I couldn't believe it.  I've been looking at this site for over a year at work.  Sometimes I eat lunch at my desk and look at the internet.  It was usually this site.  Never heard anthing about it.  Hell, most people at work screw off all day long looking at the net.  Anyway, last week I went to the site and got the big coporate "This site is Verboten!  Your activity has been logged and your manager will be notified!  Further attempts to connect to this site will lead to disciplinary action!"

Jeez, I wish that they would let us know ahead of time which sites they were clamping down on. It ain't like I was looking at porn and wacking like a monkey in my cubicle....!

whatever....

I'd start looking around for other work if you can.

[sarcasm]You mean you get paid to look at AR-15.com when working? WOW I need a job like yours!!![/sarcasm]

No shit! Are you sure you want to work there?

I just need a job.
Got laid off 2 months ago.  Telecommunications melt down.   Telecomm sales engineer.
Lunch hour cool.  Your time, their gear.  Let's face it smokers burn more time than our black rifle cult.

Please be a place I can stop buying from!

Isn't there another address you can type in to get here?  Something like www.businessstuff.com or something like that.  Anyone remember?  Goatboy?  Wonder if that will get you around them.  Or go to Anonymizer but you have to pay for that.

[url]www.jobrelatedstuff.com[/url]

-T.

I think it's:

[url]www.jobrelatedstuff.com[/url]

Ya' beat me Toaster...shouldn't have watched the end of the sci-fi movie

Toaster, you are da Man!

Do what I do, go around the proxy server.  Get into your internet explorer options.  Select connection and make sure you are not using a proxy server to connect.  Allot of the time this will work.

Yeah, I hear ya schapman but I'm pretty sure all that stuff is locked out.  But that's not really the point.  If they don't want me surfin there, fine.  It's their computer.  But when I see guys next to me lookin at car stuff or softball stuff on the web all day, I kinda feel like "what's the deal man?"  Why ar15.com?  What's the red flag?

No matter how you get there, Ar15.com sends back info on port 9999.  Therefore, they can tell that you've been there.  My log at work has thousands of 9999's.  [:D]  

Well, if your company is going to bother blocking websites, they likely aren't going to allow outgoing connections on port 80 (what http typically uses...) from every workstation so this probably won't work.  

You can try one of the public "anonymizer" services out there, but the well known ones are likely blocked as well.  However, if you have broadband at home with a decent upload speed, you can install your own - do a search for Triangle Boy.  Install it on your home machine, you then point your browser at work to your home machine, which in turn makes the connections to the destination site and sends the data to your work machine.   The only connections your company sees will be to your home PC, which is also done over https so they won't be able to read the data.  If someone is really looking, they may get suspicious when they see all the https connections going to a single address, but they can't really prove anything.

Rocko

Fu---su recently did the same thing noticed it changed Fri to Mon. AR15, Ammoman and anything ovbiously gun related in name blocked, however Falfiles still open Dans, Orion7, anything armory,ordinance,arms etc blocked cars golf softball even some porn Ive seen guys lookin at but no gun websites can be allowed !!

"          Network Communications, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACCESS DENIED
You have attempted to access an address that
is forbidden to users within the FNC network.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have a valid business requirement for accessing this location, please forward
the URL, and your business requirement to
                                                     "

You're not alone man, the city I work for also filters AR15.com.  I can go to the anarchist sites, get the recipes for making bombs, but can't check the postings here.  I gotta do that on my own time. Bummer.

Where I work, they just recently started blocking AR15.com.  My boss doesn't care if we surf while on break or not on the clock as long as we keep it clean.  Too bad my boss doesn't work in the Data Processing department.  Apparently, they've decided that AR15.com isn't work related.  DANG THEM!

USPC40

-------------------------------------------------
[b][blue]NRA Life Member[/blue][/b] - [url]www.nra.org[/url]
[b][blue]GOA Life Member[/blue][/b] - [url]www.gunowners.org[/url]
[b][blue]SAF Supporter[/blue][/b] - [url]www.saf.org[/url]
[b][blue]SAS Supporter[/blue][/b] - [url]www.sas-aim.org[/url]

[img]www.ar15.com/members/albums/USPC40/alabamaflag.gif[/img]

My employer must be the exception

I see the guys and gals in the office looking at porn and gun related web sites all the time.

LoL one of them sent me a nice mpeg of a group of nude female skydivers free falling.
For some reason those guys really have a thing for japanese porn

now that was a definate cheap thrill
[bounce][bounce]

that shadow link is funny.
I used to use safeweb.com before they shut down the service. I always wondered if they could see what I was looking at.

I was banned from an airgun sight. How absurd is that?

