website monitoring at work?

[clioman]

Hi all, need some techi info.

We have just had an email come round saying that our website's are being monitored at work.

I have been told this is only possible by using a piece of software which costs about £6k which i know for a fact our company wouldnt pay.

Therefor is there anyway of knowing if it is being monitored? Visible on connections or in proccesses? Hope someone can help.

We have VNC server installed which i understand is just a remote desktop program.

Thanks in advance.

Shaw

 

[McBunny]

tbh it doesnt cost that much ours doesnt and it depends what software is been used as to if you can see if its been done

 

[Daz]

It's perfectly possible for £0 and a bit of hardware if you use a Linux Proxy solution.
It could be ISA Server which does cost money, it could be Squid, it could be bespoke software, it could even be a piece of hardware .. but, it's definetly possible..

 

[black kro]

might be random monitoring - i.e. they can see what you have sent/received.

be careful I say cos 'intent' not obvious

I got disciplined for a 'cheeky' e-mail!

"god i need my nipple ring tweeking" to a female mate who knew it was fun.

as in a 'warning for use of offensive material' on my HR record for 12 months

 

[Daz]

Oh,

"Hi Clioman's IT Department!!!"

 

[Lee]

We're just installing Surf Control. Our users are so owned now.

 

[Daz]

We're just installing Surf Control. Our users are so owned now.

Exclude: cliosport.net?
Being in IT is great isn't it? - exception rules.. awesome *runs*

 

[herkescup]

It's not safe to talk about this right now.... I'm being watched

 

[Lee]

It's time to lock this place down. I've had enough of people causing s**t around here, it's time to force them into actually working.

Me excluded of course. My only concern is we may have to set it to report back to Head Office, in which case I'll have to behave.

 

[McBunny]

we use surfcontrol it works to an extent

 

[Adam K]

we use a barracuda box at work, when i was based in the office part of my role was to administer it, so no issue for me

 

[KDF]

Who watches the watcher

 

[clioman]

Who watches the watcher

No one, and there normally the worst culprites, ha ha

 

[dk]

we use websense, very effective product.

We have less restrictions before 9, after 5 and at lunchtimes etc.

Different policies for different groups of people and amazing statistics down to how many minutes are spent on facebook by each employee over a week to non work related categories etc.

It really is very granular and can catch a few people out. Basically, if they want to get you for something, this is a nice easy way!

When i was working at HO in Germany, over there they have strict privacy laws and these kinds of things can't be monitored, not even emails, the employee is very protected over there!

 

[TELFORDS_LURK]

We're just installing Surf Control. Our users are so owned now.

We use this too, installed on and in conjuction with ISA 2004.

So funny when you see the students deleting their temporary internet files and browser history, when we can go back and show them their entire internet browsing activity for the last 3 months, no matter what pc they've been on.

It also doesnt have anything installed on the pc so they cant shut it down, so if they want internet access, they are forced to go through the proxy and therefore are monitored.

Oh, and we've also blocked any internet traffic on port 80 other than the proxy server :lolup:

 

[Munday]

The joys of having two works pc's, one of which is on a dedicated ADSL line with no monitoring

 

[al]

Who watches the watcher

No one, and there normally the worst culprites, ha ha

 

[Andy.]

We also use Surf control.

Users got around it by using portable firefox on USB sticks to work around the proxy. That is now blocked.

 

[sargey]

We use a SonicWall CF 2200. Half the price of Surfcontrol!

 

[timmmah]

Different policies for different groups of people and amazing statistics down to how many minutes are spent on facebook by each employee over a week to non work related categories etc.

So how many minutes are spent on facebook within your company?

I'd be interested to know!

 

[McBunny]

Different policies for different groups of people and amazing statistics down to how many minutes are spent on facebook by each employee over a week to non work related categories etc.

So how many minutes are spent on facebook within your company?

I'd be interested to know!

non its just blocked

 

[sneeks]

Can it monitor people who tunnel out to a home PC using SSH and effectively browse using that system? Surely all it would display is a connection to the outside and no other details of what you were looking at as this would be handled remotely?

 

[McBunny]

you would need to use packet filtering for that

 

[timmmah]

What if people use those free proxy websites?

 

[sneeks]

you would need to use packet filtering for that

Is this easily blocked by the IT bods?

