(no subject)

[lwoodbloo]

Hey.


Everyone who works at a company with internet access, please answer.

What's their policy? Can you get fired for accessing outside sites, anything at all? Does it have to be "non work safe"? Verizon has a policy...but it doesn't seem very enforced in my office, but it worries me nonetheless. I like playing around on the web and whatnot. I'm realizing that I shouldn't do it at work.

We got our quarterly security report today, which is usually something like this:

Idiot tried to cheat the company. We caught idiot. He got fired.

But occasionally people get fired for accessing...how shall I say, less than savory material.

I don't do that. Don't even access my fave comms at work.

Comments

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

At Excellus, we're allowed "reasonable" access to the Internet, but there is a blocking software in place. In addition to the usual stuff, web-based e-mail is blocked, and they seem to include LJ in that policy.

About the only things I do on the Internet at work are:

- check bank account and 401k balances
- check school-related info
- occasionally look at weather or other news-related items
- occasionally get driving directions to somewhere I'm going after work

about security,..

[erisreg.livejournal.com]

it's very easy to log net use on any big system,..so if your accessing the web they have a log of those transactions,..if the policy says no, your gambling with your job,... if you get a superior to tell you it's ok, then your a bit safer,..

[helenangel.livejournal.com]

Our internet policy is kinda vague. We're not supposed to use the internet except for company-related stuff but we can use it on our breaks as long as it's for a short while and whatnot.

It's not really enforced unless you're doing something bad- like, say, on the internet all the time instead of doing your work or downloading stuff, etc. etc. Look at how many Hiltonites I have on my friends list who all update their LJs from work. -lol-

[feroluce.livejournal.com]

i work in a somewhat untraditional company, so i may not be of the best help. the only policy we have regarding internet use is time. we cannot be online for more than half an hour at a time, durring the day ( between 6am and midnight according to them). oh, and kazaa and other shareware things are no-go. but that's it, unless you bring your own computer, then only the time constraints are applicable

Re:

[violetshade.livejournal.com]

Nitpick: filesharing≠shareware. Shareware is a kind of commercial software that may or may not have anything to do with sharing files, but is a demo that when unlocked with a registration key provides the full functionality of the software ("try-before-you-buy")

Re:

[feroluce.livejournal.com]

ack, sorry, i do this commonly, confuse terms that dont mean the same thing. thanks :) i should've just said P2P that would've been safer... heh.

Re:

[violetshade.livejournal.com]

No worries :) Just wanted to be clear.

[booshanky.livejournal.com]

I am the guy who does all the nerd shit in the office. but nobody cares if you're on the internet. just as long as you get your job done.

but yeah, i still hide my porn when i'm looking at it.

[violetshade.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: this is me trying to judge people's responses rather than a result of actual direct experience. Take with a grain of salt and preferably someone who knows what they're talking about.
That said...

Porn=big no-no, obviously.
Very obviously "fun" sites for sustained periods of time (example: game sites, Homestar Runner, other animation/such sites, webcomics): another no-no.
Excessive personal business: no-no. Excessive is usually pretty easy to define: if you don't get your work done, it's excessive. If your supervisor or other superior doesn't like you, however, you may find anything more than five minutes defined as "excessive".
LJ/weblogs/any form of openly-visible communication: risky, and a BIG no-no if you mention anything about your work that might end up being seen by someone in the company. DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR BOSS IF HE OR SHE MAY READ THE JOURNAL.
Email: I'm not sure what all is visible. Certainly anything through the company server should be nonsensitive. If you really need to send/receive personal or risqué email, use encryption (I feel like I'm telling you to carry condoms). Make sure you're using a non-work-provided email for that, as sending encrypted data and then refusing to decrypt it for your supervisors may also get you fired. In fact, check with someone who knows what they're doing about encryption first, just in case.
Strictly speaking you probably can be terminated for almost any deliberate offense, but in practice it'll probably take repeat offenses or particularly offensive material. Basically once it looks like you'll be more of a liability than an asset, you're gone.

[yetibruce.livejournal.com]

During business hours we are only to use internet for business purposes. We have spyware in place to monitor this. Pornography is prohibited at all times. We can use the internet for personal use if its not during business hours. Share ware is prohibited because it uses huge amounts of space and slows down the LAN (as I have seen with one of my employees who shall remain nameless:)).

Ours used to be nebulous, but became very strict, probably because people were being stupidly abusive of company time.
So, if you use ccommon sense you should be alright...at least where I work.

[phoenixsong]

Stuff like this is exactly why, even in locked posts, I was wary about what sorts of things I was posting about work, especially from work.

Technically, anything non-business-related is off-limits. Given the nature of my job (call center), so long as we're not sitting around in Release rather than Ready, web browsing while everyone else is taking calls, we get a little bit of slack during the lulls.

My employer (using the broadest sense of the term, as in the company whose Internet access I use from work) blocks anything with the word "webmail" in the URL. They'll also eventually get around to blocking anything else that can be used for webmail purposes. Along the same lines, they've also blocked http://groups.yahoo.com.

In general, unless it's on say, a respected news site and related to the story, nudity of any sort is likely to be questionable. I felt weird just looking at the JJ/JT pictures from the Super Bowl on the BBC website from work. (Though it didn't stop me, I just waited until it was officially "after business hours." Hey, I work Sundays, how else was I going to see what all the fuss was about? And I check BBC all the time from work.) At a previous employer, I was also very careful about the kinds of fanfic I'd read online.

My employer (see above definition) basically blocks a lot of the objectionable material anyway. Even "personal" or "chat" sites, which is probably how they eventually decided to block LJ -- those are the categories that come up when I try. I'm probably largely responsible for that one all on my own, proof that they do in fact monitor the logs, check out sites that get a lot of hits, and update the filters.

As a result, pretty much the only browsing I've been doing from work lately is big news sites (BBC, CNN, NYTimes, Wash Post), and a bit of apartment hunting recently.

[ashleighlou.livejournal.com]

Cingular's internet policy is:

Don't use it.

You can't even access http://www.yahoo.com on the floor. You can in the training rooms, but not on the floor. You aren't supposed to access anything on the internet except for the web-based applications and the Cingular homepage.

That's it. As for email, personal emails are "occasionally" acceptable, but as you well know that didn't stop me when I worked there. Misuse of email is a firing offense - do not pass go, do not collect $200. As a matter of fact when I was still with Cingular, a woman named Paula in relocations got fired because she sent out an email to the call center asking for donations to help a woman in tech whose house burned to the ground.

[galatea-world.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I have worked at various major corporatoions before. Generally, you are fine as long as you don't access porn. :-)

[offbalance.livejournal.com]

Here at the Big International Publisher that I work for, they really only have a bee in their bonnet about downloading, as we had a pretty big problem with people playing fast and loose with sites like Kazaa. Porn is also a big no-no, but people are on all sorts of internet sites that you wouldn't expect to be job-related but are (Amazon, B&N, variant news sites) so they pretty much give us free reign on the web. It's your basic honor system, but I tend to watch my back just the same, and NEVER use the name of the place I work for.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

I was working for a company at one point where I was the only person not allowed internet access.

Yup, you got that right - the only one. They hired a couple more secretaries and they joined me on the 'no internet access' list...which was stupid, 'cause we were the only people who sometimes sat for hours at a time with nothing to do, and my boss wouldn't let me bring in schoolwork. Oddly enough, she tolerated novels, but not my Trig book. Go fig.

~Blaze