ONE WORD,LAPTOP.

they didnt block the sight at work, but I have recieved nasty e-mails from system administrator and my boss (he is really cool about it) said it had been mentioned to him and maybe I should cool it at work for a while. I guess some of the office geeks got busted downloading massive amount of porn so the company is cracking down on "non industrial related" web sights.

[:)>]

ROTFLMAO!!! Goatboy,  [b]UDAMAN!!!!!![/b]

jesterdog, I understand your frustration.  I've been relieved of my internet priveleges more than once for browsing this site.  You're right, I've got people sitting within 10 feet of me that screw off more than they work, and when they do work - they screw up more than they do right.  It doesn't seem to matter though.

Why don't you go to your supervisor and ask if the IT department can set up specific times when the priveleges are allowed?  That's what our IT guy did.  I'm allowed on before work, at 9:00 break, over lunch, at 2:00 break, and after work.  It's pretty cool setup really - keeps me "on task" [b]like I should be[/b] during working hours, and allows me surf when it's appropriate.

[i]Oh, I'm also allowed on anytime my boss isn't in his office - 'cause he's had the same password on his PC for 2 years..[/i]    [:D]

Well... As a Network Engineer, I have a few thoughts on this subject. First nothing you do on the internet is private. NOTHING. Second, anything you do on my network I can see, regardless. Its called sniffing, and I can decode your data to its actual payload in the blink of an eye. Third, Its called work for a reason. Though I'm sure many of the comments here are somewhat sarcastic, if your company has taken steps to filter internet traffic,(and has a written internet use policy), take the hint and avoid the internet as a whole unless it is business related. Along with the filtering is a monitoring program to see where you go and how much time you spend there. I have seen more than a few employees "released" where I work (Fortune 100 company) due to "unauthorized use of the internet". I love to surf too, and obviously this is one of my "choices"... but I significantly limit where I go at work because of one reason....


I need my Job!

[8D]

Due to the lowest of low vermin, lawyers, workplaces are responsible for what the employees look at on the internet. So you go are looking at porn occasionally at work and harrass someone, the company you work for could be found partially responsible for not addressing the issue beforehand -- or even for facilitating it.

Alot of companies sell URL listings for "objectionable" or "nonwork" related sites because it's impossible to sift through everything everyone looks at and have the business judge itself what's good and bad. Those lists are always very, very inaccurate. About 80% of what people go to doesn't even appear on the lists. More than likely ar15.com was added by one of those list makers and your company had no part in deciding it was objectionable.

Blame the lawyers... your company is just trying to protect itself and stay in business. Unfortunately disagreeing with the list's decision is difficult because taking the time to complain that ar15.com shouldn't be blocked probably puts too much of a spotlight on your surfing habits.

My personal favorite is when the small hosting companies get flagged for the content of one of the sub-sites and then everyone on that gets the same content type. So the subsite that sells bikinis gets "Adult, Objectionable Content" as does the grandma who sells her needle-point patterns on the web. When neither of them was really all that bad.

(edited to fix the board trying to interpret something as an object...)

My work did the same thing about a month ago except the screen that comes up says "This is a site deemed offensive to this company.  Administration will be notified"  I have noticed that it is not just gun sites.  For example yahoo mail (or any other web mail site) gets the same message.  I actually have to work now.

Takque is correct.  For the most part, no company is going to take the time to manually block specific sites/urls.  They'll buy some sort of web filtering package, part of the service is receiving updates to the list of blocked updates.  I work in the "internet nazi" group of a largish company, and this is exactly what we do.  Usually the product will have broad categories that the administrators can choose to block.  

Last week I switched back to the "normal" proxy to test something (a couple of us have unrestricted access so we can, uh, investigate the contact of blocked sites that people request be unblocked), forgot I had switched and went here.  Sure enough, I was blocked as well.  It's been awhile since I had used the normal proxy, but I don't think it was blocked last time I tried it - chances are, ar15.com just got added to the "Weapons" category of a bunch of filtering products.

I can't speak for any other place, but once a site gets added, it is usually difficult to get it off of our blocked list.  It requires approval of upper management, and since the list of exceptions added is pretty short, it would likely be noticed if we added "extra" stuff to the exception list.  However, the truth is that most people really don't pay attention to this stuff.  Managers are sent a weekly report of their employees internet activity, but it is up to them to take any action on it, and 95% of them probably don't even look at it.  HR requests a list of the "top 10" offenders weekly.  While people have been fired for internet related stuff, in all the cases I can think of it, the internet use was just an excuse to fire them.  Seems to be pretty hard to get fired in our company - you need to really screw up or clearly violate one of our policies.  Our internet usage policy is work-related use only (sure, it is your time during lunch and off hours, but it is still our resources), which of course is pretty much violated by everyone, so it serves as a convenient excuse when people seem to be scared to terminate someone just because of incompetency.  However, the fact that the information is there if anyone wants it (even though it is rarely looked at) keeps most employee's internet surfing in line.  The funniest was the guy who wanted us to revoke his access as he couldn't control himself...

