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Programs for catching a user slacking at work
Monkeydrye
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My dept has been tasked with fidning out a users surfing habits. Not just where they go, but when and how much. Worse, they want us to travel back in time to do so. Luckily the uses is totally unsavvy, so we have like 2 gigs of internet temporary files.
The question is, are there any programs to help analyize those temp files. And are there any simple sniffer programs to help watch where she goes currently? Our firewall will let us look at the last day, and where she went, but not for how long or how much.
For the record, I am not totally comfy doing this. BUT, I am not comfy with falling on the bad side of the boss. Luckily it helps that the woman we are looking at is a totaly witch.
The question is, are there any programs to help analyize those temp files. And are there any simple sniffer programs to help watch where she goes currently? Our firewall will let us look at the last day, and where she went, but not for how long or how much.
For the record, I am not totally comfy doing this. BUT, I am not comfy with falling on the bad side of the boss. Luckily it helps that the woman we are looking at is a totaly witch.
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As for your problem, i don't think you can really gauge how long someone was using a particular website... only by looking at the initial request by the IP address, and then looking at the timestamp of a subsequent connection to the same site by the same ip, can you get a reasonable number...
But, if she goes to xxx.com, and sits there reading an article for 1 hour, all you will see is the initial GET request for the page...
Cookies, temp folders, the history stored in the registry, etc are all good places to look at. But the firewall itself is the best way.
Questions I am curious about. You have a firewall... if web surfing is a big no no, why not just block access or use a websense to stop access to certian sites? Are the actual sites she visits or the time spent doing so the problem?
What is the usage policy at your work ?
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
As for my comfort...I just didn't sign up to be all cloak and dagger. I know they own everything. On a practical level I don't mind. But I dislike being the facilitator. I am more of a blunt person...so I would rather just call them on it
At my previous company, they'd actually generate a weekly list of all employees, sorted by internet usage, and mail it out to all the managers. God Forbid you were on the top of that list, for whatever reasons, and regardless of your performance. See, the report had the employee's name AND the managers name on it, so if you were at the top of the list, so was your manager... and that made him "look bad".
You'd get "spoken to" and threatened. The employee would, of course, cut down significantly. Then, the next week, the new top person would get in trouble.
Never happened to me, but I knew what was going on. Again, this wasn't picking out people who were browsing too much... just whoever happened to have the highest page hits that week.
THAT SAID, what's going on with you is exactly what should be going on. A manager has noticed an issue and is checking up on a problem employee.
And yes, I'm at work right now. :P
I agree with you there. Luckily, in my near 6 years here we have only done internet useage 3 times, and only for specific people. They know everyone uses the internet. My Network Admin tried to shut down all non-work internet access...got shot down so fast. In general, you get your work done, and aren't too blatant about it, they don't care what you do.
Waaaaaait a minute... you posted this from work, didn't you?
Also, you should totally do that trick that would make all of her images appear upsidedown when she browses.
You know, just for fun.
-hides-
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
As a sys-admin, I can say you'll need to get over that quick. On occasion, its going to be your task to sniff out things you don't want to know. Just know its for the better good of the organization (usually.) Sometimes the subject is more than a coworker, and you'll have to get over that too.
Its not your place to call people on anything, unless you get a manager involved, and you have facts to back it up. There's a lot of CYA now because people are so happy to sue.
That said, if this is a small organization, you probably won't be looking to spend the kind of money a monitoring utility would cost. Decent appliances start around $3k, and web sense was much more. The most effective tool for a small organization is to have the individual's manager get involved and start micromanaging until its no longer an issue or the employee gets fed up and leaves. If the manager walks up and finds the person surfing a site that doesn't serve the business' purpose, the manager should start the warning and write up process.
Also, if there is no policy, establish one, even if all it does is declares ownership of equipment and data, reserves the right to monitor, and establishes proper usage (business purposes, only install approved apps, etc.)
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
I'm as guilty as the next person about surfing on company time, but I don't do it if there is something work-related I should be doing. But, when you get down to it, the company is paying anyone to surf the Web all day.
Or, you can look at it this way: If the person you are trying to catch is as unsavvy as you say, there is a good likelihood that she may have visited a site that likes to put malware on people's machines or downloaded something she shouldn't have. If that malware propagates, that means more work for you trying to clean up the infected systems. Catching her may just be an investment in your future sanity.
A large part of my job, actually.
Sometimes it could be hard to tell what was and wasn't work related, beyond the obvious, because what I do is search for data that could be anywhere.
For the record, said lady has been canned.
It's not your fault.
It may seem sorta counter-logical, as monitoring seems like it would motivate people to not slack off and make sure they're always working. But in reality, virtually no worker can sit their 9-5 constantly working.
Even though I don't have the facts at the ready, I can assure you that it's been proven that monitoring employees in an office causes productivity to go down.
Not at all.
It'sall part of the growing trend of treating works solely as a labor pool, rather than as human beings. The more you dehumanize people, the less productive they be comes.
Unfortunately, as long as they stay above a CERTAIN level of productivity, it doesn't really matter for the bottom line.
It's an issue of valuing efficiency too highly over equity, in my opinion. Productivity is important for a business, sure, but in my opinion, a bussiness should also be concerned for its employees as individuals as well.
I don't know about that figure, but depending on the productivity gains by increasingstaff, that might be worthwhile.
Keeping in mind that replacing one staff member might have a short term productivity gain for other staff members who are afraid fo being replaced themselves.