SA Internet Usage Forum

[Anonymous User]

Anon for obvious reasons.

My employer uses an internet firewall (you know, "this site is blocked--social networking" or whatever), and I use a personal laptop. While doing some surfing during a lunch break, I had a site that was blocked as pornography (totally not on purpose... I guess it had a bad keyword or something). I know nothing about how this stuff works, so bear with me: what are the chances that they can even see this or that they will be able to tell its my laptop? Also, sorry for being an anal retentive SA.

[Danger Zone]

The records are kept on their server, but the only reason to pull them is if they're looking for a reason to fire you anyway.

Sauce: used to work in a top secret facility that had a similar protocol. If it's good enough for them, certainly no law firm is going to go digging beyond that.

[thesealocust]

My firm filters and reviews records of all computer usage by all employees every day. People regularly get sit down with partners over improper net usage, or even just too much idle surfing during working hours.

I'd watch your back.

[NotMyRealName09]

That's really dependent on your firm's policies. If anyone cares about how much I surf the internet, no one has ever said anything to me about it. Of course, so long as I'm racking up billables (when not internet surfing), I don't think anyone gives a crap. Probably different for support staff who are paid hourly, but for attorneys, we get some leeway because we're actually generating income.

[Anonymous User]

I'm support staff in a 150+ firm: IT doesn't track anyone's content -- they only track bandwith. And if you're going wifi, they can't even track bandwith on that. You could literally watch porn, hypothetically, and have no worries.

[Anonymous User]

I imagine it varies from firm to firm. I worked for a mid-level firm that tracked my internet usage when I was an intern, but when I was an SA at a biglaw firm, associates accessed ATL, WSJ, reddit on the reg.

[rad lulz]

I figured I'm good to go re browsing bc I saw partners looking at reddit and espn and news sites

[dixiecupdrinking]

Sometimes stuff is misclassified in those filters. On the minuscule off chance they were able and cared enough to look at your activity, they'd see that it isn't really porn anyway.

(Note: inapplicable if you were actually looking at porn.)

[NotMyRealName09]

Sometimes stuff is misclassified in those filters. On the minuscule off chance they were able and cared enough to look at your activity, they'd see that it isn't really porn anyway.

(Note: inapplicable if you were actually looking at porn.)

Sometimes the filter will say "This website has been flagged as inappropriate. If you proceed your action will be logged", even for what are seemingly harmless websites. I laugh at their "threat" to log my actions and click "proceed" in defiance of THE MAN.

[ymmv]

Weirdly ATL, Ludo's blog, and at least half a dozen other similar sites are blocked at my place...but not TLS. IDK what the rhyme or reason is.

[Danger Zone]

Weirdly ATL, Ludo's blog, and at least half a dozen other similar sites are blocked at my place...but not TLS. IDK what the rhyme or reason is.

I tried to look at Ludo's blog in a public library, but it was blocked.

Classification? "Sex."

[KidStuddi]

My firm does a yearly presentation on "fun facts about the firm." Silly things mostly, such as how many sheets of paper we ran through in the previous year (we're some arborcidal motherfuckers), how many swimming pools of coffee the cafeteria went through, etc. The relevant fact for this discussion was a list of the top websites accessed by attorneys at the firm. Westlaw and Lexis didn't even crack the top 20. Rest assured you're not the only one who dicks around on the internet at work.

[smallfirmassociate]

I can state with 92% certainty that every single person person in my building right now is surfing the internet. Shit happens, it gets slow, people check out in the early afternoon, etc.

Really, 80% of the work here gets done in under 50% of the business hours. It's even possible that more work is done between 9 and 11:30 a.m. than the rest of the day combined.

[toothbrush]

I can state with 92% certainty that every single person person in my building right now is surfing the internet. Shit happens, it gets slow, people check out in the early afternoon, etc.

Really, 80% of the work here gets done in under 50% of the business hours. It's even possible that more work is done between 9 and 11:30 a.m. than the rest of the day combined.

I think I read a study about this absolutely being the case.

Having some experience working for places that track your internet usage, I wouldn't sweat it, OP. If anything, there is some guy in IT checking whatever is flagged. So long as you weren't looking up "child porn trafficking and how to make homemade bomb" you should be good.

[smallfirmassociate]

So long as you weren't looking up "child porn trafficking and how to make homemade bomb" you should be good.

brb starting thread on lateraling

[Anonymous User]

Necro-ing this thread--sorry.

I use a lot of apps on my phone like Whatsapp and Snapchat, and I didn't realize this at first, but all week my personal iphone has automatically connected to the firm wifi.

Some of the photos and stuff that I've been sent through there are...probably not entirely work appropriate, and I sent and received stuff throughout the week. Just realized today, so of course freaked out and made my iphone not automatically connect to firm wifi.

Can they see what apps I've been using on my personal iphone, and more importantly, can they see what I actually do INSIDE those apps?

[Hipster but Athletic]

No. They track http requests, not the content pulled.

[LRGhost]

Nobody where I'm at cares. I have reddit/gchat/FB open in the background all day.

[dowu]

I figured I'm good to go re browsing bc I saw partners looking at reddit and espn and news sites

If you saw them jump off a bridge would you be good to go?

[LRGhost]

I figured I'm good to go re browsing bc I saw partners looking at reddit and espn and news sites

If you saw them jump off a bridge would you be good to go?

Would my time be written off?

[Anonymous User]

Bill this time to "Practice Development --> Masturbating."