why do some businesses block websites?

[jjlynn27]

Quite a few replies along the lines 'cause you should be working not surfing' sent on a workday during working hours.

[ZesPak]

jjlynn27 said:

Quite a few replies along the lines 'cause you should be working not surfing' sent on a workday during working hours.

Tbh, it's something that's almost out of date. I've got 10gb of data on my contract now, so providing I've got sufficient signal...

So, as mentioned before, adress the core problem. I see the op's sentiment, but there's no reason your employee should provide for you in that way. If you get a smartphone and a decent data plan, and your employer is fine you spending 4h+/day on it, then I'd suggest you take it as a win .

You could try and get your employer to pay part of your phone plan though?

[944fan]

Often it isn't specific sites that are blocked (youtube) but the rules are based on a whitelist so only everything is blocked and only specific sites are available.

Best thing to do is get a job in IT and then you can bypass the filters :-)

[Dr G]

We don't care too much as long as everyone is doing their job and the pee-pee is not taken

If you're dumb enough to look at something stupid/illicit/illegal then you've nobody to blame but yourself when you're looking for another job!

[Mark-C]

There is a lot more to our website blocking than whitelists - they are useful for stopping time wasting but we have a whole load of other stuff in place aimed at malware and data loss prevention and I don’t fancy the chances of anyone getting around it all. Anyone that does is likely to leave a footprint.

[Guvernator]

Lol at the question. Surely as a security guard your job should be to be on HIGH alert at all times to catch the bad guys, not watching videos on youtube? Next you'll be telling me you expect them to pay you for sleeping on the job too (which security guards never do of course )

The amount of times I have seen internet access become an issue is unreal, 7/10 the security guards are the culprit too. If you give people access to this stuff, they WILL abuse it. Might not be you necessarily but someone most certainly will so rather than face all that hassle with HR etc companies just block it and avoid the issue altogether.

My advice, get yourself a kindle\ipad with a data plan.

[TurricanII]

Idle web browsing often leads to viruses getting onto machines, even if antivirus is installed. This costs lots of time and money to fix, and could expose the entire company network/your client data to malicious remote people. Further, your entire company network or computers could be shut down by the latest worm. The publicity for any of these scenarios could be very damaging. Although good IT staff should be able to put in lots of security measures, the risk is still massive. +1 for buying a tablet or smart phone and 3G plan.