Sites are blacklisted for a reason...

[draggar]

I just had an IM conversation with one of my users because they want to get to some sites that are blocked by our firewall.

Yeah, right. They're fire-walled for a reason, especially for those of us with internet access.

[Salesmonkey]

I thought that the firewall blacklist was only there to give us a reason to learn about proxy servers?

[fireheart]

Five sweet words from their point of view.

"The Internet Is For Porn."

[MrSmiley]

I'll assume by "for a reason" is that there is a good one for blocking. Because I've worked at places before where the reasons weren't good at all... sometimes it was something in the domain (customerssuck.com? sounds like retail porn!), sometimes it was something triggering the keyword filter (fark.com headlines are good for this), sometimes it was a someone who missed the point of the website (yahoo.com? we don't need you to be playing games at work!) and sometimes it was just because I "spent too much time" on the website (I tend to open a lot of different pages in tabs and get to them "whenever" during an 8 hour shift).

Also had a blacklist system block the company's own website due to the aforementioned issues.

[mattm04]

Also had a blacklist system block the company's own website due to the aforementioned issues.

Once our parent companies domain got blacklisted, all the services we use including the public website and intranet were blocked for almost three hours as inappropriate content.

[elsporko]

At my work we have a filture because somebody reported finding porn sites in the computer. Porn in this case meant a wrestling site which had pictures of female wrestlers. Oddly enough seanbaby.com is not blocked despite there being an articles which feature pictures of naked women.

[JLRodgers]

Funny story about firewalls at one company I worked at.
Blocked sites (before fixed):
company's website, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, google, yahoo (granted, for mail, but also did search)

Not blocked (as I discovered when going over internet logs):
porn sites, hardcore porn, beastiality, "kid" porn, gaming sites, online poker, etc

When I asked the network admin about it, they just disabled the firewall filter.

[Victoria J]

My mother got blocked at work for a site I sent her. She got very perplexed asking why I had sent her a site about being "really old" and what on earth was so questionable about it.

What I had actually sent her was a link to a site about the actor from many old films - Victor Mature (a very very odd site clearly run by old ladies still lusting after him, but still not at all risque). This had been blocked either for the large picture - a black and white photo of his face hand tinted to flesh tone which could have been more pink than was allowed, or use of the word mature. The only thing left had been something saying "V.Mature" leading her to think I was calling her very old...

She worked for local councils and they tend to have very strict firewalls and she would often have to ask to be granted access to sites she needed. Sites needed for training she gave with regard to sexual health, or child protection and various other things where you do need to see lots of information that may not always be suitable for children or delicate council workers.

Victoria J

[Broomjockey]

i was insulted over it being called a game. Because i don't feel SL to be a game,and most people in SL don't regard it as a game.

Yeah, I agree. Since games are fun. (I KID! I KID!) Not sure what you'd have them classify it as, then. The only other thing close would be social networking. I do think you're overthinking it though. Most times what something's blocked as is completely irrelevant to the actual nature of the site. Usually the site should be blocked, just not for the reason listed.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/websense...-is-tasteless/

[MergedLoki]

yea my work blocks anything with video or flash in it.

so... LOTS of sites. thankfully not this one though

[PepperElf]

what sites did he or she want?

and i'd also suggest keeping tabs on that user's web usage just in case.

there are ways around a firewall, mainly proxy hacks that make blocked websites show up as a different IP address. those hack sites usually contain nasty viruses

we had an issue like that at work cos sites like myspace, facebook etc... they were blocked at a location beyond us, and people were using the hacks to get around it... and yes we picked up some nasties that way