Websense is Evil

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Dad was in the hospital. Was sitting up all night at Chattanooga Memorial Hospital with the laptop. Very kindly, they have free wifi for the patients and guests.

Unfortunately, was unable to connect to TGO to while away the hours, because they have Websense firewall.

Go to TGO, and it says, "Limited Usage Site... Use quota if available"

Click for more info, "Your Websense policy blocks this page at all times. Reason: Weapons."

So according to Websense, a gun site is just as bad as XXX porn or East European hacker sites.

Spent a couple of bleary wee-hours in the waiting room researching this horrible 1984 style firewall. It is somewhat difficult because Websense blocks many sites related to itself.

On many pages related to bypassing Websense, Websense blocks the sites, "For your safety, this page is blocked." It ain't for my safety! It is to keep me from learning how to break out of the cage!

Websense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well, the priests and nuns who run Memorial can run whatever firewall they like on their wifi, of course. I could just as easily read an ancient Readers Digest thru the night.

But the Websense seems relatively bulletproof, and it looks like it would be really easy to install on an entire ISP or an entire nation. Scary.

[Sandman]

I work at a hospital (here now) with websense. I can obviously get on TGO, but not facebook. Oh well...better that way.

[TGO David]

Websense is configurable, therefore the organizations using it can choose to block weapons related sites or not. I work for a company that has, in its complete lack of common sense, blocked firearms related sites (even sporting arms, hunting related, etc.) yet allows unfettered access to sites that discuss and advocate illegal drug use, neo-nazism, Black Panthers and other hate groups, as well as the purchase and sale of sex toys.

As I am one of two people tasked with, among other things, managing our Websense installation and as I do possess common sense, I inquired as to why the company is blocking places like Cabelas, Bass Pro, Remington, Winchester, etc. given that we are here in the south and people do hunt for sport and sustenance. The answer? "Guns are bad, m'kay?"

So suffice it to say that it's not Websense that is evil... it's just the morons that decide which policies to apply to Websense are evil. Oh, wait... there's a parallel with firearms hiding in that statement.

[Il Duce]

How to Get Past Websense and Surfcontrol Blockers - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com

proxys are awesome

[TGO David]

We (at my job) block most proxies as well.

[laktrash]

I was lucky TGO wasn't blocked at work but the majority of the other "weapons" site were along with facebook and porn

[lowbud]

We (at my job) block most proxies as well.

Best way around this is to remote into the home machine and surf from there. You can also setup a proxy at home. So many ways around the likes of websense..

[TGO David]

Best way around this is to remote into the home machine and surf from there. You can also setup a proxy at home. So many ways around the likes of websense..

True enough. The threat of unemployment has thus far kept me from being very creative. I just use my aircard and my personal laptop during lunch, that way I'm on my time using my resources. They can't exactly police that unless they want me to start going completely off-campus for lunch, which would put them in a hurt since we're short-staffed as is.

[vontar]

Sounds like where I work, they use websense as well and they monitor it.

With the knowledge that everything surfed is tracked and logged I dare not chance upsetting the people in charge.

They don't want us to bring our personal laptops in either, so I stick to my Droid for those times I really need to check something.

I know they have checked work machine several times, and I keep it spotless. I know of at least 2 people I worked with that have been fired for having stuff on their machines that did not belong. Believe it or not, one was fired for setting up Portable Firefox.

[lowbud]

True enough. The threat of unemployment has thus far kept me from being very creative. I just use my aircard and my personal laptop during lunch, that way I'm on my time using my resources. They can't exactly police that unless they want me to start going completely off-campus for lunch, which would put them in a hurt since we're short-staffed as is.

I hear ya.. Actually I can't believe some employers haven't pulled internet all together. It's the most counter productive thing ever invented for the workplace. What always amazed me is walking down the isle of a cube farm and taking note of who's actually working. bet ya can count the working workers on one hand.

But hey.. job security, right?

[vontar]

I hear ya.. Actually I can't believe some employers haven't pulled internet all together. It's the most counter productive thing ever invented for the workplace. What always amazed me is walking down the isle of a cube farm and taking note of who's actually working. bet ya can count the working workers on one hand.

But hey.. job security, right?

Funny, were I work in Tech support. I have 2 PCs on my desk. One is our Clients and one is the company I work for.

My internet is disabled on the clients computer by request of the company that I work for. So that there is no chance I can do bad surfing on their clients computer. Not just me but for everything that supports that client.

So when the clients call and ask if the internet is down. I have to get creative for trouble shooting the issue. RDP into servers, the clients machines, test accounts with internet access.

However the computer my company supplies me with has internet access with websense. I hardly see it with the minor surfing I do, pretty much because I don't want risk setting it off. I have a time or to, then I let my supervisor know.

Once, I was doing a search for a problem that I knew how to fix but I needed to check a detail. A website directed me to a site that loaded some naked pictures. I think this was before we got the websense but I knew monitoring was in place. I turned it off. I walked to my supervisors off. I told her some very questionable material had accidental loaded on my machine while researching a fix and I wanted her to know if anything got came about it.

She told me, with me, she felt she had nothing to worry about and thanked me for letting her know. I never hard anything else about it.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Websense is configurable, therefore the organizations using it can choose to block weapons related sites or not. I work for a company that has, in its complete lack of common sense, blocked firearms related sites (even sporting arms, hunting related, etc.) yet allows unfettered access to sites that discuss and advocate illegal drug use, neo-nazism, Black Panthers and other hate groups, as well as the purchase and sale of sex toys.

As I am one of two people tasked with, among other things, managing our Websense installation and as I do possess common sense, I inquired as to why the company is blocking places like Cabelas, Bass Pro, Remington, Winchester, etc. given that we are here in the south and people do hunt for sport and sustenance. The answer? "Guns are bad, m'kay?"

So suffice it to say that it's not Websense that is evil... it's just the morons that decide which policies to apply to Websense are evil. Oh, wait... there's a parallel with firearms hiding in that statement.

Those are good points, David

I recognize that owners of private networks can lock up their networks any way desired. But it seems offensive that a company would big-brother information firewall a public-accessible network. No visitors smoking in the hospital makes more sense than no visitors reading about guns.

I should have checked to see if the Brady Center or other anti-gun sites are blocked. In fairness the anti-gun sites should also be blocked, because otherwise a hospital visitor might sign on to an anti-gun site and post a pro-gun forum message. Wouldn't that be horrible, accidentally letting a visitor speak positively about guns from the hospital net portal?

As a catholic hospital, wonder if they block information about abortion, euthanasia, priest sexual abuse, or perhaps Baptists?

I have a home static IP, but would be reluctant to set up a proxy port into the home computers.

Also have a domain on one of the big web services providers, kept as a neglected toy. It is unix apache, setup so the customer can't just do anything he wants to his server VM. Which is fine by me. I'd rather them have it locked down so it can't be compromised. The only thing I've wanted to do that this cramped my style-- It seems basically impossible to install an SVN revision control system on the site unless the provider decides to add that to one of the available canned packages customers can install.

Am woefully ignorant of all things server. Wonder if it would be possible to add an https proxy to that domain just by writing a hidden web page running a cgi-bin script or whatever? Without having to install executable code?

Edited October 4, 2010 by Lester Weevils