work web surfing tips

After the button complained about being more heavily monitored for internet usage at work, I said I'd give him some tips on avoidance, I should point out I don't actually use most of these, just keep them in reserve should they become useful later. Obviously if you got caught using some of this, you'd probably be breaking more of the IT policy than you would just browsing, so consider the competence of your IT department and the relative risks before you try any of this out.

I'll try to do this in order of complexity, so people don't get lost too early on. Any other ideas please add them and maybe we can turn it into a proper page at some point.

Basic settings:

In Internet explorer, go to options, then get it to keep pages in history for 0 days, and clear your history and temporary internet files every so often. This won't stop monitoring, but it'll stop anyone else who shares your pc from accidentally finding all the sites you're viewing if they use the address bar as a shortcut etc.

In advanced settings, you can also do stuff like disabling flash content and images - this will make even sites like hotmail appear relatively innocuos.

Alternative Browsers:
Internet Explorer is shit for hiding what you're viewing - if it's open, it's obvious what you're looking at, and it'll appear in the task bar as well.

Firefox:
Just using firefox opens up some more possibilities.

With tabbed browsing, you can ctrl-tab to change to a different web page (something appropriate) - which doesn't have the obviousness of an alt-tab into Excel, you can also leave the browser open on a site while doing something else, but if it's on a work-related tab, not have to worry about people looking at the taskbar to check what you're doing.#

You can also set image and text display options. For example, if you choose times new roman for all text, set it to dark grey, 12pt, and disable underlining of links etc. - then make sure it's set to override website defaults, you'll make most sites look incredibly boring.

Portable firefox:
If you can't get firefox installed by IT support, you can download portable firefox - which will run off a cd, your document folder or a USB pen - this has the advantage of not recording your internet history locally, which won't stop a decent IT team from knowing what you're looking at, but means your manager won't be able to hit the down button in the address bar to see what sites you've been viewing. http://portablefirefox.mozdev.org/

Outlook
Outlook has an address bar which allows you to use it as a web browser. I don't have a copy here, but if you can disable images then you've a decent chance of making it look like you're checking your work e-mail and calendar while you're doing all kinds of stuff.

ghostzilla
This is getting a bit more complex. You don't want to have a copy of ghostzilla on a file system at work, since a scan could pick it up, so you'll need a USB pen drive (costs about a fiver for a small one), or a CD to run it off. ghostzilla makes a small frame inside outlook, word, excel or whatever else, then disables all images and greys out text - you can customise it as well. If someone walks past, there's only a tiny chance they'll notice anything different from your normal work software. If you're worried, you just move your mouse away from the window and it'll disappear completely, brought back only by a left - right - left movement of your mouse. If you get caught using it you're likely to be in the shit though.

http://www.ghostzilla.com/

for fuck's sake, try it at home first.

Proxy's

Not my strong point, but to avoid both web activity monitoring, and filtering, your best bet is to set up a proxy to browse the web with.

What this means, is you connect to a computer outside your network (probably your home computer), then all requests for websites are done via that computer - the only connection your work computer makes is to the proxy, and that'll be the only thing recorded in network logs.

You'll need a machine at home which you can set up either an ssh server (any linux distribution will do it, or cygwin for windows which I've not tried), or even a remote desktop application which will show your home desktop on your work machine - not one to try if you're actual work space is exposed.

If you're behind a firewall with content filtering, you can set your ssh server to accept connections on port 443 (the same as https:// uses), or port 80 (normal web access), then connect to it with your ip address from work. http://www.findmyip.com/

I've not tried it, but something like this should work:
http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/proxy-through-ssh/ The only software you'll need at work is putty, available from here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ which runs of an exe file and isn't as obviously skivey as ghostzilla.