But for many jobs this is perfectly valid.
Time to vent (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's take this quote right here which sums it up:
"The message is: 'I'm afraid you'll have to do it after hours at home, which is where you should be doing it in the first place,"' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research for Finish-based F-Secure Corp.
Where does ANYONE get off thinking company resources are PERSONAL resources? How is this a limitation of ANYONE'S rights? Do you think you have the right to drive the company car across the country for a personal vacation? Do you think you have the right to use the company FedEx account to send Christmas presents to your sister in New York? Then how in the hell do you think you have the right to use company network resources to send personal email and use ICQ? Would your boss let you sit there and read the newest John Grisham novel when you should be working? Then why do you think you are allowed to read slashdot all day?
People need to grow up. When you are at work, you should work. If your company is NICE enough to let you use resources for personal use then fine but you do NOT have a right to do anything with something that isn't yours.
Christ I need a beer.
Re:Time to vent (Score:2)
This is a "security" software company using the press (if you can call Yahoo! News the press) to try to drum up some business with scaremongering tactics. The people in their virus-writing division have probably been slacking off surfing the web, thus reducing the demand for anti-virus software, so they've got to sell something.
Christ, I need a Jaegermeister [jaegermeister.de]!
P.S.: In answer to your first question, no, I've never worked in a corporate eye-tee environment. I prefer the company of intelligent, productive people to that of hyperpolitical, network nazi, tattle-tale tech wannabes that infest most corporate eye-tee environments.
Re:Time to vent (Score:2, Flamebait)
Uh, It's a privilege, not a right... (Score:2)
I use the internet quite a bit while at work; it's an invaluable programming reference. Any surfing beyond that, though, is technically an abuse of company resources. I'm pretty good about sneaking over here to Slashdot only on short breaks, but there are times when I let the mouse wander a little more than I should.
In a big company, lots of employees surfing around and forwarding stupid jokes and viruses to one another can cost a company in terms of both bandwidth and lost productivity.
Having internet access at work is nice and all, but a God-given right it ain't.
And this is a bad thing because? (Score:2)
Worse, let's say Dumb Secretary #1 opens up an ILOVEYOU-type virus (I saw such a case on the evening news at the time.) Boom-infected machines that will have to be cleaned up. This is most certainly a BAD THING.
Now, before I'm flamed by the personal freedoms crowd, let me point out that work is a privilege. You have been hired by said company to perform said tasks. You have not been hired to bid on eBay, manage your stocks, or visit the Hamsterdance. Those people who need access, like developers, will likely be granted it. The article means companies in general, some tech firms probably won't mess with it.
We'll have to see where this goes, but I say let's wait and see.
~chazzf
Not viruses and lawsuits... (Score:2)
No personal email? (Score:2)
-Pete
woo (Score:2)
FUD FUD FUD!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
"As a result, companies are considering dramatically curtailing, or even abolishing completely the freedoms, on which employees have grown increasingly reliant over the past few years. "
Companies? What "companies"? The only firms named in the article are firewall and security companies that are spewing the fear used in this marketing spewing article.
No real management is going to take this seriously.
They take it seriously where I work!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Where I work, we completely cut off access to the Internet from nine to noon, and one to five. In other words, if you want to do anything on the Internet, you can't do it during regular business hours (except during lunch). In our case the purpose was not security or reducing liability, but to increase the productivity of our coders. Management wasn't too happy with the amount of time programmers spent web surfing and IRCing.
Some coders complained they needed to use the Web for reference and research purposes, so we set up a single computer with 24 hour Internet access in a very public area where everyone could see whether or not you doing something work related. Surprisingly, it doesn't see much use.
This whole policy was none too popular (as you might imagine) when it was first implemented a few months ago. But by every objective measure, productivity is very markedly improved, bugs are fewer, we're getting things done within a reasonable time frame for a change. It still isn't a popular policy, but even the programmers who most resent the policy have had to admit (grudgingly) that it works.
Re:They take it seriously where I work!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
If my company took away net access, would I continue to work, well yeah, would I be any more productive definitely not. Would I be looking for a new job, count on it.
Re:FUD FUD FUD!!!!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
No real management is going to take this seriously.
Hahahahahhahahahahahahahaha
You're so naive its almost cute.
