My site is blocked!

[oce222]

My website, www.gimme-five.com, is blocked at my workplace, and some others are telling me it is blocked at others.

I do not think my site is distasteful, and other much more risque websites are not being blocked like this. Is there a registry I need to sign up at to tell the internet my site is appropriate?

[Lil_Red]

It sounds like your boss has decided that visiting your site during working hours is not appropriate.
Why not talk to him and ask him how come the IT department blocked your site?

[oce222]

the site was blocked on the first day I got to work... I tried to check it when I got back from lunch and it was blocked... I'm just worried a lot of places are blocking it, because some people have told me it is blocked at their workplaces as well.

[stymiee]

If it's not a site that is useful for employees to use can you blame them for blocking it?

[oce222]

No, that's not the point.

The point is, my site is being blocked from many different places, where others are not, I don't care so much whether or not I can visit it, I'm worried about the fact that somewhere online is classifying my website is distasteful and therefore suggesting it be blocked when it is not.

[Thermit]

I'm not sure why your site would be singled out...?

Perhaps they are blocking all sites that aren't major portals, etc...?

[HarryR]

We use a Novell product called BorderManager for filtering nasty websites out, they maintain reguarly updated lists of websites which are split into different categories, but also block content depending on keywords, sentances etc.

Most of the time this works fine.. until you get sites that really shouldn't be blocked, or sites that are required for people to work with (e.g. b2b portals, learning centres etc.)..

One of the funniest things I saw was it blocking the official 2004 olympics website, but none of the other olympics related sites. In my opinion the best way to help in this situation is just to make sure everybody on the IT team know how to add explicit allow rules whenever they get a call regarding a blocked website that obviously shouldn't be blocked.

[pdxi]

Web sites are often blocked from corporate networks because they have nothing to do with employees' work, not because they offensive.

Why would ratemybutt.com be important to employees of an advertising agency?

[Corey Bryant]

Just curious - is http://www.avpolice.com/ or http://www.petermcwilliams.org/ blocked?

[oce222]

no they are not

[Corey Bryant]

They might be blocking the pic content - there are all different reasons. Make good with an IT person and ask him. That will help you to understand

[El Camino]

Many companies use websense.com to block sites and increase employee productivity. Its not a question whether a site is "distasteful" or not. Websense maintains a central database and companies can select which categories to block. Many companies block the "entertainment", "travel", "forums", and "chat" categories.

[111678]

there are sites out there that can get you around web filtering software ... megaproxy.com, hidemyurl.com (i like this one), proxify.com ... sometimes they work sometimes they dont ... just depends on how your network admins are using the blocking software ..