internet usage

[d_unbeliever]

Does viewing video from site like you-tube involve temporarily saving the video in the viewer's pc? Does video streaming use up internet usage based on downloaded gigabytes of data? Our school give each office a certain allowable size of data that can be downloaded from the internet per month. Its their one way of monitoring internet use abuse. Our netad informed us that our office went beyond with our monthly alloted internet usage. I said to my boss that maybe my officemates were downloading installers or movies. We are also suspecting viewing you-tube is the culprit. I even suggested that we let the netad trace who the user is. But they say they will just inform them first. So what should we avoid aside from downloading movies, installer etc?

[Abbadon]

The first thing you need to do is to have each employee sign a document where they understand that any data or communication could be monitored and that the equipment is property of the company, blah, blah, blah, and that they are bound to respect company policies, blah, blah, blah, or face suspension, or dismissal.

Of course, you need to create the policy first. it would be funny to watch how your company is sued if you start abusing the employees before having some sort of protection first.

P.S.

I am not playing devil's suit here, just sharing what I have been subject in the past.

[usually_quiet]

The answer to your question is "yes". Anything that you look at on the internet has to be download to the pc in some fashion, be it text or video, and here is a lot of streaming video content on all kinds of websites these days. That's one of the reasons I will not have dial up much longer. Several of my favorite sites have started streaming video on some pages that I used to be able to visit, but no longer can on account of the time required to load them.

[Krispy Kritter]

Anything you view on the internet has to be downloaded in order for you to see it, regardless of whether or not it is saved on the PC.

[RickA]

Yes, whatever you view or access gets stored on the computer in some fashion. Depending on the size that it has been set to and how often it gets cleared the internet browser cache should retain alot of what gets viewed. For instance pictures, youtube movies, whatever. I've saved movies viewed that way from flash type web based players which do not let you click-save a movie directly. Watch the movie then go find it in the cache and save it elsewhere.

From a legal aspect point of view. No, I am not a lawyer but have worked with many (hundreds) over the past decade. I've video'ed more depositions (thousands) than a large number of attournies will ever take. If the company owns the computers, pays for the internet connection and is paying you to be working... not playing around on the 'net. You don't have much defense to stand on for not working. After all you are being paid to do work for your employer. Not putz about killing time, chatting with online friends or other non-work related stuff on their equipment while on the clock. Not saying that you d_unbeliever personally are doing this.

Claiming employee ignorance is no defense. Don't job search, don't email out your resume through work computers to other companies, don't even work on your resume on a company computer. Personal emails, everything on the work computer is your employers' property and they have the right to view / monitor it whenever they like and do not have to tell you about it. It can come back to bite you very hard.

If an employee gets terminated for not working when they should be and tries to sue the company as Abbadon suggested. They are gonna look very silly when the lawyers bring out reams of personal emails, IM's, websites the employee has been too that they should not. Was sending out / working on resumes for other jobs while there - shows they were unhappy and getting ready to leave anyway. Or they construct logs of the hours of time that person was surfing the web when they should have been working. Each NIC card has it's own ID. All files are time / date stamped. You are in a place large enough for a netad - I reckon backups are routine. It is not gonna be a pretty sight for that disgruntled ex-employee. That is not going to give any new employer much confidence to hire them in the future. Fair warning.

I can just see the companies' lawyer questioning the disgruntled ex-employee on the witness stand...
Lawyer: "So, Mr. Smith you claim to have been hard at work on the Anderson project all afternoon on the 25th?"
ex-employee: "Yes, sir. Hard at work, did not stop."
Lawyer: "Was not on the computer at all chatting away with friends about non-work related matters instead?"
ex-employee: "Oh, no sir. Not me."
Lawyer: "How then do you rectify these 23 personal emails and a 3 1/2 hour long instant messaging conversation to your friends? Which are all time / date stamped and have been printed up in binder form for the jury to read."

Yeah, that is gonna look real good to the judge and jury.

Cheers,
Rick

[d_unbeliever]

we have rules and regulations for internet use and abuse. violations may result to suspension or termination. the boss said that it is better to give them first a warning. the boss already called a meeting and i think my officemates will listen. they are afraid to get fired.
i adviced them not to download installers and movies. Even viewing video streaming should not be allowed. If they like to do that, they could do it at home or buy a prepaid account. Internet use for research purposes is allowed though since they need it for their teaching jobs.

[AlanHK]

a lot of streaming video content on all kinds of websites these days. That's one of the reasons I will not have dial up much longer. Several of my favorite sites have started streaming video on some pages that I used to be able to visit, but no longer can on account of the time required to load them.

If these videos are ads, probably Flash, and you don't want to see them it's easy to install an ad and/or Flash blocker so you can read the rest of the page without downloading the junk.

[d_unbeliever]

i think the new firefox has ad blocker and things like that. do you know how to activate those? maybe it will also cut down their bandwidth usage.

[Abbadon]

Your company needs to consider a NAT solution or Firewall with blocking and logging capabilites; Sonic Wall comes to mind, this way traffic is monitored and filtered before it reaches the employees computers.

Some Linux distributions come already configured with all of the above, but you would need a machine to make it slave/traffic cop and become a guru for deployment and maintenance.

[AlanHK]

i think the new firefox has ad blocker and things like that. do you know how to activate those? maybe it will also cut down their bandwidth usage.

Really, this shouldn't be done on the individual PCs, but on the router. Don't you have an IT person who can set this up properly?

In the meantime, Firefox has plenty of tools.
Look at the Help -- Add-ons
it has a link to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
and from there you can select useful things like Adblock plus.

You can search for things by keyword -- eg type "Flash" and find a Flash killer and Flash blocker, which will stop most videos from running.

These things are fairly easy to get around if the user wants to, but they can't claim they did it innocently.

[usually_quiet]

a lot of streaming video content on all kinds of websites these days. That's one of the reasons I will not have dial up much longer. Several of my favorite sites have started streaming video on some pages that I used to be able to visit, but no longer can on account of the time required to load them.

If these videos are ads, probably Flash, and you don't want to see them it's easy to install an ad and/or Flash blocker so you can read the rest of the page without downloading the junk.

That's a good suggestion, and it may help the OP, but unfortunately what causes problems for me isn't ads. It's definitely content related to the website. Examples would be news stories, or video cooking lessons for recipes that I want to try. Also, there doesn't appear to be a text version (or a link to one) on the page anymore, so I'd like to see them if I could. If all goes well, I'll have DSL in a few days and be able to do that.