Fairly weighing the risks (Score:2, Insightful)
I also don't understand the focus on racy and inflammatory stuff as the biggest risk to a company. The biggest risk to the company is not the Internet but the Intranet. It's often the case that in a single button click, one can get to the corporate secrets and with little more than a few more keystrokes one can output that info to a file and mail it to a party outside the company's walls. That risk outshines the risk of pornography in many cases.
And, finally, a lot of this seems a scapegoat for lazy/bad management. If your employees are productively yielding what they should, what difference does it make where they are surfing. And if they are not yielding what they should, why not address that issue?
Rights On the Line (Score:2)
Face it, he who owns the property gets to set the rules for it. If I refuse to let Timothy redecorate my bathroom for proper feng shui alignments, I am hardly infringing on his freedom of religion. Yet somehow if I don't allow him to use my computer to cruise for pr0n I am somehow infringing on his rights.
If you own that workstation in your cubicle, go do whatever you want with it. But if you boss owns it instead, then you had better follow his rules regarding it.
This isn't about "Your Rights Online", but rather "Your Employer's Rights Regarding Your Employer's Property".
using the faster connection at work to download? (Score:2)
But seriously, I couldn't do my job if I didn't have the net. Sure I browse /. for about an hour a day, but I'm there 9 or 10 hours somedays, so what's the big deal? Also, every bigwig in my company has AIM or YahooIM installed, so do you really think they will block all that stuff? When the big guys visited our location last time, I got pulled out of a very important meeting to help one of them get connected to YahooIM.
Bozos? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're surfing the Internet on your employer's time
Your employer is paying the bill for the T3 (or whatever)
And you think you have the right to surf the Internet while at work? When you're on the company's time, you're supposed to be working...not bidding on crap on eBay.
Would someone please tell timothy what censorship is? This story doesn't even come close to the definition.
Re:Bozos? (Score:3, Insightful)
And you think you have the right to surf the Internet while at work?
If the organization in question is big enough for a T3, then it is big enough to pay thousands for telephone service, coffee service, housekeeping, office furniture, and the ongoing costs associated with an ascetically pleasing facility and property. None of these costs directly relate to productivity, but are considered to be comforts that a civilized business provides to its employees. At some level, there is an awareness that if you are going to engage the services of humans in the course of your business, you must provide certain comforts that serve no purpose except to please the humans.
The reality is that taking away web browsing in today's world is like taking all the phones or discontinuing company provided toilet paper. It has become a necessary human comfort to be able to check the weather or see your kids on the daycare webcam.
Besides, in my extensive experience, the network abuses and virus problems almost always come from users on the top floor.
OK, OK, turn off the net access... (Score:3, Insightful)
...but please, please, please leave me a hole for Google's Usenet archive [google.com]. Almost every programming question I've ever had has been answered 100 times on Usenet.
It may not be a right, but a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is right now Americans are required to work way too much as is. Many jobs onyl allow you two weeks of vaction for several years after you start, and even then you might not get that "benefit" for a year after your start date. People getting burnt out at work happens all the time, and that hurts business in terms of productivity. Sure they enact short term solutions like fire the employees and hire new ones, but the new ones get burnt out faster trying to catch up. Allowing someone some time to spend checking up on their personal email and sending an ICQ to their wife is not to much to give up when it means your employees will be happier, and therefor more productive.
But I imagine the suits along with all the "you are paid to work" zealots on this site will only see the one dimension picture of lost email due to "personal" activities. At what point did we become slaves anyway?
What about phone access? What about the door? (Score:2, Funny)
Do you realize how much time people waste talking on the phone? One guy next to me used to spend at least an hour a week chattering about bridge. It was very annoying. But he did good work so there.
Do businesses realize that people might call up phone sex lines? They can also contact prostitutes, drug dealers, hit men, or even rat out the company to the SEC/FBI. The list of bad contacts goes on and on. I say, "Let's rip those phones out of the wall."
And what about the friggin door. Many good companies like to say that their most important assets walk out of the door every evening. Hah. Do you realize the trouble they can find when they leave the protective womb? There are drugs, criminals, blackmailers and spousal distraction units. Heck, there are even video games. I say, "Just lock them up for good." To heck with the door.
