t_oshan2003
Board Addict
Reged: 10/17/03
Posts: 385
Loc: East
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I surf the net a lot at work, I am on this site a lot as well. My company is not huge but not tiny either. We all use the net a ton for work and others surf as well but I just got the thought that they could easily find out the websites I have visited if they ever decided to.
Is this as easy as I think it is ? Should I be worried ? I would hate to have them ask me why I spend hours on the net at work and on sites like "drugbuyers"
Am I doomed ???
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cozmoford
Member
Reged: 01/03/05
Posts: 184
Loc: texas
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I would think it was considered inapropriate to be on here while at work on their time, their puter. Not to mention the name of the web site is mis-leading, could be interpeted wrongly very easily.
Your prolly doomed, but good luck!
Coz
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We all have our cross to carry, some of ours are just heavier...
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Lablady2
Banned. Found out to be Moderator at OP4L
Reged: 05/05/04
Posts: 508
Loc: New York City
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Doubt if your are "doomed" - however I sure question your work ethic if that is what you get paid to do.....
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User banned. Please ignore all posts made by this user. On March 25th, 2005 we found out this user is a moderator at ourprescriptions4less.com
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t_oshan2003
Board Addict
Reged: 10/17/03
Posts: 385
Loc: East
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I get my work done on time always, so in my spare time at work I surf the net a lot.
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DonBarba
Board Addict
Reged: 04/02/04
Posts: 368
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Quote:
My company is not huge but not tiny either.
Depends on the company. I've worked in IT for large Fortune 500 companies. Some of them barely watch what individuals are doing, but SOME of them will monitor traffic, check which sites you visited; such as job seeking sites, block out URL's such as hotmail (to stop people from doing non-work related emailing). I've seen scans for emails incoming & outgoing for keywords, such as RESUME.
So, while they might monitor stuff, it's mostly to filter out porn sites, sites not possible related to work, or to find job seekers.
Remember that at work, your computer and what is done on it is COMPANY property - and legally they can snoop all they want.
If you know any of the Desktop support / network IT people, you could feel them out.
That said, few places would be so "detail oriented" in their snooping... but to be safe......
Edited by DonBarba (02/09/05 04:30 PM)
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ikestormu11
Board Addict
Reged: 06/02/04
Posts: 303
Loc: D.C. area
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DonBarba you said it. Your computer at work is 100% your companies property. They can deny you access to it at any time, they can have there IT people find out where you've been, and at what time. Remember any place you go online leaves a "thumbprint" behind.
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S.P.A.S. 12 making my home a safer place.
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t_oshan2003
Board Addict
Reged: 10/17/03
Posts: 385
Loc: East
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yeah, I actually am part of the IT dept. but not the network dept.
I was told that they could find any site I have ever been to.
I think they just don't have the time or manpower to monitor it, plus everyone in the company surfs the web for research anyway which is part of their jobs, but I think from now on, I will be a bit more cautious about it as I know the policy about how its the companies property.
Sometimes, I will leave a website in the background and forget about it wile I am working so it might look like I am reading cnn.com for 3 hours!
Plus, I have peaked at a few riskeee websites so thats what got me nervous.
I will just have to be more carefull.
Thanks for the reply's! I appreciate it!
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lincoona
Board Addict
Reged: 11/24/04
Posts: 398
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For one, once you've downloaded a page, like CNN, it's done. You do not maintain a physical connection the entire time the page is open. It will appear that you went to CNN at 3:10 but that's it.
Any IT person worth their pay can determine where you've been and when, but don't make it easy. Set your browser (Probably IE6) to not save visited websites:
Tools>Internet Options> set the "Days to Keep Pages in History" to zero, and clear history. ALL my personal PC's are set this way.
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Trey_McC
Old Hand
Reged: 12/07/04
Posts: 414
Loc: Mars
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Turn off auto complete and clear the cache.
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phialpha2000
Journeyman
Reged: 02/02/05
Posts: 77
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At this point, worrying is not going to help you at all. You may escape this potential carwreck without a scratch.Whatever happens, I'm sure you have learned a lesson you'll not soon forget. It might behoove you to freshen up you resume, just in case.
I am most curious to know how this topic of conversation came up in the first place? Was a co-worker aware of your worktime personal surfing, and mentioned it to you ?
Other posters on the board have weighed in with accurate, sound, advise. When you work for a company, everything is proprietarty. You probably signed a pile of papers the day you were hired. Included in there would have been acknowledgment of company policy on Internet use. Check your employee handbook for the specifics.
