Discovery of the Week
Okay, I may be late to the party on this one, but just in case this is new, I must share. We have a reasonably open network at work, but they block all AOL-affiliated sites, which evidently includes the Go Network; in other words, ESPN.com is blocked. Not being an ESPN guy, I can live with that, but occasionally there’s a link there that I want to read and it’s annoying when I can’t.
Enter the coolest new tool I’ve seen in a long time: Browse At Work
Go the page, enter your URL of choice and just like that you’re in. I just showed it to a Packer-crazy buddy of mine at work, using the ESPN example and the first thing he saw on ESPN’s page was a link to Favre’s intention to play again this season. Needless to say, he’s now a fan of this tool.
There’s more information on this and similar tools at the site, BlockAvoid.
Come and partake of these sweet waters my web-oppressed brethren. Rise up and free yourself from the chains of workplace oppression! There shall be much rejoicing and partaking of the lambs, and the sheep and breakfast cereals! And it shall be good!
…or something like that.
April 26th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Did you just post a link that lets my kid bust the pron filter at home???
April 26th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Be careful. Network admins, such as myself, can still see through that. So if it’s against your company’s tech policies, just know you aren’t in the clear.
We fired a guy recently for this and other things that violated our tech policy.
April 26th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
They’re more adamant about the AOL stuff. The ESPN site is just a splash-damage casualty that they don’t care to have an exception for. (For example, CBS Sportsline, SI, etc. aren’t blocked.) Thanks for the heads-up, though. (I figured as much, but I still thought it’s a cool feature.)
April 26th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Ah, the joys of working from home…
April 27th, 2006 at 12:20 am
You can also use an ssh server at your house(free) and open up a ssh tunnel to your house with a tool called putty.. then set your browser(ie/firefox) and chat clients ect to use a socks 5 proxy. The network admins will see traffic but they won’t have a clue what you are doing or what sites you are visiting since the DNS traffic will be tunneled through the proxy as well.
April 29th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I wondered why Google Analytics was showing loads of people coming from your blog… thanks for the link! I’m the webmaster of the BlockAvoid site.
In response to mjb2123, you’re spot on. Tools for bypassing content filters are never totally foolproof. Some (like Tor [tor.eff.org]) are better than others, but you’re most likely to be busted by someone looking over your shoulder. Oh, and lord flatus… are you sure the pron filter hasn’t already been busted?
Jon jones… make sure if you’re using SSH over Socks5 that the Firefox about:config setting ‘network.proxy.socks_remote_dns’ is set to TRUE, otherwise the browser will leak your DNS requests and the admins will see them.
Nice blog BTW, one for my bookmarks list.