The way it should be. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I work (5000+ people company), this is what we do:
Honestly, I think that is about the best you can do. IT needs the internet extensively; other departments not so much. Hell, my boss has said to me on more than one occasion that if
I must say that I don't think its a good idea to totally remove internet access though for entire departments. I mean, if you work 8-5, that's the largest portion of your day spent at the office. You do have a life outside of work, and sometimes you have to do something online during those hours. Same goes for the phone, you are going to need it for a personal call every now & again. Of course, if you abuse the privileges, then you should have them revoked, plain & simple. But basic access should be allowed, after proper training, etc. However, giving everyone in the company unrestricted access is just flat-out stupid.
Re:The way it should be. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen IT departments that have ONLY HTTP access through a proxy. I was once stationed at a consultant through my full time employer as such a place and when I neeeded to do a text dump of a DB I couldn't even FTP it back to our site because -nobody- in the building could do an FTP transfer. Solution: NFS mount the Unix partition that had the
IT may abuse it from time to time, but take it away and you pull a huge resource from the good workers.
Re:The way it should be. (Score:3)
I work at a great company- we have none of these pretender types around. We have one guy, and he doesn't go around uninstalling crap from people's machines and destroying their ability to get their job done just to satisfy a petty power trip. He has been dragging his feet a little on installing an Exchange server for management, but that's fine with us.
technical solution to a people problem (Score:3, Informative)
Having said that, there is indeed a need for increased security awareness in many companies. Buying more gear isn't really that cost effective though. Educating your people and letting them know the expected behaviour is better. This includes increasing the Cluedness of manglement so that they are aware of what their people are doing. If someone feels a need to surf pr0n all day instead of doing their job, your problem is not giving them access to pr0n. Why not find out why people are doing it instead of working?
If you've got people using decent passwords that they don't put on PostIt notes on their monitor; if your network techs are using ssh instead of telnet to configure routers; if every two bit middle manager stops demanding to be an exception to all the rules; and if you still have security issues, then maybe you can start looking at more drastic solutions. Security must be holistic, and more often than not it's more a business process issue, not a purely technical one.
Lastly, I've been at sites with really tight access policies that were easy enough to bypass for someone in the know. If there's any outbound access permitted, there's a way to bypass the security. So go ahead and implement this stuff. If I really want to get past it, I probably can.
But then, I've got better things to do with my time than surf pr0n at work, so when I say I need ssh access outbound, I actually do. Don't stop me doing my job by implementing some half-assed pseudo-security solution. Better yet, hire me to do it right! ;-)
Re:technical solution to a people problem (Score:3, Insightful)
(a) in business terms, that's the cost of assigning someone to work full-time for 4 months on something. So consider that before you shell-out for the software: could your own people get a free solution running for less cost?
(b) just how much money do they expect businesses to save? You'd have to waste an awful lot of bandwidth before the cost reached £30,000
(c) Did anyone ever analyse the costs/benefits of this? How much work does a perl developer do without access to perl.com? How much work does any developer do if they have to stare at the program unril they leave, rather than being able to do something else while they think about it?
(d) How long are your people going to stay if they have to keep on working every spare moment, without any distractions? It makes you think of the human-farms in The Matrix.
Reactionary Drivel... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gads, a tad bit reactionary, aren't we???
First, any company that doesn't take, at least, modest precautions in blocking certain types of e-mail attachments, or abusive downloadable web content is foolish, and, IMHO, acting negligently towards their own fiduciary responsibility, or toward their Internet neighbors.
I've been long sickened by the number of automated attacks that my IDS picks up. How long has CodeRed and Nimda been around??? Too many of these are comprimised hosts supported by corporate networks of some sort.
Second, there's little "right" involved in your use of corporate assets such as personal computers and networks. It's a kindergarten mentality to expect a company to be required to provide you with resources to order the latest teen-pop drivel, or whatever it is you just _have_ to buy during work hours.
That said, I (and many of those within my company) couldn't do our jobs as developers without net access. Any company which starts arbitrarily blocking access to the Internet without properly judging the necessary impact to their workers is also foolish.
If your company manufactures pencils, then OK, they can probably get away without providing unrestricted access to the Internet without any negative impact on their workforce. On the other hand, if your company develops software, etc... the impact would be substantial.
It's all a matter of degree, and like most things on this planet, the right solution lies in moderation.
