Me vs. My Content Filter

Many a time have there been office workers who arrive at their workplace in the bleary hours of the morning, fire up their coffee makers, poke blindly at their CPUs until it hits the power button either by sheer luck or accident, opened Internet Explorer and gone, “WTF? When did my company get a content filter?”

In the unfortunate real world of cubicles, phone extensions and annoying colleagues, this is a very real issue faced by many a web surfer. You can link them all the ‘Surfing The Internet Makes people More Productive’ articles that you want, but companies, big and small are cracking down on staff members who enjoy the odd visit to social media sites, online comic sites, blogs, and so on and so forth. How, then, will the everyday office minion find entertainment on a Monday morning while their brain is booting up? What will the trainees and interns do while their bosses are out for meetings?

Never fear, the internet is full of those who believe in the freedom of speech and surfing, and there hasn’t been a cyberwall put up that people haven’t found a way around. The answer is, in theory, ridiculously simple: a proxy that re-routes your surfing via a website that looks nice and safe to your company’s content filter.

In practice, there are 2 questions that you first need to ask:
1. What is your company’s policy on surfing the net?
2. How good is your company’s content filter?

Before deciding to get around the company’s content filter, one should always understand the company’s policy on surfing the internet – Will your browsing history be logged? What will the company do in cases of breach of policy? Have there been cases in which they have taken action against a staff member? Always know what you’re getting into before you’re knee deep in it.

Understanding what you’re up against is also essential for your convenience. There are content filters (like mine) that actively work to identify proxy URLs and ban them, and then there are filters that just ban the basics that the company has installed for the looks of it. In the case of the latter, it’s very simple to get around it, just choose a proxy from a proxy list like TechFAQ and you’ll be surfing in 0.0001 seconds.

In the case of the former, it’s a little bit more complicated. The content filter will update its list of proxy URLs daily. Every morning, you’ll have to find a new URL that works. However, after the first couple of days, you’ll notice that there are URLs that are more likely to work. For example, in the case of Me vs My Content Filter, I’ve noticed that URLs with ‘proxy’ in it or ending in .cc are less likely to work, while URLs ending in .info are far more likely to work. Innocuous URLs that sound like http://www.howtoworkharder.info or http://www.homeworkforschool.info are also preferable because my server logs my browsing history. Some proxy websites also have daily emails listing their latest proxy URLs that can be delivered for your convenience to your inbox.

You’ll notice that it’s a bit annoying to keep using the proxy, and in some cases, it’s difficult to access password-protected websites like GMail using a proxy – and for good reason. Always be careful when surfing by proxy and make sure to never do so when using internet banking because a proxy isn’t always secure and allows the transfer of unencrypted data, meaning that your password could be leaked. I mean, there has to be a reason that your company instituted a content filter.

With this information, it should be easier for you to face up to that big bully of an IT Policy.