internet abuse

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Ever heard about someone lot a job because of internet abuse??

What kind of abuse?

I just heard that a bloke from my previous company got fired because of that. But he was on a chat websites literally 9-5 EVERY DAY

 

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Yes - it happens fairly often.

Most companies will look the other way at occasional mis-use of resources, but step over some line and you are out.

And this is usualy written into the contract of employment.

Harry.

 

Well I know about the contract thing but to be honest I never actually heard about that.

Anyway I'm more interested in reasons…

 

Porn sites are a big no no.

 

Anything non work related can and often is considered misuse of company equipment
Chat rooms
Porn sites
Downloading stuff

those are the big ones
often companies don't like people accessing sports sites and other non business type resources
news websites are usually ok
as are anything business related more often than not

 

Like spending your day on IT Forums when you're employed in an IT role!

It's called 'Research'! Actually you'd be surprised at just how much you do learn for your job on forums.

 

ok that looks like a good line of defence

 

I second that my friend...it is more of a research site than our usual communal stuff (all good fun tho )

however, yes we have to be cautious of where we go...I do tend to visit my usual sites at work (Superman, Smallville, Empire and MySpace) but at the same time I work hard...so long as the company know I work my butt off, all is good and we use MSN too (well those of us that need to stay in touch with the outside world hehe!!)

Saying that tho, my team leader sits behind me so he can see where I am going...but he is fine with it as he knows how hard I work...although he doesnt pry which is good and my line manager is another room, hehehe! But I dont take the mickey at all. If its a busy busy day u wont even see me talk on MSN let alone surf the web not related to work....

 

My company is really good with allowing internet access. If we are in the crew room, we can only use the PC's to report for duty, get the duty details, etc, and the address bar has een locked out so you can't browse the net. However, I found a way round this and told a few people so now it has been completely banned

In the rest room however, you can use the PC's for more or less what you what, but streaming video/audio, porn, chat programs (messenger) are banned, unless you phone up IT and they approve of it. Quite often they let me use MSN Web Messenger though as it doesn't install anything onto the system.

When I have to be on airport stand by at work, I tend to take my laptop in. Not wishing to take my origal discs for games, I tend to take a back up in. But to the copy protection on them, they often need a patch to get working, so a quick call to IT and they let me download the file on the work computers then transfer it to my laptop. a top secret site I cant mention - RC is the site to get patches from if you don't wish to use your original discs, I DON'T CONDONE PIRACY THOUGH! I just don't want to damage my original discs.

Hopefully, when I get some certs and a job in IT, my next company will treat the staff just as good as my current employer

 

Now there is ur first mistake my friend...hehe. Finding a loophole is all well and good but always be careful who u tell, cos someone will always be a goodie two shoes to the management and go opening their big mouth and for what?

Its always been know tho, the minority start it and then the majority are the ones who suffer the most.

But good work on that tho hehe...keep it to yourself next time...anyway that said we dont really condone such activities here on CF we're all squeaky clean here (yeah right hehe)

 

Interesting Topic, but employees wasting time really isnt the key factor in our company although there are many that do [EasyJet, Gucci, Xbox, Warez the list is endless].

Bandwidth and security is the major point for us and at times the internet is unusable due to non business web browsing. We host web servers internally so need to ensure that the bandwidth is available for our external clients at all times.

To help I installed a standalone 2mb ADSL line so that staff can browse unmonitored but they cant be @rsed to walk 10 yards to use it!!

I agree that research is important and do try to open up blocked sites that users ask for, but somtimes this just isnt possible in a business enviroment.

My 2p worth!

G

 

We block internet access other then to those who need it, but internet abuse is not the only thing we monitor. Email abuse is another big nono, along with telephone abuse.

 

Lots of companies take broadsided approach to net access that actually LOWER staff productivity and morale
this ofcourse is because the IT department are often left to manage this, and IT have very little business understanding in most cases, they often bypass the restrictions themselves as well and hence dont give a s***

Understanding the needs of employees is just as important as business security, as workers are asked to work longer and longer hours its very important that they are still able to manage the day to day requirements of there lives, whilst the internet helps facilitate a lot of this due to it being time insensitive, it is often the case that people want call back confirmation or actions to be performed, such as booking flights, buying stuff online, all of which should really not be blocked

intelligent solutions are far better, ones that allow access during certain times of the day, or on a quota basis,
it is very important to most business' to increase staff retention and thus the skillset level of thier employees, and staff morale is pivitol to this
IT HAVE to learn that broadsword approcahes to surgical problems do not benefit anyone in the scheme of things

 

My pet hate is people who use their work email address to subscribe to newsletters, enter competitions and other such rubbish.
It's usually not apparent until the person leaves and someone else has to handle their email.
Then you just get swamped with cr@p every day telling you how well their favorite football team is doing.

 

I do agree Phoenix, but I'm stuck between the board of directors and the staff. Asking the board to pay another £8000 to upgrade the leased line isnt going to get me anyway, honestly I have tried..

To them the £20 per month ADSL option was pushing it a bit, but it has reduced the problems a tad so it satisfies them for now!!

We do have filtering software in place on the LAN which is fairly intelligent, and allows access to all business sites, but denies access to anything deemed porn, terrorist etc.

Another issue we had, has been webmail whereby staff have used it to download "unknown "files from Hotmail, Yahoo etc onto their PC, bypassing the firewalls & security at ther Gateway..

G

 

What, no dedicated DMZ?

 

heh heh, yeh we have DMZ for the webservers with the SQL servers on the LAN..

G

 

Gary
it's often because IT appraoch things at a technology level and not at a business solution level
there is obviously a business problem that needs to be addressed
but there are numerous ways to address it

• inteligence to the routing infrastructure so that priority is assigned to that which is important
• quota based access system that limits use to non work related content without a total block
• filters for certain groups of websites
• timed proxy system
• blanket blocking of t'internet

directors look at business problems, they are often unfussed as to the technical solutions
but employee morale and motivation are very much business problems, and if your solution can help address both needs its far more compelling to roll with
There are many associated costs with hiring and firing people and if a solution costs money but helps address that from one angle then its a winner

I can understand why upgrading the leased line was not an ideal solution

 

Or do they need their wedding tackle enlarged or get viagra on the cheap

 

I find that deleting MP3's VOB's, etc tends to get the message through about using up the bandwidth.

Went a bit wrong though when I deleted *.WMA from the music teachers account..........