Was this REALLY worth a Slashdot news item? I do not see how this is news in that a) it's not anything new, or hasn't been bandied about ad nausem; and b) common sense tells me that the submission itself is borderline troll. Seriously, timothy, did you think this was news???
It'd be nice to be able to moderate story submissions in addition to comments.
Duh, quit using Outlook (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest developments are around email prevention, experts say. Elaborate content filtering software, which can run upwards of $30,000 to install, can block all but the tamest incoming emails, and most attachments, said Trend Micro's Genes.
Corporations, particularly those that were stung hard by the wave of virus and worm attacks during the past two years, are considering it a top priority.
Here's a free clue: QUIT USING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE.
Sheesh, how stupid can you be? And what a stupid solution to the problem, cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Seriously, damned near all the email viruses are targeted directly at Outlook. So the solution is to ban email? Why not just, ya know, not use Outlook?
Myopic. Utterly myopic.
Office e-viruses - "The Microsoft Disease" (Score:4, Troll)
Really. Because there's times I'm very, very, happy not to be using Windows, such as when the latest Outlook or Word infection is going around.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]
it is about control... (Score:4, Insightful)
A draconian attitude regarding squeezing every last second of work out of an employee is pointless! all it does is breed resentment in the employees. when I was working in an environment where 5pm counterstrike matches were commonplace, we tended to do more work after the match. however, the work was interesting enough we did not mind.
the moment the management is against the workers is the moment production starts to fall. everyone should be working toward the goal.
also I highly doubt that ANYONE here could go 8 hours without a slashdot fix. dream on.
they won't stop me! (Score:3, Funny)
I'm a BOFH!
Besides, I'd rather have the users porn surfing than asking me about excel and access anyway.
They Watch You At Home, Too (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a case of rights, but still important. (Score:3, Interesting)
From the standpoint of security and/or legal responsibility, of course a company needs to restrict Internet access. No filter is perfect, but as long as it blocks out most of the obvious porn, gambling, "hacker" (speaking colloquially), racist, etc. sites it should at least make it abundantly clear that an employee is trying very hard to circumvent the rules. But then again, there should already be policies on the books dealing with those things, Internet or no Internet.
On the other hand, from a standpoint of productivity, a company should be very wary of restricting Internet access. I don't buy the argument that if an employee isn't surfing the Internet for X hours per day that all of a sudden, he will be productive for X more hours per day. There is a limit to how productive someone is going to be -- if you take away the Internet, some other "time waster" will rise in its place. Do you really think everyone who has a Palm just uses it for phone numbers and schedules? Do you think that just because someone is at their desk concentrating intently that they aren't working on a crossword puzzle? Do you think that every phone call made is for business? How about good old-fashioned staring into space?
An employee is productive if he or she performs to expectations, period. Companies should have an interest in getting rid of (or better yet, finding a way to motivate) unproductive employees anyway -- but it shouldn't involve cutting off the Internet from employees who are already pulling at least their own share of the weight, if not more. If my company wants to call me on the carpet for reading Slashdot or sending an e-mail to my girlfriend to see how her Monday is going after being sick with the flu all weekend, fine. I will be more than glad to show them the half-dozen individual and team achievement awards that senior management has given to me in the last three years, agree sarcastically that the Internet has indeed made me a lousy employee, and otherwise be as amicable as Galileo before the Inquisition. I will also be sure never to work more than 40 hours per week, observe Internet usage policies religiously, and perform utterly mediocre work for the length of time it takes to find a job for a competitor who understands that achievement is the bottom line.
Lucent now blocks webmail (Score:3, Informative)
However, they have expressly allowed limited personal use of company e-mail.
VPN sucks.
#1 Worm entry vector? Hotmail! (Score:3, Insightful)
Employee access to external POP3 services is prohibited, both by policy and firewall rules.
Where viruses and worms (Nimda, Code Red, etc) have made it into the company, we've almost universally tracked the vector down to a 'Free Email' service, primarily Hotmail and Yahoo! mail.
We are considering blocking all such services, or at least forcing all traffic to and from these services through the antivirus system, and suffer the latency and associated user complaints.
Again, we cannot force all web traffic through a scanner, as there is strong opposition from various divisions to any change that would slow down web access.
