My employer has decided to block OzBargain. This comes as a compliment to the creators of OzBargain, however makes it difficult to enjoy OzB during my lunchbreak.
Can OzBargain please create a mirror site so we can enjoy this while taking our lunch break?
@CandyMan: That would be because you are the admin of your computer, you do not have any policies set to disable USB devices, you actually have USBs, etc.
I'm not an expert
…and not working for a big organisation either. As xsacha points out, how's that right-click stuff go when you try it at work?
Some of the replies in this thread truly are fascinating.
@D C:
Yep and people ask me why the corporate PCs still have PS/2 ports. And that's why, because certain organizations completely disable USB.
And that's why, because certain organizations completely disable USB.
Or they only allow a class of devices by using HID identifiers. So if something is in the whitelist (e.g. the teller machines use a very specific type of cherry keyboards), then only these will connect to the USB and function normally.
@TheMostHated: We can't mine crypto then?
You can give it a shot.
First hurdle is the app. You can't install anything, so that means writing your own miner if your company allows scripts to run. You can try Javascript (just like dodgy sites do) or fire up Excel and write one in VBA or .Net.
If you are enthusiastic distribute your app to others (easier if you're the database front-end dev or something) and pop up dialog boxes that make the user wait a while as you use their machine to do a little bit of work for you, like 'certain sites' do. Use the database for storage.
A better option is to put a procedure on the database server so it does a little bit of mining when people request data, but most people won't have access to that. Folk might complain the database is a bit slow too.
Next problem is networking. All the sites are blocked and traffic is monitored, so you'll need your own device to communicate, be it a laptop, phone, Arduino etc that has internet. (Connect that to the serial port (usually not blocked if there is one) so your script can talk to the coin P2P network.
Don't worry if the serial port is blocked, there are other avenues.
Simple, and I can't see any downsides so go for it.
@D C: I can't wait until you get Palantir installed to really monitor employees…
The irony is that its malfeasance at the management level which tends to cost more than what employees do.
@TheMostHated: > I can't wait until you get Palantir installed to really monitor employees…
Geez dude, ya want to mine or not?
blackmail
Well, @fancypantsman is collecting logins; we're considering doxing @OP but not really sure if he's worth blackmailing. Probably only a small Eneloop collection.
Do not use tor, guaranteed visit from the IT guys if you use it.
I reckon bikies "I know what're you doing. Just don't"
Running tor from within a bank? Not a good idea.
Yeah this is bad advice. Won’t last an hour before your terminal is shut down/blocked
Use your phone?…? Or here's a tip at work do your work so your next post isn't
"Employer fired me for installing 3rd party software on my computer. Any options for compensation"
I can but I don't like to be seen using my phone that often.
So it's much better that it shows up in IT's logs?
You are paid by the boss to work - not play around on the web visiting external sites.
OP response:
Usually jump on there during my lunch break.
A suggestion
Use your phone?
OP response:
I can but I don't like to be seen using my phone that often.
You don't like being seen using your phone during your lunch break? Okay then.
CIO at an undisclosed company once told me off by 'anonymously' referring me to my manager who pulled me aside to have a word for looking at my phone on my lunch break in the lunch room of all places (even when this particular CIO had a big speel a few days before, about how everyone should raise issues with people directly rather than emailing/going behind peoples backs) because it made his staff look bad (was surfing gumtree for a car part). I knew the 'anon' complaint came from him; and confirmed it after grilling my manager about who the complaint came from. Went over to the CIO's room and told him to go stuff it and fire me if I can't check my personal things on my lunch break (my car was not operational and I was looking for a replacement, so in a way it had something to do with work). He backed down because everyone knew I was producing good results at work, and I held a position with very limited people who can fill my expertise. He avoided me every day there-after. But I imagine most people would have just taken the warning on the chin and stopped using their phones on their breaks. Some bosses can be bullies when it comes to silly things, even like using your phone on your lunch break.
That's correct. Due to meetings I might have take my lunch break aldesko and later than normal lunch break hours (eg 2pm). Eating while looking at my computer looks a lot better than eating while looking at my phone.
Eating while looking at my computer looks a lot better than eating while looking at my phone.
No it doesn't actually. You're trying to circumvent controls put in on your work computer, that shit looks wayyyy worse than someone sitting and watching/reading stuff on their phone while having lunch.
Your lunch break is OWED to you. You don't need to eat lunch at your desk like a miserable wagecuck.
Haha… it's great isnt it? :D
But seriously mate, just use your own personal laptop/tablet/phone. You can't get into trouble reading/browsing the Internet on your personal devices during your breaks (well, as long it's not inappropriate content).
Trying to bypass controls on a work device is more trouble than its worth, and has way more severe ramifications if caught. I'm not preaching, its just a matter of 'risk' vs 'benefit'.
