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Blocking MSN Messenger?
Tekno2k3 asks: "As a sysadmin for a financial company, I have been tasked with removing Instant Messaging from our network. The only service that is being difficult is MSN Messenger. It uses many methods to get around being blocked. These include using port 80, using it's own DNS servers for lookup, using MANY logon servers, and using reverse DNS lookup. Has anyone had any success in blocking Messenger?"
Are you fucking serious? Really. Have you ever had a job before? You can't go around firing people for petty reasons like instant messaging. Before you know it you have people striking and everyone hates you.
Hacker Media
The real question here is why block MSN? What about people who use instant messaging for legitimate business purposes?? People chat on telephones, and I don't see many offices rushing to ban them. Fire unproductive people, and let the rest of us communicate.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Why not map that name to a dud address too?
I assume you ownzor the DNS that client PCs will use!
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
Blame Enron and other such fiasco's.
Financial institution's have to record and hold all elctronic communications for years now. The specific number of years eludes me atm.
If you think some E-mails people send are incriminating, imagine what IM's traded around an office would expose.
It's much easier to stop the people from using IM services than to try to capture/record/log/preserve it all. At least for financial institutions which theoretically could face billion dollar lawsuits.
I call BS. Instant messaging is a useful tool that has many legitimate applications in the workplace, and in any case should be acceptable to use during breaks just like a cell phone, etc. Banning IM programs just means they don't trust the employees, and it's analogous to a high school where students aren't allowed to leave the building during lunch break. That's petty.
Repeal the DMCA!
Install Linux, MSN Messenger will go away rather quickly :)
I think it would be easier to lock down a linux box to prevent installations of gaim, Gabber, etc than it would be to putz around with your firewalls trying to kill MSN Messenger.
If you allow www, you can't stop all chats. You can pretend, but you can't do it. Heck, email can be used for such as well. How about making internet access a priviledge that only those have that need. Though im can be used to boost productivity too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I did this with my old company. They had a very strict firewall policy, and to get a port open, you had to get through higer management.
Geez. Try baking the sysadmin some cookies, give him a case of Guiness/Bawlz, or take the poor guy to lunch.
Banning instant messaging might be counter productive if the aim is to increase the amount of work done. (It is bad for staff morale.) However, it is management's responsibility to manage productivity. If the workplace culture (or the nature of the work) is such that people find excuses to "bunk off" all of the time, then banning instant messaging as a time waster may be necessary. Besides, there are other (much stronger) reasons why instant messaging might be banned. For example:
The real point is that SEC says we HAVE to block it or log it via a server (not the logging that users initiate) or we get shut down.
Instead of going the technical approach, have you ever considered proposing the idea of docking pay, and/or firing? Most people need their jobs more than they need instant messaging. Also, why are you letting your users install programs on the company's computers? Do you have everyone run as admin?
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Shoot Steve Gibson. That guy is an idiot.
Yes, there are others, but do we really think that the Average Joe IM-Abuser-At-Work will know of these programs?
Yes, within a week of whatever he was using being blocked. It only takes one person to figure it out, and word will spread.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I like sysadmins that run Windows shops and think that since they are the only ones that know what they set the Administrator password to, their machines can't be modified. They're funny.
Anyone who thinks I'm going to work on Windows without cygwin, JSPager, xemacs, etc, has another think coming. Sysadmins are *support* personnel. They're there to facilitate work getting done. They aren't supervisors of said personnel, and controlling behavior is certainly not in their baliwick unless expressly handed down by management.
That said, I've had grand old times with IT folks who don't feel the need to try to be assholes.
Finally, I don't use any form of instant messaging at work, because I find email and phone to be more convenient. But I *have* done software development before with another person on the other end of an ICQ connection, and if that's the most convenient way to do work, IT should definitely not be trying to be a pain in the ass about it.
May we never see th
Ding Ding Ding! Correct, IT is there to HELP. Same exact thing goes with contractors, they are there to help the full time employees. As a contractor in IT departments, I can tell you that companies, contractors and IT departments are often very broken in how they try to get stuff done.
:).
NOT EVERYTHING IS A TECHNICAL ISSUE. Policy is as important as technology. Lazy management makes management problems (lack of control and accountability) into technical problems because they are too weak to deal with the issues on their own and want IT to do it for them.
Also, FlashDesktops is far better than JSPager
something like "Hello xxxx, here are your last few messenger messages:
Something like that would make me very happy - Because I would have instant feedback about whether or not my attempts to circumvent stupid network usage policies had succeeded, and if so, did they work anonymously.
Mind you, I don't care about vising playboy.com from work - I never understood the point of porn at work anyway, since every work environment I've ever encountered made killing kittens all but impossible while there. But corporate IT departments have a bad habit of blocking valid, work-related traffic that they don't see the need for. "We notice you've visited alphaworks.ibm.com over fifty times in the last two weeks, so we've decided to block it to boost your productivity and ''help'' you not waste company resources.".
Incidentally, I see the parent article's theme as very similar - Too many people use IM, so block it. This ignores the fact that many people using it may well have a valid, work-related reason for doing so. Personally I've used IM exactly three times (from home, not work, though), and each of those times I used it for the sole purpose of chatting with a fellow coder about something that, in another context, would count as work related (yeah, call me a geek, I actually code for fun).