BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Cheating the email block

 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:47 / 04.06.03
Hotmail, Yahoo and other more obscure mail servers are blocked from my new work computer.

How do I gert round this in order to stay contactable and sane?
 
 
grant
16:12 / 04.06.03
How do they block them?

I'd imagine an anonymizer *might* help.

There was one... hell, I can't remember what it was called, but the gist was that you'd open the one web page and it would do all your browsing for you. as far as your system was concerned, there was only one page open, but you could go anywhere. I think "boss" was in the title.
 
 
Warewullf
16:46 / 04.06.03
Safeweb used to be a fantastic free anonymiser but they went all corporate and I think you have to pay now.

Try Megaproxy.
It won't work with Hotmail, though.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
18:53 / 04.06.03
The program is called SuperScout. Dib-dib-bloody-dib indeed. Alas, Hotmail's my main address ... but I can also access my Hotmail messages from Yahoo (in theory) so I'll try Megaproxy, cheers Warewulff.

Any other sites?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
03:02 / 05.06.03
Be careful, though: they're probably analysing server logs, and an anonymizer will show up and eventually be blocked... eventually.
 
 
Linus Dunce
19:20 / 05.06.03
You could also try paying the 20 bucks or whatever to get POP access for your Hotmail and installing a non-Office e-mail client (Eudora, Pegasus, etc.) but this would only work if they've not bothered to block the e-mail port as well.

Roth's right though, it'd probably only be a matter of time before they cottoned on. You may have to resort to SMS.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
23:13 / 05.06.03
It's OK, I'm only there 3 months, and blocking off yet more sites in a job as boring as this must surely constitute some form of mental cruelty. I'll fight them all the way to the European Court of Human Rights!
 
 
Whisky Priestess
13:12 / 09.06.03
Access is denied to Megaproxy. Clearly our virtual Baden-Powell knows his stuff. Any other suggestions?
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
14:33 / 09.06.03
I'm stupid on these things, can you get to them through search engines?
 
 
Linus Dunce
18:41 / 09.06.03
What about getting some of that "control your PC remotely" software and remotely controlling your home PC to pick up your Hotmail?
 
 
Whisky Priestess
09:41 / 10.06.03
Wouldn't it have to be on and online all the time for that? And I've tried search engines - still blocked. These cookies are smart.
 
 
Mazarine
09:50 / 10.06.03
If you can set yourself up a proxy, you might be able to get around blocks (this is how people I know sneak about). Of course, that may lead to questions like "why the hell are there fifteen hits per day to this proxy, and what the fuck is Barbelith?" Also, I have no idea how to set up a proxy, so someone more technical than I would have to fill in the numerous blanks.
 
 
w1rebaby
10:30 / 10.06.03
If you can get through to www.fastmail.fm you can set it up to check your hotmail. It's a better service, anyway.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:35 / 10.06.03
Fastmail is blocked too. Arse.

I'm seriously thinking of offering to blow someone in IT in exchange for the secret of getting through this bloody firewall.
 
 
grant
16:33 / 23.02.04
They appear to have started blocking livejournal from my company's net access (as a "malicious web site" apparently).
Any ideas on how to get there from here?
 
 
Red Cross Iodized Salt
04:24 / 24.02.04
The program is called SuperScout

I know this one...my company used it for a while and all the blocked sites are based on lists that are updated by SuperScout every few weeks. Any anonymizer that has been around for more than a month will eventually get added to the list. Any reasonably well known webmail site will most likely be blocked as well.

Unless you know for certain that you won't get into trouble for trying to circumvent the blocking software, it's proabably better not to keep looking for ways around it. Superscout will generate a report displaying every blocked site you attempted to access (with times and number or attempts) alongside your log-in ID for whoever it is that looks at these things. If

Oh, and Google cache is your friend for when you just want to read somthing that's blocked. It's no good for accessing email, but it helps ease the pain.
 
 
aus
04:38 / 24.02.04
At my previous workplace, even the company's own web site was blocked! We were only allowed access to about 10 domains, and many of them didn't work properly because, of course, they pulled content from blocked domains - even though the domains were owned by the same company. In fact, there was only one web site that could be usefully accessed. Often I had to give people directions to my office, and all the mapping/directions web sites were blocked. It was also very counterproductive that telephone directory sites were all blocked.
 
 
Red Cross Iodized Salt
04:41 / 24.02.04
On the topic of proxies, the SuperScout software is usually set up to monitor the traffic on the proxy server used by all employees that access the web. As a last ditch effort, you could try unchecking "access the internet using a proxy" in your browser's preferences, or try adding "*.*.*.*" to the list of IP address that are accessed without the proxy. Unfortunately, unless the info security people at your workplace do a really half-assed job, it is unlikely that either of these things will work.

If you do trade sexual favors with a geek, see if there's a proxy without SuperScout that they'll let you use. It's the kind of thing that might be frowned on even more than just constantly looking for new anonymizers / webmail sites to use (even if you're not going to be going to work un-friendly sites, IT managers get very uptight about the possibility of viruses being introduced to the network).
 
 
doc
10:47 / 24.02.04
sorry for stating the obvious...maybe there is a good reason for blocking these sites...dont ask me what it is
 
 
doc
10:47 / 24.02.04
sorry for stating the obvious...maybe there is a good reason for blocking these sites...dont ask me what it is though
 
 
grant
13:35 / 24.02.04
Round here, they're using something called "websense". The page that pops up when I try to get onto LJ looks like this:
http://192.168.99.13:15871/cgi-bin/blockpage.cgi?ws-session=687865921

I suppose I'll just start checking it at home. Alas.
 
 
w1rebaby
17:10 / 24.02.04
I imagine that's a page on your proxy server, I can't get it.

I recently found that my blog had been banned as "Mature" on a number of corporate firewalls. That's a fucking joke. Nothing mature about it.
 
 
■
18:27 / 24.02.04
Oh, for god's sake. Get a grip. If you're being paid to work for someone they have every right to stop you wasting their time, money and resources on personal stuff.
I know you won't be convinced by that, but don't forget that by using personal accounts at work you're leaving yourself open to having all your usernames and passwords logged by some geek in the IT department and used against you when they quit.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
18:34 / 24.02.04
Fair point ... but in my case I was working on reception, where all I had to do was answer the phone, take deliveries and twiddle my thumbs for the other 7 hours of the day. So in fact, there was nothing else for me to do but surf all day - and it's better that I do that and look busy rather than sit there staring cross-eyed at the wall.

But receptionists are a special case ... I mean, there's only so long you can spend painting your nails, no?
 
 
Olulabelle
19:17 / 24.02.04
It depends how detailed you're going to get about them.

I suggest not this much.
 
  
Add Your Reply