Best of the ISP-Lists

Little Brother is Watching You

Members of the ISP-Tech list delve into the dark world of tools that would monitor the behavior of a company's employees and even prohibit them from viewing streaming content on sports sites.

[August 7, 2001]

On the ISP-Tech list in July, DY inquired,

"I am looking for a way to track what my employees are doing on the Internet. Does anyone know of something that will do this?"

There was some discussion of whether or not such monitoring is legal—or a good idea:

[KN warned] "Wasn't there a recent court ruling that brought this practice into question? You may want to check that out before you spend money."

[RW added] "I always felt it was best to not bother my people. If they do their job, and you get good customer satisfaction, then that is all that counts."

[SS countered] "You'd think that employers would have the right to monitor usage of the Internet service that they are paying for, on the computers that they own. I believe that the current US laws bear that out, but I'm not a lawyer."

[BK offered] "I believe that the court ruling said that as long as it's made clear as a condition of employment, then it is okay."

Others offered some suggestions on methods of tracking or limiting usage:

[BS noted] "A firewall blocking direct access to the outside, and a proxy server with logs, will accomplish your general goal."

[RG advised] "Check out Websense."

[ed. note: Websense says its software works "in conjunction with the Websense Master Database of more than 2.5 million sites, organized into 75+ categories, including MP3, gambling, shopping and adult content. You can choose to block, permit, limit by time-based quota or postpone access to individual categories by user, group, workstation or network. New sites are added to the database daily, and Websense Enterprise automatically downloads updates to the database every night to ensure you’re keeping up with the rapid evolution of the Internet."]

[JF recalled] "eSoft has a new product called SmartReports, which is easy to use and maintain."

[ed. note: SmartReports is agent-deployed and has many report types that can be delivered in a wide variety of file formats.]

[RW offered] "Just use syslog on your router and run it back to MRTG."

[JW added] "There is also a package called Little Brother that I used several years ago. It will run on Windows 95/98 or NT, and like all little brothers, it's designed for tattling…"

[ed. note: Little Brother also features content control, "for intelligent policy enforcement, i.e. 'Allow' Streaming Video from Investment News sites, but 'Deny' Streaming Video from Sports sites."]

— End