rudis dot net

If the Net builds it, the users will do anything they can to access it, even if it means violating their corporate policies and flying in the face of their code of ethics.

Digital Inspiration provided friendly advice on how to get access to Twitter (if it's blocked) and uses the big, bad UAE as the justification.

Users need to understand that their jobs are at risk more than ever when they attempt to bypass company restrictions on computer and Internet usage. Companies want to control bandwidth costs, maintain IT security and increase productivity and are spending more money than ever on controls and reporting facilities to ensure that you are focused on work. While Twitter is fun and all, it's only a useful business tool for a subset of organizations (now, an *internal* Twitter-like system would be cool) and is a hard sell to management. Is it worth your job - and personal integrity - to violate an agreement that you have signed and promised to adhere to just to IM, e-mall or tweet some friends?

If you *really* need to use blocked services, put together a case and talk to your IT security folks about it - maybe even over coffee or lunch (you may even find that the IT security folks are cool, interesting people). They may be able to help push a reasonable request through or you may discover why it's a bad idea to allow, say, Skype to flow with wild abandon on the company's network.