
Ask HN: What websites does your employer block? - WhiteBuffalo
My employer (a large Tech company with about 10k employees) recently blocked every sports related website along with YouTube, Netflix, and every video and music streaming service possible (Spotify, Pandora, Apple music, etc.), citing bandwidth issues as the reason. There was a vague statement claiming they will review this policy in the future. I can understand blocking Netflix, but blocking music streaming services and sports news websites seems ridiculous for a technology company.<p>What websites does your employer block? Should an employer block any websites?
======
Nadya
My company attempted to block YouTube and Twitch for similar reasons (some
employees were streaming e-sports tournaments during work/lunch time; I was
one of them).

It lasted less than a week. When they realized productivity plummeted to the
deepest, darkest depths of the metaphorical ocean and the company was better
off having happy, productive employees free to do what they want than
miserable employees who hardly get any work done.

There's also a generic filter, mostly used to block porn sites. I've noticed
it blocks anything with "hack" in the URL which is a problem on occasion
("shack" gets blocked an issue when its part of a client's domain name like
"Shackel"). I almost never hit it except on false-positives so it doesn't
really bother me any. I think I can at least agree people shouldn't be
browsing porn at work.

AFAIK the only logs kept are who hit the generic filter, what they were trying
to access, and when. General browsing isn't logged or I'd probably be in more
trouble for browsing HN so much.

------
vanattab
I work for the feds they pretty much block the whole Internet. And on about
90% of the sites they do let through they pop up a message saying "this site
is not trusted" which does nothing but condition users to ignore the warnings
even on sites that they shouldn't.

------
herbst
None. Afaik there is not even a log.

Your case really sounds more than ridiculous.

