Bizarre behavior with my work computer

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I started my current job in my IT department about two years ago, and the work conditions went from so-so at the beginning, to OK a few months later, to "sucks" after that, to horrible for most of 2011, to intolerable in the last two months. So I'm looking to resign, but I'm also interested in not losing unemployment benefits, because in most states, if you quit, you don't get the benefits. Luckily, my state recognizes quitting under duress, which means you quit because you were driven to it by your employer. So I still have a fighting chance here.

Anyway, that's not the focus on this thread. When I visit websites like world news, technical reference, personal e-mail, and computer jokes, my web browser (Internet Explorer) works fine. But when I visit websites regarding labor laws, my web browser freezes, takes forever to load the site, or both. Something fishy is going on here. Or maybe it's just my imagination, because the sites do load eventually, sometimes as much as 15 minutes later. The corporation I work for is a very large company, so it'd be hard for them to pull off something like this.

But either way, what gives? Why would the same web browser work OK when loading general sites and glitch when loading labor law sites? (Browsers other than Internet Explorer are not permitted to be installed by security policy, so I can't test it with a different browser.) So did my employer set up their proxy or DNS servers to slow down traffic or delete a certain percentage of data packets coming from IP addresses belonging to legal sites? Something else? Are they trying to prevent their workers from finding out about their rights?

Anyway, post your thoughts. Because this is very weird and confusing. I can still read about labor laws from my home computer, but I do it from work because I reached a point where I no longer care if my employer finds out I'm plotting against them. The work conditions became such that I often throw up, get frequent headaches, run through hallways to prevent others from asking me for help with their computers, and bolt out to my car just to sit there and scream. So if my boss fires me because of what I read online, I don't even care anymore.

The behavior you are talking about can be caused by any number of things that IT can get away with. I can lock down my network or make it wide open with a single click of the mouse. I can also overwrite log files in the same manner if I so choose. There are a number of ways certain things like these can be accomplished. If someone from personnel or another department who is against you and has knowledge and access to I.T., that person alone can be responsible.

If is very easy to alter or modify routing tables, add delays in traffic passage, change DNS entries, etc. Without more information such as tracerts (traceroutes), pings, proxy setup, etc, it is nearly impossible to provide more information.
The company may not be blocking anything on that site at all but rather a banner that pulls information from another site. I have blocked ads on my network only to find that the websites in which the ads were embedded took forever to load. You employer may not have any ill intention at all, or may be using a very sneaky way of blocking access to the information you want.


You may try countermeasures (which may be logged) such as using https:// or using one of the many web proxies to visit the sites you want (again, watch for detection). Another way to test things is to search on Google for the page you want, and if it takes forever to load, use the URL behind the word, cache: Example catche:www.myexample.com/employmentlaw.html This way, you are loading content from Google rather than the website. If the content still takes forever to load, then it is very possible that the filtering is being done based upon the content of the document. In that case, stop the loading but do not clear out the address bar and change the http://.... to https://...... If it loads much faster, then it is likely that filtering is being done based upon content instead of URL.

If the company is trying to drum you out, and you want to collect unemployment, it may be best not to visit labor law sites or other sites that violate company policy or gives the company intelligence on your intent unless you want to give the company the impression that you are going to do something other than what you actually plan to do. Companies use this type of intelligence to squirm out of their obligations under the law and win fights. Remember, they can afford to hire more lawyers than you can.

Someone I know had a very valid discrimination case against her employer. She was being denied a promotion because of her religious beliefs. She would have won the case very easily since the discrimination was so blatant. The company found out that she and a friend were discussing a lawsuit against the company. The company covered itself by creating a new position, making sure that she was promoted to that position, and firing or transferring those who were involved in the discrimination. After about three months, the position she was put in was eliminated, and she was given the choice of going back to her old position or leaving the company. The problem was solved by spending about $5,000 instead of $30,000, $40,000, or more on courts and lawyers. This is the way business is done.

Why do you think that it is hard just because the corporation is large?




I suggest you do so, especially if you live in a country with weak labour laws that allows the employer have the right to arbitrarily fire people who break their whimsical policies.

For large companies, it's harder because it takes more expenses (<sarcasm>and we all know how much companies love spending money</sarcasm>) to implement a measure to prevent labor law sites from loading properly. Plus, executive oversight might be a stopping factor, since they're afraid of government finding out they're preventing workers from learning about their rights. In small companies, they can just use a free or low-cost outside service, like OpenDNS, and the government is less likely to scrutinize small companies.

I'm not too concerned about being fired. My state generally does not deny unemployment benefits for firing, unless the cause is gross misconduct, rather than poor performance. The workload is so horrible and I'm so burned out, that if I get fired, I'll dig my Star of David out of storage (I renounced my faith because of this job) and thank god for making me lose the job.

It is much easier for large companies to do clever techy things.

IT Department in a small company usually consists of a 19 year old that likes to play world of warcraft a lot and who has no budget.

The IT Department in a large multinational has a multi-million dollar budget and a staff of 50 graduates with various specialities.


As an employee of a large company they probably have an intranet and they probably have a load of policy documents on there somewhere, it would be worth saving a copy of the relevant policies as you won't have access to them after you leave.

Aspie1: do a cache and cookie cleanup in your browser... IE has a nasty habit of freezing up due to cookies and other sh*t. This worked well on my dad's work computer, where IE froze up whenever he used Google...
Also, considering IE is the least secure browser (next to Safari for windows), your IT dept. are a bunch of amateurs

DC: Not likely... When I was 19 (or 21 for that matter) I couldn't even get a basic IT job considering my competence in the area. I have since found out that my competence is higher than the collective IT department at my current school (they can't even block WoW without FUBARing the entire network ) and at many companies (Many places they just sit 9-5 on a support hotline)
The only reason as to why, that I can think of, is because I don't have this competence on paper.... at least yet.