h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You probably knew already that there are lots of tools out there which our employers can use to control what we can browse on the internet in the office. If we try to access a site which they dont approve of, then we might be faced instead with a screen with a scary message on it saying we are breaching the company's policy on internet usage, or somesuch. It may warn us that we could be dismissed from our job through this sort of behaviour.

Then again, they may be a little more insidious about it, and let us view the site, but trigger a little alert somewhere, so that the IT security people know. They may collect data on our browsing habits which the company could use against us if they ever wanted some evidence to help them downsize the organisation.

One tool they will use is a website categorisation service. Your firewall software basically submits the address you are trying to browse to a large database of websites, and by return they will get a categorisation number. If it's the categorisation for, say 'adult' or 'terrorism', then too bad. More interesting are the shades of grey with which the rest of the web is categorised.

Here's an example: a categorisation service called Brightcloud:

http://www.brightcloud.com/tools/change-request-url-categorization.php#catdescription

This database has no less than 82 categories. Lots of pretty dodgy ones are in there (please don't click the example links!): Adult, Hate, Phishing, etc, but did you know there was a whole category dedicated to Real Estate? or Motor Vehicles? I wonder on what grounds those would be singled out for blocking.

h2g2 is category 29: Reference and Research, which sounds pretty safe. It's probably safer than 14 - Social Networking.


Oh, if you want to know what category your favourite site is on this database, then type it here (and fill in the dreaded Captcha):

http://www.brightcloud.com/tools/url-ip-lookup.php

I'll take your word for it, thanking my luck stars that I'm retired from getting spied on by employers.

The firewall at work must use a different, possibly proprietary list. I find it disturbing that "alternative religions" are blocked so some sites on secularism and atheism are blocked, but Christian sites aren't.

There was a big hoo-ha about that in Britain a few years ago. I think a Wiccan took a discrimination case over it, but I can't remember how it all panned out.

Well, considering that we're not supposed to use "government" computers for anything not work related, it's not something I'm going to make an issue of. But I don't have to like it.

Yeah, I can see why you don't! It's slightly different here insofar as I think most government workplaces do let you use their computers for personal reasons when not on "company time", eg. Lunch breaks. But yeah, it is an unfair distinction between "religion" and "alternative religion" - or other philosophical outlooks. A bit arbitrary.

Seems an awefully lot of catogrys, for website... to catogrise them into I mean... over-complicated IMO... I thinky uo only need two, really, one for those about horses, and one for those not about horses... though which catogry workplaces would ban, is, kinda hard to guess I suppose, unless your working at a stable or meat processing plant I guess...

I think they should just use horse sense and devote their energy to getting something useful done.

[Amy P]

Some websites at our company come and go. The e-mail provider I used was very popular 10 years ago, but people are now using facebook etc more these days. According to the IT department, they can only block a certain number of sites at a time, so after a couple of years of my e-mail website being blocked, it is now always open for use.

And h2g2, of course - in fact any English language sites - I am probably the only one using them here, so it's not worth their while blocking them. What I can't do any more is listen to BBC radio over the internet, but that's because they've blocked streaming.

After a couple of years of very active facebooking in the lunch break, that site is now blocked, by the way!