 

[McBunny]

no im saying packet filtering would need to be done for them to detect it either that or just block every thing other than http traffic

 

[sneeks]

Yeah I went and read what packet filtering was after I posted that question

 

[McBunny]

packet filtering is very good and powerfull

 

[b3nje]

i work 8 hours a day - 5 are spent on facebook

 

[Maxx]

we use websense, very effective product.

We have less restrictions before 9, after 5 and at lunchtimes etc.

Different policies for different groups of people and amazing statistics down to how many minutes are spent on facebook by each employee over a week to non work related categories etc.

It really is very granular and can catch a few people out. Basically, if they want to get you for something, this is a nice easy way!

When i was working at HO in Germany, over there they have strict privacy laws and these kinds of things can't be monitored, not even emails, the employee is very protected over there!

Do you know how to turn it off or anything??

 

[172.com]

Thank God I work in a company, which isn't arsed about this kind of thing.

 

[Lagerlout]

Our company has websense. If they monitor emplyees time on websites in minutes I'm pretty much fucked. lol.

 

[dk]

Different policies for different groups of people and amazing statistics down to how many minutes are spent on facebook by each employee over a week to non work related categories etc.

So how many minutes are spent on facebook within your company?

I'd be interested to know!

its actually quite scary, facebook used to be categorised in one section which wasn't allowed at all but then they re-categorised it and now its available before 9, after 5 and between 12-2pm.

The top person on the graph was spending about 6-8 hours a week on there i think, hes a good mate of mine so i tipped him off that he was being monitored and appeared at the top of the graph, hes gone down since then.

My boss (it manager) wants to ban it completely but hes not decided yet, i showed him this in the news.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6969791.stm

 

[dk]

What if people use those free proxy websites?

those types of site are all in a category in websense and so are blocked also

 

[dk]

no im saying packet filtering would need to be done for them to detect it either that or just block every thing other than http traffic

i believe websense looks at all network traffic, not jsut at the proxy etc so is difficult to get around.

I've never tried as I am happy with what I can see, i get less restricted access but i can't access ClioSport, i was mad at first but i am glad now as i used to spend stupid amounts of time on here and now its just about 1/2 hour at lunchtime and evenings, I get a lot more work done now!

 

[Toypop]

Ebay and the BBC are the most browsed where I work. Ebay has since been blocked. Facebook and all those sites along with hotmail etc are all blocked too.

On a more alarming note I could swear my boss is spying on my facebook - outside of work obviously! When we talk she sometimes lets slip things that she knows that I haven't told her. E.g. today she asked what I did last night and I said I played on my Xbox 360 and she said "oh was that Bioshock". I was like "how the f*ck do you know that?". She said "oh you told me you were getting your new 360 with Bioshock" but that is total utter BS because I never mentioned Bioshock to her once but have mentioned it on my facebook a lot...

Also I had a load of lads who work for the same company but in a different location spying on my facebook and taking the piss so I started posting notes saying I had a new job and was leaving the company. Well the day before I was supposed to "leave" my boss called me into an office and said she had heard a rumour I was leaving and wanted to know if it was true!!!! Unbelievable!

If they monitor you like that at home you have to worry about what they do in work!!!!

 

[KDF]

Can it monitor people who tunnel out to a home PC using SSH and effectively browse using that system? Surely all it would display is a connection to the outside and no other details of what you were looking at as this would be handled remotely?

They could see where the connection is too, but all traffic is encrypted. I use my linux system at work to SSH into my home system and launch a web browser. All traffic/requests etc are tunnelled through the SSH connection and are therfor encrypted and unreadable even at the packet level.

No point blocking port 22 and I could easily tunnel a connection of port 80 (web) if I wanted to.

 

[Brand86]

We had websense at work, pretty much everything was accessible though excpet for Facebook.

TBH as long as your working don't really see the problem visiting a few websites during the day, I kept CS open in a browser tab all day but didn't mean I was watching it all day.

I took internet breaks same as smokers took fag breaks, seems only fair...

 

[ChrisR]

Another websense company here, and our place is stupidly locked down.

I can circumvent it all if need be or add in my own exceptions but there's no point as it's more hassle than it's worth. Being the IT dept we're always told we have to be whiter than white

But then everything in our place is locked down to hell, it's great Since we took the hard line with everything problems have reduced dramatically.

But for the OP, it depends on what your company has, but as said you can do it very cheaply without you knowing as it'll all be done at the proxy/when the data has left your pc, rather than monitoring your actual pc. If that makes sense