Why does this workaround for my workplace internet restriction work?

[jdomaha]

So my day job killed access to the internet earlier this month and it has everyone all freaked out and annoyed.

Anytime you open IE and go anywhere but the authorized sites, you're supposed to get an "Access Denied" page.

After a little fiddling, however, I found out that you can click on a link in an Outlook Express e-mail and it'll bring up IE and you'll get to that page. You cannot copy the link and paste it in IE, it'll just give you the access denied page. You can't click on any of the links on that page, or you'll get the access denied page.

For someone who was really bored, you could theoretically go to the sitemap page of whatever site you wanted to read and get all the links, email them to yourself and read to your heart's content.

So why does the link in Outlook work and not the browser itself? Is it fetching a cached copy?

 

[heavyt]

no it sounds like they are using group policy to restrict your access to the internet. if you download a portable version of firefox to your computer does it still work?

 

[joevis]

Beats me, but I'm enjoying the libelous content of your blog.

Calling your competitors pedophiles = money

 

[CallOnMe]

 

[LotsOfZeros]

What happens when you click links on the page (the first page you gained access to)? Does it them give you the intended URL page or do you then get access denied pages?

Maybe it's a quirky internal proxy server.

When you go to Tools >> Internet Options >> Connections >> LAN Settings, what do you see?

 

[nvanprooyen]

SSH tunneling FTW. It's super easy.

http://www.devdaily.com/unix/edu/putty-ssh-tunnel-firefox-socks-proxy/index.shtml

 

[jdomaha]

no it sounds like they are using group policy to restrict your access to the internet. if you download a portable version of firefox to your computer does it still work?

Well, they used to do that.

Then we brought in Firefox on thumb drives and used that to get past it.

So they disabled thumb drives and killed the ability to install anything, but then we could access the internet through IE all of a sudden.

That lasted for a year and a half or so until people got stupid and kept downloading poker/porn/etc - along with all the malware that comes with it. The company that handles the tech support responded to a record number of problems a month or two ago so the powers that be finally decided to severely limit access.

Right now it's account limited - some people who need access to do their jobs have access, but everyone else is SOL.

 

[jdomaha]

What happens when you click links on the page (the first page you gained access to)? Does it them give you the intended URL page or do you then get access denied pages?

Maybe it's a quirky internal proxy server.

When you go to Tools >> Internet Options >> Connections >> LAN Settings, what do you see?

I'm not at all sure. Everyone's quite paranoid about the whole thing. It's easy for the employer to request server logs from the tech company and see exactly where you've been. To be honest I was kind of surprised to see the pages come up, so I didn't mess with it. I'll check out what the settings are tomorrow.

It's not that I'm trying to circumvent things, it's just that I'm very curious as to why clicking the link in Outlook works the way it does.

 

[jdomaha]

Beats me, but I'm enjoying the libelous content of your blog.

Calling your competitors pedophiles = money

Landscaping in Omaha is serious business.

And like my high school newspaper mentor said, "If you're not libelous, you're not trying!"

 

[KaniGT5]

+1 for a half ass proxy server.

on another note, sounds like the IT guy at your day job has no fucking clue what he is doing.

 

[LotsOfZeros]

It's easy for the employer to request server logs from the tech company

Yeah, these 'server logs' are coming from their proxy server.

Try this:
Go into your control panel and in the address bar type a web address and see what happens.

 

[jryan21]

It depends on the way they restricted internet access. I've seen corporate environments use group/account level policies to hide menu items (like control panel), but not disable them, so if you know keyboard shortcuts, you can get around.

Also, they would commonly make changes to the proxy settings in "Internet Options" because they believe since IE is integrated with Explorer, it will affect things system-wide, but the actual network device settings go untouched (don't want to mess around with LAN connectivity and have 100s of extra support calls).

A possible reason things work in Outlook Express is that the HTML content is running through port 443 https:// instead of 80, and they only have port 80 blocked/going through the proxy.

 

[Fatbat]

You lost me at "day job"...

 

[vinnythejinny]

its coz your outlook is bypassing the restrictions, prolly via a proxy. Use the same proxy for IE and it will work.

Just another tip that might help. If your gmail/yahoomail is blocked, you can bypass common block by using https://gmail.google.com

good luck. i was the only one using gmail in my company untill some network guy found out lol. who cares i left after a month anyway lol

 

[Mike]

Best "About Us" picture. EVER.

This one: (yes virginia, it's hotlinked)

 

[waffles]

i use glype to get around my workplace proxy. works well