@gearhead: >Your lunch break is OWED to you. You don't need to eat lunch at your desk like a miserable wagecuck.
Depends on the industry - traders would be expected to be at their desk (usually).
Android? Plug it in to your monitor and mouse?
bring a personal laptop or tablet and let it run via your phone's internet. Problem solved!
You can bring your own personal Laptop or tablet-laptop like Microsoft surface.
Put it on the blind-side where people can't look through the screen then use your phone as a Wi-FI HotSpot
As as shareholder of your bank, and quasi indirect owner I demand you stop messing around on internet all day and instead serve customers and sell loans.
I'm in a support role, can only make people work harder.
Oh the delicious irony!
Perhaps you should be increasing your bloody productivity rather than slacking off browsing internet!
Give me your name so I can tell my neighbour you've been slacking
So many stone throwers in here. Who hasn't checked ozbargain at work?
My job has a break room to use the internet, so the masses think I should not use the staff facilities??
Mine too has several break rooms. Each with a single seat, no desk, a giant toothbrush in a floor holder, writing paper in a roll. But the air can get a bit heavy at times.
I believe if you sit backwards on the seat you have a small desk with a button that you can press for the relaxing sound of flowing water?
Heard recently of a boss who when his staff were looking a bit thin on the ground would walk into the toilets and turn the lights off and could then see a glow coming from all the cubicles so he knew what people were doing in there, didn't do too much about it more than make mental notes, the amusing part was when one employee told him he should get the lights in the toilet checked as they seemed to keep going out.
get the lights in the toilet checked
Lol.
@OP is safe, ANZ's dunny illuminators are motion-sensitive.
didn't do too much about it more than make mental notes
Until the day when the shit hits the phone fan. "Cut three staff, you say? Hmm."
I'm reading this at work
It’s the question OP asked is being stone pelted. Nothing personal about browsing internet.
Like seriously? OzB gets blocked. Why not File change.org petition?
I don't check ozb at work, I'm a day trader I check commsec at work.
JB blocks it on the Telstra PC's we use. so I use it on the Macbooks on display :)
I do but my work doesn't have a policy forbidding it or actively blocking it so I am not trying to bypass imposed security controls or breach any policy. our policy is browse whatever you like (within reason) as long as your work is completed. Trying to bypass corporate IT security at a bank is a fast way to end up in an unemployment queue.
My response was mostly in reply to the people canning him for using the internet at work, not about the ethics of bypassing a company imposed block.
I am OP's boss. Do NOT answer his question!!!
If you're checking ozb every now and then at work I don't see an issue.. Its like someone else's cigarette break or coffee break (or Facebook break)
But if you're hitting that refresh button every 2 mins trying to catch the next price error, I don't blame them for blocking the service.
Having said that… IT have probably done the analysis and can see the number of cumulative hours being "wasted" on ozb so it may well be justified.
As every1 else mentioned, use your phone/own internet connection.
Which one of 4, if you don't mind me asking?
OP works is at ANZ.
Are you the guy who works at Westpac and owns an $80k investment car?
oh CMON!!!!
build your own circumventor: http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumventor-in…
(not sure if this still works or there are better tool out there… I had to do this 10-15 years ago in the early days of companies censoring stuff like facebook and hotmail, etc)
While it is possible to implement a solution by creating your own custom proxy or using an in-browser remote desktop session, I wouldn't bother.
At one of my workplaces (big, big company) we were regularly reminded of the company's IT policy. That is, all network logs are collected and analysed and all computers have remote desktop software installed. I believe outside NSW/ACT they don't even have to tell you it's company policy if you're using their hardware.
And just a life tip: If possible, try to get out of the office during your lunch break.
Vnc into your home pc and do all your ozbargaining that way
Can you try something with your search engine at work; when you type 'How to….? What comes up first:
'charge for doing nothing'
'lie to ASIC' or
'charge dead people'
How to block ozbargain comes up?
OP put a good word in for me, I'll give you the login info to you use my VPN.
That is a lot of effort where you could just check your phone. Everyone else does it
Demand a royal commission, outrageous!
Your boss uses ozbargain, and he/she had the IT people block everyone else from ozbargain, so he could snipe all the best bargains for himself before you guys see them.
Amateur. Cache ozbargain and show it an hour later. ??? Profit.
Or to be evil, invalidate the cache of expired/out of stock posts. That click of hope.. extinguished.
Get back to work!
Should be able to pick prices out of the summary and halve them…
Vpn
Obviously the IT team can see what web traffic is high and they aren't dumb and realised that the site is being used at a high rate… I'd say mostly during work hours not break hours as you allude to. Add all the time up each year of time spent not doing work during work hours and it would be a huge amount. Obviously no one is perfect and a company can't expect there to be no time theft, but in this case I assume the time theft would be too high with this site, so they blocked it. If it was my business or company and I saw a high rate, I would block it too. People are employed to work, not to sit around and do their own personal searching.
