Chicitysports was recently blocked by my company

[Decatur Staley]

Now... I am new to this company and I'm assuming that since we're primarily based in Texas that it wasn't due to all kinds of new employees that happen to be Chicago fans... Which means I was on this site enough to trigger it to be blocked.

Should I be concerned? Any IT guys out there want to explain how this works?

 

[X]

Now... I am new to this company and I'm assuming that since we're primarily based in Texas that it wasn't due to all kinds of new employees that happen to be Chicago fans... Which means I was on this site enough to trigger it to be blocked.

Should I be concerned? Any IT guys out there want to explain how this works?

I'm not an IT guy - but it could be several things. Could just be that you were on the site enough for them to block it...could be nsfw images in sigs/avatars...could be an automated thing...Crys/Nvan will probably have better info -- but I made sure I had sigs/avatars turned off before i checked ccs @ work.

 

[Ares]

How locked down is your company net? Can you browse other forums? FB? Twitter?

If they are not locked down tight but blocked CCS, that might be an a-hole IT guys noticing alot of traffic, checked it out and shut it down.

Or if the net is locked down pretty tight already, they might just have a policy of shutting off access to anything non-work related and they may monitor outgoing web traffic for anything social media, message boards, chat sites, fantasy football, etc.

 

[Decatur Staley]

I can access Facebook and other MBs... I think it was someone in IT.

I just bring my iPad to work now.

:nervous:

 

[Tony Danza]

You need to make friends with the IT boys. That has been very beneficial to me anyway...

 

[BNB]

It was a Cowboys fan that didn't want you to have the joy of reading about the Bears while at work.

 

[Ares]

I can access Facebook and other MBs... I think it was someone in IT.

I just bring my iPad to work now.

:nervous:

Yup, I used to work for TransUnion and they clamp down pretty tight on web traffic, so I knew quite a few people who had to do just that.

They even blocked Pandora for a while, not sure what the reasoning behind that was.

 

[Les Grossman]

Yeah, my company just filter/banned CCS as a gambling site. LOL

 

[ShiftyDevil]

Yup, I used to work for TransUnion and they clamp down pretty tight on web traffic, so I knew quite a few people who had to do just that.

They even blocked Pandora for a while, not sure what the reasoning behind that was.

Bandwidth usage.

 

[nvanprooyen]

It's impossible to tell without knowing exactly how things are setup at your company, but if I had to guess...it was probably an automated process. Those solutions can't know what every single website is and have rules about access. So what they do is progressively check based on user behavior. Vistiting the site probably placed CCS in a "validation queue", the application went out and classified the site based on crawling it through some algorithm and then placed it in the blocked list for future users. Even if it was a manual check... the IT guys probably really don't give a ****, unless they have a personal axe to grind with you / you were doing something illegal / or your behavior was causing a serious security issue (read, making their jobs harder). None of these apply, so its just some dude fucking off at work a little (like every other employee there probably). And I doubt it was a manual check anyways.

Disclaimer - This area of expertise isn't exactly my wheelhouse, but I have a general idea of how these things generally work from BSing with co-workers.

tl;dr - get back to work you fucking slacker

 

[nvanprooyen]

Yeah, my company just filter/banned CCS as a gambling site. LOL

Ya, this is the kind of thing I was talking about from an automation perspective. Did it work for awhile and then got blocked eventually?

 

[nvanprooyen]

A more specific example, something like this:

https://www.barracuda.com/products/webfilter/features


URL by Category

Administrators can create policies that control user access to websites using 95 content categories including pornography, violence, hacking, sports, news, dating, shopping, chat and others.


1) You visit the site
2) Site gets placed in a content validation queue
3) Software crawls site, finds keywords that match the category restriction policy (Chicago Bears, Blackhawks, whatever)
4) CCS gets added to the block list
5) You can't get to it anymore

OR

1) You visit the site
2) CCS gets placed into a validation queue
3) An administrator opens up the queue of sites to check and sees an entry for CCS, realizes it's a sports site and adds it to the block list
4) Not one **** was given today
5) Administrator talks about Magic The Gathering with the other people in his office for 2 hours

Generally anyways.

 

[DewsSox79]

https://www.kproxy.com try that.

 

[Les Grossman]

Ya, this is the kind of thing I was talking about from an automation perspective. Did it work for awhile and then got blocked eventually?

Yup. It always worked and then my work finally switched to Windows 7 (which may just be a coincidence) and then CCS was filtered as gambling.

 

[NCChiFan]

Try this... Keep logging onto your own companies site, maybe they will auto block that for you as well.

 

[Decatur Staley]

Try this... Keep logging onto your own companies site, maybe they will auto block that for you as well.

Haha... That would be nice.