Help me keep my job.

August 3, 2006 4:00 AM

IT people and sysadmins, hope me: I need to keep my interweb addiction under (some form of) control at work. What I'm thinking is that you might be able to give me some cautionary tales/practical information on tracking net usage that will scare me enough so that I'm motivated to think twice before whiling away my working day on Mefi et al.

I don't just mean "I once knew someone who got fired for writing slash on work time", that sort of thing. I've heard those stories already. I want to know nuts and bolts, because I'm not hugely familiar with the technical side of a large network. Here's the deal: I'm working in a fairly low pressure job in a academic setting. I have an office to myself, and way too much time where I'm just hanging out on my own, and dealing with the occasional person who wanders by and needs to give me some paperwork. Quiet time at work + nobody watching = waaaay too much time online. I need to use the internet, obviously, for various parts of my job, but I'm having a helluva time not spending hours-- and I mean hours-- every day reading the web. It doesn't help that the workflow is reasonable enough that I'm mostly keeping up (but not totally, and one day, I fear, I'll find myself in a bad position).

This is what I'm hoping for: I don't know a whole lot about the IT side of things. I want somebody out there to confirm that yes, the tech staff can track everything I do and everywhere I go online, and could, if they had to, come up with some kind of horrific printout that would detail it all, my wandering through Livejournal, my postings on various boards, etc. Because I need to really understand that this is possible, and that if fact somebody is/could be watching. Fill me with the fear of getting fired, please. Because that's what I think it'll take. My bank account and self-esteem will thank you.

(Oh, and please no framing this a a genuine "addiction" question please-- I don't need 12 step, I just need to focus on what I'm doing at work, dull as it may be.)

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (17 comments total)

I've run the web proxying infrastructure at large organizations before.

Where I worked, every web page any user went to was logged. All those logs went into a database.

We got a daily report of potentially bad behavior (based on third-party categorization) and would give people warnings if they showed up on the list. Multiple offenses would result in terminations.

Beyond the automated reports, we would give up a daily summary to any manager who asked for it, with HR's approval. This would show every URL you visited, by time, size of transaction, and category. Furthermore, the report would provide an estimate of "time spent" on the web page. I don't remember how this worked, other than that I thought it gave pretty unfair estimates to the user.
posted by sohcahtoa at 4:49 AM on August 3, 2006

Oh, and we did 1) cut people off from all outside web sites and 2) terminate for repeated violations of our HR policy.
posted by sohcahtoa at 4:50 AM on August 3, 2006

Umm, if you're working in a fairly low pressure academic type setting then isn't it quite possible they don't care?

It's entirely possible someone could be watching, but it's also possible no one cares as long as you get your work done.
posted by sien at 5:11 AM on August 3, 2006

I don't want to be your enabler, but internet usage policies exist as legal cover, not as an employee directive. If someone sues the employer, vicariously, for creating a hostile work environment, they can say that Johnny Porno acted outside the scope of his employment because he was specifically warned not to engage in such behavior.

If you're getting your work done, they are not going to waste time going after you for looking at blogs. Just watch for questionable-looking URLs.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 5:19 AM on August 3, 2006

There are quite a few products out there that do this.. The ones I have seen are:

Surf Control Can be linked with active directory easily to provide per user stats based on category, surf time, with automated reports.

DansGuardian A free OSS filter that rides on top of Squid that with some hacking can list every single url a user hits.

There are quite a few others that probably do a more comprehensive job than these two products, however these are the two I have used.
posted by SirStan at 5:20 AM on August 3, 2006 [1 favorite]

AS you've noted, larger issue is that you're screwing off and not getting done the work you need to do. ( I am, by the by, the last person in all Known Space to be judgemental on this subject,)

So once various sysadmins fill you on on how every last thing you do online at work is easy to track and report (and what did you expect, really?) if you're runnng Windows XP, try Temptation Blocker. Good program for avoiding online, well, temptation.
posted by mojohand at 5:22 AM on August 3, 2006

I second Temptation Blocker...the only problem is if you need to use the web as part of your job (like I do), then you can't really block your web browser AND get your work done. If that's the case, you can add the sites you most frequently visit to goof off on to your HOSTS file to make it so you can't mindlessly visit them.
posted by tastybrains at 5:32 AM on August 3, 2006

Doesn't your workplace have procedures like "three verbal warnings then three written warnings then the boot"?

I have heard that it has been demonstrated that out of 8 hours of paid work, the best any manager can expect is about 5. The rest of the time is spent on toilet breaks, watercooler conversations, daydreaming, personal phone calls, web surfing, making coffee, cleaning fingernails, and so on.

Realistic managers will realise that these are just standard overheads that they cannot eliminate. These kinds of stress relief also eliminate burnout, and chances are, whatever on earth you are doing, others are doing the same, as long as you keep it within reasonable limits.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:35 AM on August 3, 2006

Temptation Blocker doesn't work on my system; "Runtime Error 21" :(
posted by inigo2 at 6:18 AM on August 3, 2006

The larger issue, as mentioned, is that you're not getting your work done. If you had everything done and then surfed the web while you waited for people to drop by, that would be a different story.