You don't say what state you live in. If you work under contract you have many more options than an "at will" employee does in the event of termination. Most states recognize "at will employment". In a nutshell, this just means that you as the employee can quit at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. Similarly, in an "at will" employment state [in the absence of an employment contract] the employee can fire an employee at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.
The browser function which lets you delete history or keep it from showing is essentially useless. It will prevent somone sitting in front of your PC at home from surrepititiously looking at your surfing history. The computer at work, however is a more serious matter. That harddrive has a permanent record of when and where you have been and how long you were there. It would take an average techie less than 5 minutes to find and print out a complete history of your internet use for the boss.
Good Luck...
Patty
"I'm not a lawyer. I've just been fired alot" [/list]
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Trey_McC
Old Hand
Reged: 12/07/04
Posts: 414
Loc: Mars
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you could accidentally format your hard drive.
Trey
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t_oshan2003
Board Addict
Reged: 10/17/03
Posts: 385
Loc: East
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not a bad idea! But wouldn't the history still be logged in the network?
Their really is no reason someone should check my PC, netowrk guys say if it aint broken, don't fix it so they like being left alone.
hey, if they look and see that I was on sports sites a lot and even get to the point where they warn me, kool. I just underestimated our rights to privacy. And i was bitching about Micheal Moore! LOL
One dude I know had all his emails read and he had a friend that was so blatent in the emails that they totally went off on him so I got kinda curious.
Looks like I will have to stay offline most of the time now .
Man, I was just getting to love the net to!
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tiredbones
Journeyman
Reged: 06/23/03
Posts: 77
Loc: SF county
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Phialpha, this might be getting a tad off the spirit of the original post, but would you be able to elaborate a bit about how one would go about identifying what activities have been recorded on a hard drive like the average tech you described? Was it this hard drive search that busted Scott Peterson on his search of the bay? Also can you erase specifics rather than reformatting the entire drive as another suggested?
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The healthy animal is up and doing
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PAIDFO
Member
Reged: 02/01/03
Posts: 163
Loc: southeast
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I agree with DonBarba,the law firm where my wife works uses some kind of system that watches for keywords and e-mails are randomly checked.They fire someone every so often for Riskee site visits.A paralegal was terminated for doing her thing on ebay.Plz be careful after all its "their puter"..Good Luck.....P
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"The difference between Ordinary and Extraordinary is the Little Extra"
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prettyday
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 02/09/03
Posts: 1134
Loc: Coastal Sage Scrub
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I have heard the only way to erase your tracks for good is smash up the drive with a hammer.
Actually I was walking along a Maui beach one time with my husband we both said, "what's that?" Not having a Computer yet...it was A DELL CPU...very interesting how that came to be, but really selfish considering the sealife and how they are affected by some of the materials that go into manufacture of PCs...
That being said, if I was in my gorgeous Hawaii oceanfront home, don't have that yet either, and was some kind of outlaw, mmmm....not yet, and I heard a bunch of government men at the door, I can't be certain I would not say "sorry, fishies! fire in the hole!"
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Mahatma Gandhi
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dman22
Board Addict
Reged: 05/02/04
Posts: 326
Loc: Everywhere
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Quote:
Turn off auto complete and clear the cache.
Unfortunately, a lot of these suggestions will not work. Most companies direct all outbound traffic through a proxy server, therefore, every URL is logged at the server by host name.
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barelythere
Member
Reged: 11/29/04
Posts: 101
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You can purchase software to completely erase your tracks. Cyberscrub is one such product. I wouldn't be surfing on company time though, but that's your decision.
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MatthewJ
Member
Reged: 11/06/04
Posts: 102
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Quote:
I surf the net a lot at work, I am on this site a lot as well. My company is not huge but not tiny either. We all use the net a ton for work and others surf as well but I just got the thought that they could easily find out the websites I have visited if they ever decided to.
Is this as easy as I think it is ? Should I be worried ? I would hate to have them ask me why I spend hours on the net at work and on sites like "drugbuyers"
Am I doomed ???
I think you better stop. I work at one of the BIG 3 and the policy is VERY srict! Any sort of bad behavior, per say during surfing, any words pop up and you're gone! I do NOT access any sites from work except maybe my e-mail & bank info. Thats allowed. Alot of people got fired lately over surfing. I would guess all business's have the same ploicies.
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"Is the pain ever gonna stop?"