Laptop users (Score:4, Insightful)
With increasing numbers of portable devices, and wireless networking, including 3G phones, it's going to be harder and harder to plug all the gaps. Instead of listening to the sales pitch of the anti-virus and firewall manufacturers, we should use some commonsense: ditch products like Outlook.
i hope i never become like you people ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... what it is like to have your spririt broken like that??? to have resigned that 8 hours of your life a day - AN ENTIRE THIRD - of it is surrendered so completely to someone else just because they give you some money for it. has your life become so shallow and money obsessed that you are prepared to resign the greater part of your waking day to someone else just for money?
i am working in a job i like (computer programmer), and its something that i will even do at home after hours on a different level (i write commercial apps at work, and i fiddle with games/graphics programming at home)
... sure, when one of the plebs in support double clicks on a
... and on the flipside, if i think of something outside of work - when im not *GASP* actually getting paid for it - that is useful or may relate to my work, i may still actually spend a bit or a lot of time (whatever may be required) working it over or writing it down or something AND I DONT ASK FOR MONEY THE NEXT MORNING
... i just hope to that i never EVER become as depressing and inert as half the ppl who have replied to this posting
What "they" care about and what matters (Score:3, Insightful)
Well they do.
On a recent interview, I decided I did NOT want to work for the company I was speaking to. (They had mentioned that TCP/IP was owned by MS b/c (I swear this is true) to implement it you had to "Right click on Network Neighborhood, choose Protocols, choose Microsoft....") I asked them why they were switching from CC Mail to Outlook and not to Lotus Notes which is a more "natural" move.
The IT Manager (not the TCP/IP lady) said basically this:
"Our users want Outlook. They used it elsewhere. It works really well with Office. It does a lot of things right. Yeah Lotus is more secure but it is ugly and it is harder to administer [I disagree]. Plus you need a developer to take advantage of the program. Outlook does everything Notes does before you get a developer involved anf it does it a lot easier."
So what the IT Manager was saying was; Everyone uses it, it's easy.
He's pretty much right.
All the folks that yell and scream: BUT *NIX IS BETTER, you're all correct. In the late 70s early 80s all the people that yelled BUT BETA IS BETTER were right too.
So if the same people who shrug their shoulders at insecurity and poor design are certainly going to belive that cutting down USENET, surfing and private email will "protect" them.
I personally blocked Hotmail, Yahoo!, & MSNMail for about 2 months at a site. To tell you the truth I couldn't take all the effing viruses either. And you know what? It stopped the viruses. I mean dead. 25/week --> 0/week
We here at
Are *NIXes better? Duh. Is PINE safer? Duh. Now tell Jane Secretary that she has to jump through hoops to send email from her bosses account...
The IT Manager just wanted happy users and was willing to hire a few more Admins to take care of the mess. He knew the score.
And
And why precisely on your company's computer, on your company's network, over your company's T do you feel you have any right to do anything they don't want you to? (Hey if you own stock raise Hell, I'm with you there!)
Companies have rights too (Score:3, Insightful)
While I think they shouldn't have the right to snoop on your private documents or e-mails just because you're in their building, that doesn't mean they can't restrict certain types of uses.
A wise company has a distributed system, whereby users login with different usernames/passwords for "leisure activity" and for "work activity". The company should separate the "leisure" and "work" logins and files separately, on separate hard-drives.
A good idea is to give unrestricted access on the "leisure" system, but allocate less resources to them. There's no reason why they need to be operating at 2GHz with 1GB RAM for leisure. Btw, sorry, the workplace is not for playing Quake or Descent 3.
Furthermore, privacy policies should be different on the leisure and work accounts/systems. There should be no privacy on your "work" account, but only on your "leisure" account. The company should also assign different e-mails for "leisure" and "work" accounts for each person; if you want privacy, you'll only use your "business" e-mail for work.
Though an individual's activities would not be monitored on the "leisure" system, the time spent on the "leisure" and "work" accounts would be monitored and compared; obviously, companies don't want to keep someone on the paycheck who spends 4 out of 8 hours a day on leisure.
The key thing here is for employees to realize that they don't have the RIGHT to use their company's resources for their own personal matters.
It, however, is also not acceptable for companies to go back on previously agreed-upon privacy rules in regards to their employees. Companies also shouldn't go on a power trip, as that is likely to alienate employees.
