[goatman]

My new job is in a large corporation and sadly, it's all Windows. (No chance of connecting my Mac -- very security conscious of protecting their information.) The network has filters on it that prevent us from going to any blog and from going to any website (that I can find so far) that does webmail. They only want you to get email at your official corporation address, and they don't want you surfing around.

I would love to occasionally check my Hotmail account and a few blogs like Metafilter. Any suggestions for legal workarounds? Are there any webmail sites that might work that I could have my Hotmail forward to?

Thanks very much.

[larkost]

If the corporate policy is that you can't get outside mail, then trying to get around that by any means is a bad idea.

[ghporter]

Circumventing the corporate network limitations is a good way to wind up fired. If they're serious about network security, good for them. These limitations are built into their network because blog sites, webmail, and particularly Hotmail are nice juicy ways to get a Windows network infected really fast. And realistically speaking, they are paying you to work, not surf, and it is their network and their computer.

Have you actually talked to anyone (in a position to do anything about it-not just a coworker) about connectivity while on your lunch break?

[goatman]

I see your points and they are well taken. Being in the advertising department, keeping familiar with blog activity is staying current with the zeitgeist -- but it's difficult to convey that point to the IT folks who control the overall network. And about Hotmail, I don't know why it invites viruses any more that getting email at the corporate address.

[CaptainHaddock]

If you have a cell phone and a Mac laptop, you could circumvent your company's network altogether and use the phone as a modem.

[ghporter]

If you have a real need to stay in touch with market-oriented blogs, don't talk to your IT guys about it, talk to your BOSS about it. Get the suits to agree that it's important for your work for you to have this access, and ask them to direct IT to make it happen. Build your request in terms managers and executives understand, not in any form of computer-technical language. "If I can keep my finger on the pulse of the industry, particularly by seeing what "Blogger Bob" and "Barb the Blogger" say about what Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Waterstein are doing for their clients, I can be more effective in setting up campaigns for our own clients." Know your audience, and aim directly at what THEY think is important. (PSR&W actually WAS a real ad agency in the '70s, by the way.)

Hotmail invites viruses for a number of reasons. First, MS appears to make absolutely NO effort to validate that a user is a "real" user, not some sort of bot. Second, they're horribly slow at disciplining users and/or deleting their accounts when those users have been found to be spammers and/or virus distributors. Third, Hotmail appears to have no effective INTERNAL virus detection capability, let alone any protection. Finally it seems that Hotmail accounts are pretty popular "false return addresses" on spam and virus mails from other sources. Basically, Hotmail is viewed as a common denominator -everyone has a Hotmail account!- and thus it slips under most users' radar in terms of security.

[goatman]

Thanks, Glenn. That makes a lot of sense. I'll tell my wife -- who was the real poster there.