Question from a Computer Illiterate
 

Something I've often wondered and thought I'd ask here. Let's just suppose that I worked at a small business and let's just say that occasionally I get the urge to check out some of the posts on the Titty Board while at work. Management says that they occasionally check everyone's internet records to make sure they haven't been doing anything inappropriate (I'm not certain they actually do, though).

If I wanted to make sure that my computer was as "clean" as possible in the event of a company search, what would some of you more experienced guys recommend I do? Just how "clean" can I get it? They folks here aren't terribly computer savvy.

Thanks for any input.

Best way is not to try. It's not worth losing your job.

Even if you cleared away every trace on your computer, the fact you acessed it over thier Internet connection means they likely would have logs (kept on a different computer you don't have access to) anyway.

I agree with spectre.

Obviously, if I was going out to a bunch of different porn websites, the addresses would be an easy clue to anyone looking at where I've been. However, I don't think that the address for TFP would attract the attention that other site addresses might.

But I guess that when I pull up a thread with photos hosted elsewhere, that address is also stored in the system so even though I'm not going to the porn site directly, they could still see the location of the photos I'm looking at. Is that correct or I am off base?

Besides, this job's not that great anyway!

Yeah thats basically the right idea, honestly if you guys have a net admin / IT guys who are worth anything its not gonna be worth trying to get around it. Sure you might be able to slip through the cracks, but on the otherhand you might not.

You could proxy your surfing through a ssh connection offsite, which would eliminate the admins being able to see what you are doing. Except for the fact that a 8 hour long ssh connection may raise some flags, and you may not have access to a machine to ssh to, (or know how to do this, as you say you are a novice), this probably isn't an option. However, if you are really interested in getting your TFP fix from work, that's probably the best way to go about it.

i agree w/ spectre. come home and feast all you want

I don't understand why people surf porn at work. I know I could get away with it (I know that we do not do any sort of proxing or logging) and I can keep mozilla from writing anything to the disk... I sometimes surf when I'm bored, but why do people seem to think it's OK to view porn at work?

It isn't much different than idly chatting at the water cooler... It is an efficient time waster.

Yep, I've spent the past year doing little other than twiddling my thumbs and surfing the net at work. We've been sold and the office is being shut down. I'm just on retainer untill they're sure that they don't need me anymore (1 month to go).

Now since I'm IT and from the hardware side, I KNOW that our network guy knows everything that we all do. We've had some good laughs at what some people look at. No one here is bothering to police access now because we just don't care, but don't believe for a second that your admin. doesn't know what you're up to. If he/she really doesn't, it's because they don't care enough to check, not because they can't.

mtsgsd is absolutely correct. I'm a system administrator and I can tell exactly who goes where, when and for how long. Unless you have control of the logs, work isn't a good place to surf the titty board!

I agree with bainatl. I'm the admin where I work. Yes, I could check the logs to see where everyone is going, but I'm just not that interested. We don't have a policy about it so I don't worry about it.

i surf from the office, I just don't go to the titty board portion from the office computer. I VNC into the home computer and look at the NSFW links that way, so any trace is at my house, not here.

semi-rookie asks: what is VNC?

you would have to ask yourself whether it is worth risking your job.. it is VERY easy to monitor network traffic even without going to your computer.

a quick check in some logs and you could be pinned down to every url you went to, so I would just leave it alone till you are at home.

If it's a big deal you could surf through Mega Proxy and go undetected they'd see it as www.megaproxy.com nothing else.

http://www.megaproxy.com/

billcollins and spectre got the essentials:
you're logged, and don't risk your job.

Where I work, we have an explicit "internet
usage is NOT monitored" policy. However, I'm
aware that people may look at network logs
for other reasons (load analysis, e.g.) and I don't
want to call attention to myself in that case.

So in TFP, I've picked the option to show images
as URL's, not as in-line, so they aren't fetched
automatically.

Then, if the URL is something like

http://innocuous-name.org/123.jpg

I go ahead and take a look. And if it's

http://panty-sniffing-perverts.net/cum-up-the-nose.jpg

I don't.

Know the policy where you work and act
accordingly. But keep re-reading spectre's
reply.

That megaproxy.com is an interesting idea. Does anyone else have any experience with it or know of its effectiveness?