I had this problem this past year because it was more fun to surf the web than to actually write my assignments and papers for university, and because I had an extremely tedious job with internet access and no accountability. This was my solution: Procrastination Hack. As they note, it's useful for compulsive web surfers. I found it to work surprisingly well. It requires a timer, and I found this one to work well.

It's not that you have to cut the web off completely. People do need breaks, and trying to go without them for too long can be counter-productive. You just need to regulate your breaks so that you're not looking at MeFi "for just a minute" and then realising an hour later that you haven't gotten any work done.
posted by heatherann at 6:23 AM on August 3, 2006 [2 favorites]

Lets say you don't quit the hours of web surfing. A bad outcome would be that you get fired, however at least you would probably get your shit together at that point. A worse outcome would be that you don't get fired and suffer years of low self-esteem caused by the knowledge that you're not really making much of a contribution to society. Still worse: you move on to a better job and find that your ability to concentrate on work has suffered long-term impairment. Even worse yet: the passive behaviour you've learned at work bleeds in to the rest of your life to the point where you can't get motivated to do anything anymore.

Don't be me. Knock it on the head while it's still relatively easy. Find something else to do, it's generally not that hard to get some extra responsibilities. If you must screw off at least do something active like writing or reading something substantial.
posted by teleskiving at 6:32 AM on August 3, 2006

First, yes, if any employer wants to it's easy for them to know exactly what you're up to online and for how long, and in great detail - down to each keystroke, if they're so inclined. Whether they care to or can be bothered to diligently and regularly review that information is the question. That, of course, depends on the employer and the culture of your place of work.

In my limited experience of a few employers in tech fields, it's usual for quite a lot of slack to be granted to employees using the net for activities unrelated to work, despite plenty of monitoring in place. People have been fired for it, however. Those that were fall into three categories:

* They were looking at porn.
* They spent almost all day, every day, surfing and/or in chat and barely got any work done.
* The management had some other reason to want to get rid of them and it was easier and less messy to fire them for an unambiguous breach of a stated policy regarding net use than it was for the real reason.

That last reason is by far the most frequent, in my experience. Hence the bottom line is that if you are a productive and valued employee in the eyes of the management, taking some time for a little innocuous surfing during work hours might not be a big deal. You're giving them an easy way to be rid of you for other reasons, however, should they decide they want to, justifiably or otherwise.
posted by normy at 7:19 AM on August 3, 2006

Normy's three pillars are true. Someone I met is an IT admin and unfortunately, we are more strict if we like you than if you don't. That is if you don't give us trouble, aren't the guy demanding it be done yesterday and aren't constantly asking us questions that 5 seconds of Google would have revealed -- well sometimes even admins miss the bad web sites. That said the company I am at is pretty liberal and everyone there is management wihtin the office. Unless we want to get rid of you we don't care -- as people at this level know that looking at porn at work is wrong but if they want to read Slate for an hour in the morning and perhaps jack around on their Porsche message board in the afternoon that is fine. Afterall they're here for 12 hours a day.

Someone I met also worked at a larger organization that used labor as a commodity. Among the rank and file, it was fairly easy to replace and find people who wouldn't push the rules ... so they were much more strict. I knew a guy that worked at a small private college and he said that everything was monitored but no one cared as long as there were no complaints. After all nearly anything can be classified as academic research.
posted by geoff. at 9:55 AM on August 3, 2006

you can add the sites you most frequently visit to goof off on to your HOSTS file to make it so you can't mindlessly visit them

I would actually like to know how to do this, myself. (Googling hasn't helped much, or searching on my machine-- sorry for the cluelessness.) My machine here is running Windows XP. I'd be grateful. Ta.
posted by jokeefe at 11:10 AM on August 3, 2006

jokeefe: use Notepad to edit the HOSTS file (found in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc) and add a line like this:

127.0.0.1 ask.metafilter.com

127.0.0.1 is the localhost address. You'll get an "Unable to connect" message when the draw of AskMe (or whatever site you want to prevent your future self from visiting) becomes too great.
posted by harkin banks at 12:34 PM on August 3, 2006 [3 favorites]

Another vote for Temptation Blocker.

I second Temptation Blocker...the only problem is if you need to use the web as part of your job (like I do), then you can't really block your web browser AND get your work done.

I've got two web browsers on my PC, Internet Explorer and Firefox. I use Internet Explorer for work and Firefox for fun. And I've been using Temptation Blocker to block Firefox during work hours. So far it's been working great.
posted by russilwvong at 5:37 PM on August 3, 2006

Normy's three pillars are true.

Actually, there are only 2 pillars. This one: "* They spent almost all day, every day, surfing and/or in chat and barely got any work done" is about the work not getting done, and not about the reason why it is not getting done. Unless you are worried about the appropriateness of the websites you are surfing, as long as you are meeting your responsibilities you won't get fired for this without a warning first. By the way, this comment is being written on a university computer while I wait for a student to finish an exam.
posted by Crotalus at 5:51 PM on August 3, 2006