(cont - damn 3500 char limit)

As far as the sites doing virtual hosting being blocked (i.e., www.pr0n0.com and www.bakinggoods.com being hosted on the same machine)... it depends on the product you were using.  We used to use Raptor, which could only block by IP address, so we would often get that there.  It was a real "treat" when one of our customers' sites would periodically get blocked because their hosting company was doing this.  However, we have since switched to Websense, which is pretty neat.  No only can you choose to block/unblock by domain, FQN, etc., you can actually unblock individual URLs on a site, while leaving the rest of the site blocked.

As far as sniffing is concerned...  Good luck if someone is using https :), which virtually all of the anonymizers do.   Of course, they'll be able to see lots of hits to the machine doing the "anonymizing" which will look suspicious, but they won't be able to read the data as it is sent via https and they won't be able to see what sites you are really accessing.  That's one of the reasons that the otherwise useful language translations sites are blocked.  In addition to translating stuff you type in, they can also translate URLs you enter, which pretty much works just like an anonymizer, just using plain http.

But yeah, legal reasons and our sue happy society are why most of these things are in place.  While alot of the stuff that is blocked often wouldn't be a problem, it would simply take too much time and effort to review and process every unblock request we got - I know it would almost be a full time position at my company.  So, if it does get blocked for whatever reason, and it is not work related, it isn't getting opened up...

Rocko

The thing that pissses me off are the water cooler guys who yak for hours and no one berates them, but I send a few personal e-mails or check my Hotmail account and they get all bothered.

To shed some light on the POP3 mail server thing- like Yahoo, hotmail, etc., Your company is worried you may import a file the internal E-Mail servers will not see (and filter), and in so doing perhaps a virus/Trojan into the internal domain. They are doing the right thing, as the current network security challenge is quite significant.
While I know many view these issues as reductions in "freedoms", they are usually not based on that principal. The company needs to protect itself from hacking and external malice in order to stay in business. Its not about who is doing what, as much as how can we manage this vulnerability and protect our systems and functionality. Try to understand that what impacts the company's bottom line, might also impact yours!

[8D]

Just to recap, if the connection is https: there is no way to see what/where you've been?

This site as well as just about all other gun sites were banned about 2 years ago. The reason given was definitely content related. (the term used is "Hate Site")  Not guns, but the constant (at the time) racial/ sex topics, and the "Who I'm gonna shoot"  SHTF armchair commandos. This started because of a single complaint from a summer secretarial temp worker who was emailed a picture from ak47.net. The system admins then banned just about every gun site they could find. At least they haven't started on the hunting sites yet. For thought,  policy at the local community college on violating internet restrictions is immediate termination without an appeal process. I have seen it used three times to date,  all on porn cases. One guy was a senior department head.  

No, they can still see where you are going, but wouldn't be able to sniff the data. In order to disguise your actual destination you would need to use some sort of anonymizer service.  Basically, you go to the webpage of the anonymizer service (ex. https://www.anonymizer.com), enter the URL you wish to view on their site (ex. http://www.ar15.com), and the anonymizer service retrieves and serves you the data from your intended destination.  From your company's perspective, the only site you visited was www.anonymizer.com.  Basically, it acts very similar to any proxy server.  

However, most of the well known anonymizer sites are blocked as well.  This is where Triangle Boy that I mentioned earlier had come into play.  You go to the Triangle Boy server instead of directly to SafeWeb's site, the TB server sends your request to the SafeWeb site, and SafeWeb sends the data directly back to you, but spoofed so that it appears to have come from the TB server.  They can't possibly block all the TB servers, and if you had a broadband connection you can set up your own at home.  Unfortunately, I originally forgot that TB was specifically associated with Safeweb whose anoynmizer service went tits up late last year.  I haven't been keeping up with this sort of stuff lately, so perhaps there is something out there to replace it - I'm not sure.

In addition to the proxy-like services of an anonymizer, the data is also usually sent via https.  So, in addition to not knowing your real destination, they can't sniff the data.  However, the hits to the anonymizer service will still show.   Any a couple hundred hits a day to the same site via https (and no hits elsewhere) does look suspicious.  However, they really can't prove anything or tell for sure where you went.

Rocko

Thanks for the clarification...I was an avid SafeWeb user before they went under, and my understanding was that it was perfectly safe.

Depends on what you mean by "where you are going"... if you use https they can sniff the IP address the packets are going to but not the domain name associated with it or the path requested.  If the server was set up to require a host header, you could make it so when you hit the server by typing the domain name you get the site, but if you type in the IP you could get something completely different, and "work related" heh.