

Y Combinator is prohibited - vnuk

I've been reading HN for couple of months now and I'm really happy with the news that people subit etc. 
Also, I'm working in my own startup for around two years now and doing just fine :)<p>Recently I've sent a link to YCombinator's HN to all my friends and one of them (who works in multinational bank) replied to me with this:<p>IWSS Security Event
Access to the URL http://news.ycombinator.com/news is currently restricted because it belongs to the Company Prohibited Sites category group.
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CalmQuiet
Perhaps the bank wishes to avoid brain-drain... and hopes to prevent its IT
people from discovering more enlightened employment opportunities in more open
parts of the world economy? :/

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trickjarrett
I expect it was the use of 'Hacker' in the page content and meta tags.

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bvttf
That's what happened here, it was even blocked as category: hacking. Only
lasted about a week, though. Comforting in a way that they had a human check.

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andr
Try <http://hackerne.ws/> or <http://icombinator.net/> or use your phone.

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fiaz
didn't know those existed...are those owned/operated by PG?

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csomar
icombinator.net no. the other one is not mentioning it..

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ahpeeyem
Big companies often use an off the shelf content filtering setup whose support
contract includes blocked site lists with regular updates. I used to work for
a bank that used one called SurfControl (who apparently have been acquired by
WebSense: <http://www.websense.com/site/scwelcome/index.html>).

So every now and then at work I would return to a site I'd been visiting
regularly and it would be blocked after a new URL database update had come
through. Sometimes it would eventually be unblocked again some time after
that.

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chacha102
My School has blockers unfourtunately. Blocked me from reading a government
website about suicide for an english report.

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ntoll
I got bitten by this when I worked at an Investment Bank in London. It made me
realise how much I valued my freedom to choose what and where I browse. Sad
really, as IT staff in big mega-corps could probably do with an injection of
entrepreneurial spirit.

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Brushfire
Its likely an automated/keyword filter, or a list they bought from someone
else.

Turning off all filtering invites phishing, spyware, malware into your
network, so thats not a great solution. My bet is that 9 times out of 10, if
you email IT and they check it out, they can get it whitelisted.

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JeremyChase
You should also be aware that many large companies have tools to see what you
have surfed, and for how often you do so.

If you can ssh out, just forward a port to a Squid proxy on a machine at home
or use one of the low cost VPS providers. Then setup your browser to use said
proxy on the local port.

You can forward ports on Windows using Putty, and of course you can use
Linux/OS X to do this easily.

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wallflower
You can always browse off the mobile network using an iPhone (like I
frequently do)

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jrg_uk
This message is just from Trend Micro's Interscan Web Security Suite product
(that's the "IWSS" bit. It's typically hooked into existing web proxies via
ICAP.)

Trend have an "interesting" track-record of site categorisation, but it's
possible that the URL is correctly categorised and the operators of the IWSS
have chosen to block that category.

Then again, the people that Trend employ to visit websites probably just saw
the name "Hacker news" and filed it as 'hacking'/bad stuff. They probably
don't spend too much time on any individual web site.

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thelonecabbage
perhaps the staggering volume of content to keep up with on HN is proving a
distraction to their workers.

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brentr
Shouldn't these people be working when they are at work?

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RandomPersona
If you're honestly asking this question, I think you've missed the point of a
lot of what's said here on HN.

You might even want to pick up a copy of "The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen.

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brentr
I understand well what is said here. With that said, if you are at work, you
do your work. Also, you should not be using corporate bandwith to catch up on
your own reading agenda. Do that at home.

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SamReidHughes_
What he should and shouldn't do is for him and his employer to decide, not
you.

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brentr
You don't find it ironic that you are now telling me what I should and should
not do?