What's wrong with this picture? (Score:3, Interesting)
If your company starts adopting this policy, then it's one good reason for you to start working from 9am till 5pm every day. I don't think that they would prefer that to your current 14 hours that you regularely put on the job, even if your pcshows the slashdot web page every once in a while.
PPA, the girl next door.
Productivity and Internet Access (Score:4, Insightful)
An aspect that I haven't seen brought up, however, is the productivity that comes from keeping salaried employees at work. Being able to handle personal business online and not having to take long lunches or leave early before the stores/banks/etc. close is a benefit to employees, employers and even the environment.
Analogy (Score:5, Funny)
--Blair
Re:It will hurt them (Score:2)
Re:It will hurt them (Score:2, Funny)
Please speak to my employer.
-Sara
[slashdot for mental health!]
Re:It will hurt them (Score:2)
Re:Yea, dont want any WORK happening. (Score:3)
Re:Yea, dont want any WORK happening. (Score:3, Informative)
So the internet lowers productivity by 25% just by connecting to it. Anyone with any brains at all would pull the plug.
Maybe you don't remember time wasting activities in the pre-internet era. Things like: wandering the plant on epic donut quests, endless banter with your office mates, reading thick publications like Byte and PC-Week cover-to-cover, writing video game emulators, calling all of the car stereo stores in the Yellow Pages looking for the best deal on an in-dash cassette player, and countless others.
I'm guessing that Internet usage has cut into the above activities more than into real work. In my case, I think the amount of off-topic time I spend at work has remained roughly constant over the last 15 years. (And it's been more than balanced by work I've done while at home).
Internet access is a *symptom* of the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
That means it's a problem their managers need to address; not something for the IT department. If someone is surfing six hours a day, then it's the manager's fault that they're not properly supervising them and giving them tasks or disciplining them for not getting their work done.
That said, a company would have to be foolish not to employ some basic filtering measures(porno, gambling, gaming sites, file sharing services, e-mail attachments) to keep network traffic and the more obvious time wasters in check.
However, if an employee is doing all their work and checking Yahoo Mail or ESPN.com, what is the harm? It keeps them happy and the company's work is getting done.
Re:Bozos? Gimme a break! (Score:2, Funny)
Scenario A: Employee needs break desperately, has net access and goes to
Scenario B: Employee needs break desperately, does not have net access, wanders outside to smoke and oggle female co-workers. Returns to work with a hardon and a brain that is more fuzzed than before.
Proposed rule: Limit all NON-GEEK employees from accessing the internet. They mess with the bandwidth that could be better spend downloading the latest Slackware distro.
-Sara
Re:Yeah. (Score:4, Interesting)
Additionally, the occasional personal use tends to reduce the number of personal phone calls coming in dramaticly, so as long as it isn't excessive, we tend to let it slide.
Re:Security (Score:2)
I'll go for that. And no one can argue that there aren't free alternatives. Pegasus Mail [pmail.com] is free, and it's immune to auto-executing worms. The only kind that can still run are executables, but the way the program displays mail means the user has to try a little harder to find the file and run it. Add to that the fact that mass-mailing worms are currently written to look at Microsoft address books and not Pegasus's, and you have a pretty good solution.
And it ain't a half-bad e-mail client.
Re:employee satisfaction (Score:2)
Boy.. Tell me about it. [popealien.com]
Re:Let's be honest. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, when I worked in Congress, one of our schedulers had a TV set up in her office to watch soaps.
Our Chief of Staff, who worked in the office across from her, didn't have a problem with it. Why?
Because she got her work done.
(That and the fact that it took 20-30 minutes to print off schedules from our crappy CMS.)
Re:Changing the way people conceive of work (Score:3, Interesting)
Quick quiz: How many people in Japan commit suicide from working like dogs compared to North Americans? My guess would be a LOT more, from what I've heard. There's even a word for it; I forget what it is but it starts with a "K".
What about the Japanese idea that an employer owes the worker a lifelong job in exchange for loyalty? That seems way more fucked up to me than putting in 9-5 and expecting a cheque. Of course, the job for life deal isn't really panning out that much anymore, and neither are a lot of other feudal Japanese traditions.
I'll tell you one thing AC, I wouldn't want to be in Japan when the time comes for the Japanese way of life to change. History has shown that societal change in Japan is never gradual, subtle, peaceful, or bloodless.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)