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Blocking Instant Messengers?

Posted by Cliff on from the back-to-email-for-ye! dept.

Michael Mattes asks: "I have been looking for a set of ports/subnets to block in order to disable instant messengers behind my firewall. While MSN is easy to block, ICQ is a little more difficult and it seems as though Yahoo Messenger is designed to do everything possible to not be blocked. I have been reading more and more articles showing companies choosing to block these tools. It seems irresponsible of Yahoo to leave, what appears to me, no choice but to block their entire domain in this situation. Any help would be appreciated."

2 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. usefullness? by grammar+nazi · · Score: 3, Offtopic
    Instant messaging isn't all bad in the business workplace. I can count 5 great uses without even thinking about it. The problem is that, currently, people only use them to IM their friends and not use them work related uses.

    What needs to happen is to get a large business software company (read: Microsoft) to integrate IM into their next Office suite. This would be useful and might gain more acceptance for IM from all the PHBs (such as the one who submitted this article). Notice that I said for IM to be integrated with the business/productivity software, not the OS. Business/Productivity (media players, IM) belong in one suite while, memory managers, task schedulers belong in the OS (NOT IM, media players_.

    Some days, 90% of my work email messages could have been accomplished with a few IMs to whomever I'm sending messages to.

    --

    Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
  2. grammatical errors by Sir+Elton+John · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm sorry, Mr. Nazi, but I appear to have located several errors in your grammar.

    The problem is that, currently, people only use them to IM their friends and not use them work related uses.

    If you break the parallel construction into two, you have "people only use them to IM their friends" (fine) and "people not use them work related issues" (nonsense).

    What needs to happen is to get...

    "To get" cannot "happen."

    90% of my work email messages could have been accomplished with a few IMs to whomever I'm sending messages to.

    I think you mean that 90% of the effects of your work email messages could have been accomplished with a few IMs. Furthermore, the sentence ends with a preposition. You want to say, "to whomever to I'm sending messages." That's awkward, so I'd rewrite to avoid the problem entirely.

    I hope this helps. I have found your advice on grammar very useful in the past, and just want to return the favour.

    --
    "I'm a rocket man / Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." - Sir Elton John