If your people have better things to do at work than being productive, then the problem is the company, not the people.
People who work for my company have zero restrictions, we're yet to have a case of abuse. Same applies to our progressive and highest performing clients. The ones who struggle woth productivity have a similar mindset outlined in your post.
This applies less to manual labour, given it's a bank, there's a higher chance it's knowledge workers.
Why not just use your phone?
Does your bank use whitelists (default off) or blacklists (default on) for blocking ?
Regardless, I am sure it is some vendor product which provides updated lists.
It is highly possible that there is a (legal) provision to whitelist a website.
Does Google translate trick still work, used to use that at school
https://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&…
Generally no these days. Either it's blocked outright or the proxy is set to spot site translations (while still allowing you to paste test in etc).
You sound like the A200 AMG guy
The equipment is owned by your employer… they can say what it can and cannot be used for.
Just use your phone
What about a usb-wifi dongle and then use the extra wifi network to connect to your phone to browse ozbargain?
Why would they block it?
Same reason they block Whirlpool, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFace, Quora, StackOverflow, LiveJournal, Reddit, Fark, Digg, 4chan, 8chan, HotCopper, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Stormfront, WeChat, webmail…
To be fair, webmail and other chats are usually blocked because they are very difficult to control data leakage. You could upload corporate documents to a personal email account, for example.
There are pretty easy ways (especially in big companies with a half decent proxy) to block just chat components of things, e.g. facebook, without blocking the rest of the website (this might be hard if the company doesn't inspect HTTPS traffic). Honestly if it is the employee's own time, it is a bit restrictive to block social media, etc.
Honestly if it is the employee's own time,
Still their network so their rules.
Obviously someone has gotten into a bit of a tizz over productivity and checked out what the slackers were doing. I don't do personal stuff on work computers because I like my privacy. I'd still consider looking up OzBargain over lunch to be ok.
IT generally don't give a rats about what you do unless they're bored or you trigger an alarm. I've had the occasional call over the years to ask exactly what it was I was doing, generally it's "Oh, we were just curious", but occasionally "knock it off, you're slowing things down", sometimes offering advice or more resources.
@D C: generally you won't be investigated by IT unless they have a request from HR. If they don't do basic QoS to stop a single user slowing down the network then they are doing it wrong :p
@55:
If they don't do basic QoS to stop a single user slowing down the network then they are doing it wrong :p
More like "Did you really mean to send 10,000 documents to the printer?" or "I see you've found RUMBA, it's nice someone doesn't have to type all that into a 3270 emulator now, but can you slow it down a tad?"
generally you won't be investigated by IT unless they have a request from HR
And now they're probably looking at who's trying to get around it. I wonder if that'll come up in OP's performance review.
Maybe the bank's internet admin is Broden! He's just looking to reduce the competition - get in on those deals! heheh
[edit] then I saw OzPete has a similar idea! Nice :)
You should never be doing any net browsing of a personal nature on any work asset, ever. Just use your phone, or bring a cheap $90 china droid tablet to work each day for personal use.
That’s not what internet use policy at my employer (a Big 4 bank) says. Limited personal use is permitted.
You don't do it because it's not allowed, you don't do it because they track what you do and anyone with access can use your history/access maliciously against you - which basically includes anyone above you, any manager or anyone with a friend in IT.
SideSync Mate, SideSync.
How do I install that on a work PC?
can you add ultrasurf to chrome and use that? works at my work
Can you install "Opera" and use the built-in VPN?
If not, regular dumps with your phone.
Which bank do you work for?
Just use your mobile on 4G, using FIREFoX/Pocket (https://getpocket.com/firefox/) - save the web pages to the virtual pocket on the phone.
Then reopen them up on your desktop.
Or email the web pages from your phones 4G to your work friendly email box, reading email isnt browsing the web.
Boycott ANZ
What sort of self respecting adult has this problem? Use your damn phone.
Either OP is lying and he's actually still in school or, like most of the rubbish threads on this site, it's a fallacy.
Remote in to home PC.
Ever since my school blocked Ozbargain I've been meaning to make a mirror site. Done now, and the mirror is available to all. The link is https://ozbargain.bencunningham.tk, enjoy.
Could you please make the sub domain name less obvious or generic?
like https://ob.bencunningham.tk/
or
https://web.bencunningham.tk/
or
https://page.bencunningham.tk/
or
https://list.bencunningham.tk/
I've added all those as aliases, so you can now use:
If there are any more requests for subdomains I'm happy to add them.
The subdomains are pointless.
Block bencunningham.tk, boom, they're all gone.
@D C: I'm not an expert but always works for me to read and write even when usb tray icon and computer icons not available. Fascinating!