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t_oshan2003
Board Addict
Reged: 10/17/03
Posts: 385
Loc: East
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yeah, I have to agree. Luckily my company does allow "casual" net surfing and have even been told its ok but I am going to really limit it as not to cause any uproar.
Thanks for all the responses!
I know if I worked for one of the bigger companies I wouldn't be even reading sports online.
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Esmee
Stranger
Reged: 01/16/03
Posts: 17
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This is an interesting topic. The Internet in the workplace has affected our society on many levels, aside from this particular question about surfing what might be deemed inappropriate. I myself worked at the largest insurance company for nearly 20 years. When the Internet was introduced I was immediately concerned. Performance and volume has taken a hard hit as many people sit and surf in between tasks. It angered me to watch how much time was wasted, and then listen to people whine about workload, knowing if they dedicated themselves to the job and left the surfing to breaks or private time, there was more than enough time in the day for tasks at hand. Don't get me wrong, I surfed too, but there was a limit for me. I was in a large office to pick up something the other day and I saw the two receptionists pull the quick screen minimize that is all too common. They had been playing a word game and changed to work when I approached. We have all done that at one time or another, as a client or perhaps upper management comes up to chat. Quick screen minimize switch. Surfing to working at the click of a mouse. But large companies have monitors in place. They know where you are. I have seen and helped place the programs. Be careful. Heck, uppper management is the worst of all.
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leap
Member
Reged: 11/19/03
Posts: 111
Loc: blue state
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My husband used to implement the systems that watch what people do on line. Porn sites of course send up a red flag, but the name of this forum, drugbuyers, could also be dangerous for you. He also said that usually companies don't bother to check the logs where all of this info is kept (all sites visited, all emails sent & recieved etc) unless they are suspicious of you for some other reason or are looking for evidence to use to get rid of you. Otherwise they probably don't have the time to check the logs.
I would restrict your surfing to safer subjects, perhaps if from now on you did a lot of medical research, like American Arthritis asociation, or those Medical potals like mayo clinic & stuff on how to train to become a pharmacist so if your previous surfing came up you could claim initial internet ignorance, & now you have figured out where to find the info you are looking for.
Definately stop looking at Op's & OP forums at work!
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"I want to believe." - Fox Mulder
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dman22
Board Addict
Reged: 05/02/04
Posts: 326
Loc: Everywhere
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In almost all of your Fortune 50 companies, most everything is monitored now. Here's some screenshots to ponder.
http://www.systracker.com/screenshot.asp
BTW: A lot of these monitoring applications pull the meta-description tags from Web pages to ease the burden on IT amongst all the URL's.
Just an FYI, Here's drugbuyers.com:
'Free information about online pharmacies, online prescriptions, online physicians, foreign pharmacies, and buying prescription drugs online. Pharmacy watch and chronic pain support group helps you find pain meds, hydrocodone, vicodin, oxycodone, oxycontin'
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Trey_McC
Old Hand
Reged: 12/07/04
Posts: 414
Loc: Mars
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If eight people surf the Internet for one hour a day then your employer would have to hire another employee.
Trey
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lela
Old Hand
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 431
Loc: Where it never snows
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Where do you people find these jobs that allow you enough time to surf the net, monitored or not? I WANT ONE OF THESE JOBS! 
Seriously, it's best to keep personal surfing at home where it belongs IMHO. Just my 2 cents as usual....
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I love this site!
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Opie_Yates
Old Hand
Reged: 08/11/03
Posts: 489
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Yup...SysTracker is widely used. They can filter on YOUR web activity with a few clicks and BOOM. See the screen shot.
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I'm not a doctor, I just play one on a message forum!
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dman22
Board Addict
Reged: 05/02/04
Posts: 326
Loc: Everywhere
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Lol.. well there's an easier solution. Network admins just need to enforce their group policies. Problem solved.
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dman22
Board Addict
Reged: 05/02/04
Posts: 326
Loc: Everywhere
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It's called delegation In a past life, I had an employee volunteer for overtime on the weekend once. As a supervisor, I didn't work weekends and really wouldn't have given his time usage a second thought... until I saw a report ,by our IT dept., showing his internet usage for that day. 4 hours surfing.... Needless to say, I denied access to the internet after that. That's what you get for trusting someone,.. Always be suspicious..
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lela
Old Hand
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 431
Loc: Where it never snows
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That's what most companies do these days and can you blame them? The world is full of slackers not to mentions idiots and as* holes.
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I love this site!
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