talkmagic.co.uk

Hi

I only have a Company laptop and do not have my own computer or internet access at home.

I cannot get on Youtube in my lunch hour / morning nap break as the website - along with many others - has been blocked.

Is there a way around this without either getting broadband or buying a new laptop with dongle?

Thanks

TZ

Unlikely. It won't be blocked at your laptop but somewhere in your company's network infrastructure - unless they are clueless, but they're probably not.

Sounds like your only option is home access (unless you can bribe someone in your IT dept.).

Charles Calthrop wrote:Unlikely. It won't be blocked at your laptop but somewhere in your company's network infrastructure - unless they are clueless, but they're probably not.

Sounds like your only option is home access (unless you can bribe someone in your IT dept.).

Charles is right, I think. What is most likely is that there is a web filter on your network and either only specific websites are allowed or certain websites are banned.

What you could do is ask the IT dept if they can allow access during lunch breaks, but it depends what the work web access policy is too.

i have the same problem. better not try to buck the system, because in this day and age it can be looked on as gross misconduct.

As i work in the it industry,i can ay that the simplest thing is to get another lap top.

a sneaky little trick we found when I was at uni was to view the page through the Google Webpage Language Translator thingamy.

I don't really know how it worked but it did.

Something just occurred to me...
When my company tried to ban Facebook they originally banned just the DNS name. This meant that if you found the IP address for the website and typed it into your browser you could get onto it.

Even if that hole is open you need to bear in mind that this suggestion, Lady of Mystery's suggestion and any other attempt you can think of to try and bypass company policy will open you up to disciplinaries. Probably not worth it since there *will* be logs that show what you've been up to.

There are plenty of proxy addresses you can go through - you can find quite a few from a simple search.

I really wouldn't recommend it though, as it could easily get you fired.

They're probably passing web traffic through a local filtering web proxy rather than filtering domains at the firewall. If that's the case, they've told your browser to use the proxy. Un-tell it and see if they've had the wit and intelligence to also tell the firewall to only accept outgoing HTTP requests from the proxy.

Of course, I'll have to shoot and eat you now. Bang goes that diet!

No question it is not the computer but at the server or something else that is blocking it as per company policy to block certain sites.

The "block" list is usually quite broad at first and depending on what you do for a living, they may allow you to request that it is unblocked. For example, schools initially banned youtube in our area...however teachers did find that there was some educational content in some things if you used it appropriately....so with a request for "truly educational/research" it was added to the allow list for teachers accounts on the system.

As a benefit we also now have personal use access again as well....so depending on what you do for a living, try to find some educational resources that are on youtube...and send them in as example links to the IT with your request to have it added to the "allow list"....anything without examples is likely to be passed off as not neccasary.

A little trick I found recently is to search in google "cache:" and then the web address.

Example:
cache:http://www.youtube.com/

The only problem with this is that it is the google cache so it isn't updated that often so things like forums and facebook aren't too good. Best way though is to use a proxy although this can get you in trouble in some work places and in some places most proxies are blocked (like my school for example).

EDIT: Just tried watching some videos on youtube via the above technique and it just said the videos were unavailable so it doesn't work too well.

Thank you to everyone that took the time to reply.

It's a bit of a pain not being able to view Youtube as nearly everyone posts links to the Site.

Think I will have to get my own access at home with an additional laptop - I bet it won't be long before they put a block on talkmagic!!.

Thanks again

TZ

TargetZero wrote: bet it won't be long before they put a block on talkmagic!!.

Thanks againTZ

Thats what happened to me...convinced them of the value of you tube (research and educational source) and they agreed. two weeks later and TM was blocked...no way to convince them of a nrrd for that one unfortunately!

My advice would be to try and find proxy sites. When I was in high school, we used them all the time to get onto youtube. If you go to a library and access a computer there, there are sites you can sign up on that will email you lists of proxy sites that are available and you can just go through them till you find one that works

Thanks Flaw07

Depending on the type of site that you wish to view you do have multiple options.

For any static site, i.e. you're looking for data/stories/etc, then a simple google cache should work just fine as there is no dynamic transmission required.

For dynamic sites (youtube and facebook both fall into this category) then you have one possible solution and one possible loop hole depending on the intellect on your site blocker.

a) A solution is, as some have said, to proxy to the site or even visit it using a terminal although this is not recommend because it *could* be seen as foul play and earn you a disciplinary.

b) Now this depends on the site blocker however I have found that a lot of them do block common sites like www.facebook.com and www.youtube.com. However, and luckily, these blockers were written in the US =D and therefore only block the US site. I have been lucky enough to simply type http://uk.youtube.com and get straight there because the blocker will not register that as the same as the US site. Hope that makes sense and that you don't get in trouble should you try it.