Grrrrr....

I can understand my work blocking certain types of websites.

Porn, gaming, gambling, cloud based storage sites (like DropBox), - They have no business being in a work environment.

But why block Google Reader?  I used it to read news sites and tech news in the morning.  And now it’s blocked.  I guess I shouldn’t have been using it in the morning.

I’m actually curious as to when they will COMPLETELY cut off people from the internet all together.  It’s really only a matter of time before TPTB decide “You know, people don’t need breaks from the workflow at all during the day, let’s get rid of this whole Interweb thing – they won’t mind at all!”  I understand that some people abuse using the internet at work.  I’ve seen it happen.  But just because a few people are irresponsible, they shouldn’t punish the ENTIRE company, should they?  I feel people will only get frustrated when they decide to take a break from working, and go to a site that they’ve been able to access before, only to find that it’s blocked.

And it’s not just sites like that – I know for a fact that YouTube is blocked (understandable – that can be a time sink), as is Facebook, MySpace, and eBay.   By why block The Skeptics Guide @ www.theskepticsguide.org?  It’s a Science blog about debunking the nutcases who believe they can read minds and bend spoons.  Yes it talks about those, but when it’s classified as “The Websense category "Non-Traditional Religions and Occult and Folklore" is filtered”, that make no sense!

I really understand that the bank has to protect its network.  The LAST thing the bank needs is for a virus, or worm, or keylogger to sneak on the system and compromise the security of the millions of people that we do business with.  But they way they choose to block websites is kinda random.  For instance, you can’t visit Google Documents (an online Word/Excel type bank of apps), but you can’t visit Google Calendar.  I can visit skeptics.org, but not theskepticsguide.org.

So I think they need to do one of two things.  Either give us a select few SAFE and SECURE websites that we can go to for news/weather/info for when we need to take a breather from work, or get rid of internet access completely.  We don’t NEED the internet here – it’s not a necessity for us to use it on a daily basis.  But people do need to take the occasional break from the work flow.  And continually changing the rules about where you can go doesn’t help.