Does your company montitor Internet Usage? 4

[bradpa77]

Ok, I'll admit it. I use the internet at work for personal reasons. I can't help it. It's just so easy to do and when I'm stuck on a boring project, it's really tempting to surf for a bit. I'm pretty sure that my company has a way to monitor our internet usage here at work but I don't have any solid proof to back it up. I'd never ask my manager if they are watching. I might as well just tell him that I spend time on the internet when I should be working.

So how about you managers from other companies? Do any of you care to share the secrets of your own companies internet monitoring? I'm dying to know what other places do.

I've never once been warned for using the internet. So that either tells me that (a) my manager knows and doesn't think that I surf enough for it to be a problem, (b) my manager has no idea what I'm doing on the internet (c) my manager knows, it bothers him, but he just doesn't feel like bringing it up for some reason. It makes it much easier to do when you're never yelled at for doing it. I remember when I first started here, I was terrified to even touch the internet explorer button because I was afraid I'd get fired for messing around. But just as us humans do, we test the waters and the boundaries slowly until someone in charge says "that's too far". Well, no ones said anything yet, so are they even watching? Or am I unknowingly racking up points against me everytime I surf?

Any thoughts or advice?

 

[jmw]

So, my company answered my question for me earlier this week.

They're probably just trying to make a point.
Evereyone does it and they can't fire everyone.
Now everyone has the message, innappropriate internet use will probably be significantly reduced for a while and in that time persistent offenders will stick out like a sore thumb; someone will elect themselves scapegoat and periodic purges will keep everyone "honest".
Maybe.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[controlnovice]

IMHO anybody with a job that involves regular contacts outside the company (like mine) couldn't do their work properly without the internet. How on earth are you going to get e.g. vendor information without internet access? Imagine yourself running down the corridors looking for the Yellow Pages...

Really? Know what we had to do just 15 years ago? It wasn't that long ago! And we still got things done....

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[kchayfie]

But 15 years ago, suppliers would have brochures and they'd give you hard copies of data sheets instead of giving you their website address and making things available for download...

 

[ewh]

Times have changed since 1991. To remain competitive today, you have to move faster.

 

[HgTX]

My first few weeks here (while they processed my internet access request, which involved a couple of forms and a whole lot of signatures) I had to do exactly that--do everything by phone. It wasted a LOT of time, not to mention long-distance phone charges.

Ridiculous. ('Course, I said so, and IT hated me for the next two years.)

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[Tomfh]

Techs are lazy. So long as you aren't leeching all day you won't even show up on their alarms.

 

[jmw]

If IT have the time and resources to worry about who is browsing where, they aren't being kept busy enough.
In my experience, if ever my PC crashed, I needed to get on the list of user for some particular netwrok program, or basically anything at all, there would be a prolonged period of frustration and inactivity while they claimed they were working on "more important things".




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ziggi]

My experience with IT is that they're those nerds who got picked on in school. They feel inferior and thus they make you wait to feel powerful, which would explain the BS that HgTX had to go through after he complained....or they could just be surfing porn, that's the ONLY valid important issue.

 

[jmw]

I think (with my cynics hat on) that companies really worry over the two biggest uses of the internet in company time:
Pornograghy - you're doing something you enjoy
Job searches - an implicit comment that you don't enjoy working for them and you might find out the grass really is greener somewhere else...
I doubt they worry about the amount of time not working for them because, let's face it, you don't cost them that much (the reason you might be doing job searches).


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[HgTX]

We're not allowed to so much as read CNN during our lunch hour. Forget porn, job searches, and waste of company time.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[Tomfh]

"We're not allowed to so much as read CNN during our lunch hour."

Gee that's rough. That would be more than enough for me to quit a job.

 

[jmw]

Do not muzzle an ox when it is treading [grain].

I thought this straightforward enough but there are other interpretations:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jovial/learn/mc/muzzleox.htm

and I like the Rash explanation here even better.

It doesn't take a genius to realise that many company policies are ill considered and often counte-productive, but that's life.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[MadMango]

We get a "403 Forbidden" splash page with our company logo, with a blurb at the bottom stating that if the page should not be blocked, send IT an email with justification. Took alot to get my Google search results for "sex bolt" unblocked.

They check our usage here, but it is not IT, but rather HR that does the checking. They are fairly easy though, 2 verbal warnings, then a written. After the 3rd strike they can terminate. I've only known of 2 people terminated, but they deserved it (porn-related).

[green]"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."[/green]
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[ScottyUK]

My company monitors and blocks sites. We get a bit of leeway on personal usage, with shopping sites being unblocked at lunchtime. I've never been questioned on internet usage, and I use online manuals and technical data a fair bit. If there is any problem at all it is the amount of stuff I store for future reference on the server. My disk quota has been increased a couple of times.

A product which helped us solve a major - i.e. business threatening - control problem a few years ago was listed as 'banned' by the automatic screening software when it was introduced. IT said that I could ask to unblock the site, but the real problem would be that I wouldn't have known what I wasn't seeing, and would probably never have asked. I don't know whether we would have solved the problem as quickly or as well, or at all, if we hadn't chanced upon the site in question, and the nanny software would have prevented that.

I personally think it is a bad policy to block sites for reasons illustrated by the example above. Log internet usage by all means, and if someone is foolish enough to misuse the privilege by looking at inappropriate sites then they should be disciplined. All the employees are responsible adults - they shouldn't need some nanny software to keep out of places they shouldn't be.

----------------------------------

I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[HVACctrl]

Don't know about my current employer, although I heard one guy saying they had to turn off an ex-receptionist's access because she was on it too much.

At a larder company where I used to work (and it was turnover-ridden, even in the IT department), one of the IT guys actually showed me the software they had for monitoring internet useage.

Each user had an IP address. NExt to the address was a multi-colored bar whose length I believe corresponded to relative internet login time. Each color was assigned to various site types. Gree, for instance, indicated sports-related sites. If one was on sports sites a lot, there would be a large section of green on his/her bar.

My understanding was that they would, every once in a while, visually scan the bars. If there was an inordinate amount of a restricted color showing up (red for porno for instance), the IT person could then talk to the manager of that person or, depending on the relationship, talk to that person him/herself.

Ed

 

[uGlay]

they use Surfcontrol here. i cant even check my hotmail anymore. and sometimes i go to my bookmarked forums and they get whacked out one at a time. ive been deleting bookmarks since i started because i get the 'white screen of death'

 

[fglass]

Oops, do you all think the company would able to find out if we are playing Solitaire/Minesweeper?

 

[ziggi]

Probably not, I used to work with a person who got away with playing Doom on their PC at work, along with some other classics like Civilisation, Frogger etc. The company was also one of the largest corporations in Canada.

 

[TheTick]

_{I find that if I type real small the company doesn't notice that I am posting to eng-tips.}

 

[BJC]

I type everything in small fonts, size 3.5 or so, it saves me a lot of space on the hard drive.