Office blocked access to internet sites

If someone is blocking sites, then someone is likely monitoring sites visited, and can follow what you're doing, even if you wipe your browser history. It would really suck to be fired in this economy, so be careful.

I was fired for surfing.

Many people have been fired for internet use. If you are finding a way to workaround the company firewall, you will probably be the next. Just remember the old adage, "you don't sh*t where you eat".

When I was on the road a lot I used to carry two laptops - one for work (provided by my company and doubtless monitored by them) and one for gaming/personal/general-fucking-around. Heavy, yes, but I keep those two worlds well separated.

O.

I delete index Dat files all the time. It gets recreated but cleans up your history. I do that on my home pc due to some free software I downloaded just to make sure I didn't download some junk or spyware. I do that at home but not at work. Old habit I guess. There are multiple ways your pc keeps a record of every web site you have visited that it seems insidious. I suppose if you got really paranoid you should know that your ISP keeps records too I believe. Then internet companies track you as well. For work reasons though, it's best to not do anything at work that could get you in trouble.

Even deleted files are not really deleted but simply marked as deleted. They can be retrieved (with some trouble) unless you use special software that writes over the data a few times. The longer you use your hard drive, the more likely it is that data will be unretrievable though. It will be written over. Some internet search engines will also keep a history of your search terms and url addresses you've typed in. Some companies probably have software that can see your screen in real time if they want to instead of just monitoring your web history.

However I don't interfere with any IT functions. There were a couple of times when an IT manager said he's never seen the company operating system crash and another time when an instructor asked if we could try and crash the new software that I mysteriously did something that might have crashed the software and the network. Strange how I did that so quick after asked. I didn't intend to crash a whole network but the IT manager blamed me because my PC caused was the first to crash and then the whole network went down. He just told me the day before he never saw it crash. I thought it crashed too easy since I wasn't even trying. That was Windows NT.

casualguy,

I've heard that data "written over" many many times, can still be obtained. Has to do with residual magnetism, or something like that. Or may just be a bunch of BS!

Yes, in one case where a man got a severe prison sentence he had according to the government (take with bucket of salt) written over the data with a program designed for "cleaning" ---- 27 TIMES!!! Talk about paranoid, but with cause apparently.

I looked into just encrypting my computer (not there is anything interesting, but with hackers who knows), but since I'm not a techie it was a little beyond my comfort level. Also, I was thinking even if it was encrypted that won't stop a bunch of scum who beyond corrupt.