Regarding Anonymity

When you cause someone to be fired, for ethics/policy violation, because they believed your BS, you could very easily end up in court being sued for their termination because of your contributing to their actions.

I am starting to gain back a lot of the users I lost when Live 365 upgraded their system and closed some loopholes for login-free and AYST-free listening. There is a way to get it to work through the anonymity services, but it requires more technical profffiency, and knowing how to get the direct-connect URL you need to plug in through the web proxy services. But people are doing it, and are lisetening again.

Which doesn't change anything - you tell people that listening can't be detected - a lie, that their boss won't know - a lie, and you will get people fired - truth, and sooner or later one of them will come after you for the lies.

Not if they use phpProxy sites. The site obfuscates the URL, so that the logs will show a bunch of jibberish imn the URL. And I see NOTHING unethical about listening to Internet radio at work, as long as you are getting your work done.

The logs will show the original URL requested by the webbrowser, because the webbrowser itself logs.

Except if you signed an agreement which forbids doing so.

Personally I would just publish a company policy forbidding the use of

*any* proxy. Then all I would have to do is prove that a proxy had been used, not what it was used for. Proving what it was used for would, of course, be a bonus.

Also companies *pay* for their bandwidth, they don't get it for free. Someone listening to the internet radio (or more especially *everyone* listening to it) could increase the charges the company has to pay for internet connectivity, or cause problems for business related usage of the internet. Since it is generally not permitted *and* can cost the company in real hard cash I would say that it *is* unethical.

X-No-Archive: Yes

However, if you can get to your computer using Internet Desktop Connection, you can then get to what you want that way. Remember, that IDC is basically a "dumb terminal" to any Windows Vista or XP machine. Your computer becomes nothing more than a keyboard, mouse, screen, and speakers for the remote machine you are accessing. Since your home PC, and your ISP is handling the traffic, it is harder to figure out what you are doing. Since you are using nothing more than a "dumb terminal", it would not violate any policies against using proxies.

Well, providing an open proxy on my machine for the purpose of allowing circumvention of filtering systems is NOT illegal. As I have said, if it were, Tor would have been shut down long ago. You would not see these lists of open proxies all over the net, either. Running my own Tor entry proxy, to allow people, primarily from work or school computers, there are locked down against installation of additional software, to allow the Tor network to be used, without installing the software, is LEGAL.

Again, it won't hide what they are doing or that they are breaking company policy or laws, it only hides the content of the connection, but we don't need to know what they are doing, only that they are connected to a non-business site - it's that simple.

Oh, and getting work done means nothing - if the company policy is against it, then it IS UNETHICAL to listen at work - that's a violation of COMPANY POLICY AND THAT MEANS IT'S UNETHICAL.

Wrong.

The firewall will show the connection to your home PC, that's a violation of company policy, you're fired, and you can then bring legal claim against Chilly for giving you false information that prompted your firing.

Chilly8 wrote, On 10/01/08 22:23:

Irrelevant. Using any form of remote desktop or remote terminal for anything other that company business should also be in the published policy.

Whether or not you are allowed to run a proxy or tor is also irrelevant. I was saying why it is not ethical for people to listen to Internet Radio at work is not ethical (unless the employer allows it). Whether they do it though a proxy and whether they get caught has nothing to do with whether it is ethical and whether the company would be within its rights to discipline staff for doing it.

Also note that whatever technical means are used to disguise the access it does not prevent the boss from walking up behind an employee and seeing that they have headphones plugged in to the computer.

Now explain to me how it can be ethical for an employee to increase the costs of the company by doing something the company states is not allowed. Not whether your service works, not whether what you are doing is legal, but whether what the *employee* is doing is ethical when it is against a clearly stated policy and costs the company money.

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Headphones don't have to be plugged into the computer. One could plug in one of these SoundFeeder FM transmitters and keep it out of sight, and then listen through any ordinary cheatp FM headphone radio. You will appear to be listening to one of the local radio stations.

True, but it would violate policies on accessing remote machines without authorization.

You wouldn't even need that policy though, just a simple "No personal use of bandwidth" would be an all-inclusive policy.

Rather then worrying about what traffic *is*, a network admin simply has to prove what the traffic *isn't*

Namely, is it legitimate business? No? Then it's in violation.

It doesn't matter if it's streaming media, remote access to a home PC, online banking, a proxy, or whatever else.

Depending on the position of the employee, there are good odds that they don't have any legitimate reason to be transferring any sort of encrypted data, so the simple fact that the data is encrypted is sufficient to know it's in violation of company policy.

Upon noticing unidentified traffic, the net admin would contact HR, who would contact the appropriate management and then query the user, and if the user doesn't have a valid business need explanation, they would be placed on probation or terminated as the need arises.

Chilly8 wrote, On 11/01/08 00:35:

ANSWER THE QUESTION! How is it ethical to do something BANNED by the company which costs the money! This is at least the third time I have asked you.

As to your suggesting, it still does not help. Boss sees headphones on and asks to see the radio. If headphones are too small to see it does not help because boss asks question and user has problems hearing because of radio giving the game away.

Again, if it's on the company network it will be seen as traffic to a non-business partner site.

That alone wouldn't suffice. You also have to make sure all employees took notice of the policy. A common way to achieve that is having them sign the policy.

cu

59cobalt

It depends on the jurisdiction what is required.

True. However, I'd suspect that the above applies to most jurisdictions in Europe and North America.

cu

59cobalt