[Martina]

So, I had turned on the Content Advisor program in Internet Explorer at work, specifically BLOCKED all the sites I kept frequenting, and went in and specifically allowed the sites I need, like Wells Fargo because I do some work with the bank. Tried it out for a few days with a password I remembered, just so I knew I could access all the bank's sites.

Then I went in and reset the password to something I don't know, and now I have no idea what the password is.

Before doing this I found out that there is a way to erase a password - but I'd have to come home, go online get instructions, print them off, go back to work, and erase the password.

Well, now I have to do that! They want me to do some online webinars to get CPE credit for my CPA license. I can do them at work. They're online.

Well, crap. There went my brilliant idea to block the internet at work. I think it lasted about 2 weeks.

So....what ideas do you have to keep me off the internet at work? It could really get me into some serious trouble, and could even cost me my job. They have strict written policies against personal internet usage, and they do monitor. (well, they say they do....if they REALLY did, I would have been called into my boss's office by now)

What should I do?

[Perna]

I would see if there are any other people taking online courses for work and see if you can have the job set up a "lunch hour" group wherever everyone can come at a certain time and work on their courses at "other" computers rather than the ones in their own offices? Is there a training room/office or admin space or something that you could go to, away from your own computer and do this work?

[WLFTW]

I don't know if you have administrative rights on your computer at work. If you do not, then you may not be able to install any programs.

If you can install programs, then maybe one of these will help:
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/

Parental controls. If your computer at work is on Vista or windows 7, parental controls are already there...but, again, only if you have administrative rights to your computer... I believe--I could be wrong.

If you can enable parental controls, whether built into the operating system or from an internet filter program, to block sites you seem to be addicted to visiting, try this.

Go to this site to get a password:
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

You'll have to enter the password twice, the second time for confirmation. Select the first five or so characters of your "perfect password" and paste into both password boxes.

Do not write down your password. This is cool because if you visit the perfect password site again, you will not get the same password.

Voila, you should never be able to bypass your parental controls.

Another thing that occurred to me is to have a friend at work make up a password for parental controls and promise to never tell you what it is.

You will have to be careful about what sites you add to the blocked-site list as it might ask for your password again. So you might want to start with a memorable password for the parental controls first just to create a list of blocked sites, but then change the parental controls password as per the instructions above to make it an un-memorable password.

edit: I feel obliged to say that if you set up which sites are blocked in a bad way, you might brick your computer (meaning making it unusable). That would be very bad of course as you'd have to explain to the IT guys why they have to re-install the operating system and programs. So be careful about your parental controls as you don't want to cripple all of the internet activity.

[Rhiannonsmoon]

Hey there,

I have a poor memory so someone else will have to ok or reject this but you should be able to halt all internet traffic which stops you from accessing the internet at all on the work computer.

Rhia

[Christina86]

Here's a good website to only allow for certain time limits for specific websites, only insert websites that you know you spend too much time on.

http://minutesplease.com/

If you've got Firefox, there are a lot more options than using Internet Explorer.

[WLFTW]

Wow that looks like a good site!