My company just sent this email to all of our employees: We provide computer and network resources to its employees to perform their job duties. These resources are made available for VALID BUSINESS USE ONLY. Inappropriate use of the company's computer systems often overloads the network and prevents all employees from being able to complete their tasks. The IT Department has verified that our Internet connection is often overloaded by employees who are visiting websites that have no relation to work. Using company equipment and resources to access the Internet for non-business use is a violation of company policy. Examples of inappropriate usage include, but are not limited to, the following: - Posting confidential, sensitive or proprietary information on the Internet. -Visiting sex, hate crime, terrorist, gambling, gaming, or dating service web sites. -Watching Internet TV, or listening to Internet radio stations. -Watching Internet sports broadcasts, including ESPN gamecasts. -Loading Internet news or weather updates, and stock tickers. -Using KaZaa, BearShare, WinMX, AudioGalaxy or ANY other file sharing software to access music, video or other file download sites. (THIS IS ILLEGAL AND EXPOSES THE COMPANY TO LAWSUITS) In addition, many of the viruses that infect the network are a direct result of visiting these sites. Due to the misuse that has occurred, we have been forced to install software to monitor unauthorized usage. Violations of company policy will be reported to the HR Department, for appropriate disciplinary action. Please use your good judgment and utilize the computer resources the company has provided to you for company business. Im freaking out! Can they backtrack to find out all the stuff I have posted here? Does this mean I cant check my email, bank accounts, and get a map for directions? (Im not at work by the way.....)
I wouldn't worry about past activities. I would definately be concerned about anything from THIS POINT on... If you are concerned about checking banking account stuff, etc, I would get permission from someone to go to these sites, find out if it's ok to go to these sites.... I didn't see anything in the email about banking websites. good luck.
That's nightmare - what did we do the whole day before there was the internet? Haha. Sorry for that, I fear the same and I guess that a lot of IT departments keep track anyway. But as long as you do a good job they tolerate it. Or just check log in during your breaks. heads up.
I don't think that posting about the Rockets(etc), checking email (though you could bypass their virus checking so that my be a gray area), checking bank accounts and going to maps.yahoo violates any of the above bullets - which is what they are trying to stop. Yes it is for business only. Yes you shouldn't spend too much time on certain sites. But they mainly want to stop people from going to sites that eat major bandwidth or have a quetionable theme or may load spyware stuff on the company machines or giving out company information on the web. That said, they could see what you post, how much is in your account and what your passwords are - if they wanted to.
My company doesn't get that specific; instead, they just say that using the Internet for anything other than "company-specific" reasons is frowned upon. Yet, everybody I know, for the most part, will check things on the Net whether it is their email, bank account, etc. One guy I used to work with was constantly checking stocks all day long. He doesn't now because he got transferred to another office within the company and as a result, he hardly has time to do that because he is WAY more busy now than he was. How well do you know the IT department? If you are on good terms with them, I wouldn't sweat it. I mean if it is serious, I think they would personally warn you instead of sending out a generic message to everyone. I would also talk to people that you know at work that are also surfing the Net to see what they are going to do now. I wouldn't worry....yet.
Are they gonna hire someone just to monitor this sh*t I mean man . .. I'd like that job .. . . boredom and you a snitch Rocket River
I wouldnt worry too much about this if all you do is check email, banking, and come here. they seem to be targeting bandwidth-hogging online applications(streaming video/audio) and illegal activities(filesharing). All the stuff they list are things that require constant network access. Manny has a good idea, get to know some of the IT staff if you dont already. Ask what specific activities trigger the loggers. Im willing to bet they are keeping an eye out for traffic on specific ports that correspond with filesharing, streaming video, or gaming/gambling sites.
They probably installed something like Websense, which filters certain types of categories of websites. My company uses this too, and I still get Clutchcity, online banking, my Netzero email acct. etc. but I cannot go and check my fantasy football stats when that starts.
Dude, that sux... oh well, I think their trying to increase productivity, but don't they know we need this outlet to be productive... I think Triple T is coming...
They most likely already had a guy that was watching this stuff. We did when I worked at Apple. My buddies and I all used to visit F*cked Company.com. We were outside smoking and talking about what we had read and this guy we had never talked to before goes "So YOUR the ones..." Apparently the site got flagged because of it's name and he had to manually override the flag everytime we visited it.
This is not true. No one can see a bank account page if it is using SSL, https (as opposed to http) protocol. If anyone in between tries to sniff that data, they will only see encrypted information.
