Internet access

Must write this quickly, as I am not sure how long I will be able to access this site.

In the latest sweep of censorship with regards to sites that can be accessed from computers on board, we have had such sites as ebay and the national lottery barred.

The restrictions have never bothered me before as they were always based at sites that contained sex, violence, etc. But this just seems a bit like big brother :evil:

 

The eBay ban has poxed me off, somewhat. I expect the Slime argument is that you can send and receive e-mails via it. Anyway, I'm sure it's had no effect on morale.

 

You dont only get it on board, we've got it here in the office too! Can't even get to my hotmail account!

 

Have had a response from IGS support as follows

"MOD as a whole has a particular concern about the use of eBay. These
concerns are that MOD employees are not allowed to trade and more
significantly the, sometimes, inordinate amount of time spent by users
on this site. Whilst the Acceptable Use Policy (JSP740) prohibits the
offering for sale of items and services on commercial auction sites and
warns that personal use must not interfere with official duties; DGInfo
and the 1* DIRGE have directed that all eBay sites be blocked between
the hours of 0630Z - 1800Z."


Shouldn't be too bad for me then as I am currently in Charlie time.

 

I think this is to do with JSP740 and acceptable use.

Some of the activities that are prohibited are:

Conducting commercial activities
Gaming, lottery or betting
Using commercial auction sites (eg e-bay)

I suppose that hotmail addresses are also used for spamming, so access to these may also be banned.

Edit - Dixie Gooner beat me to a reply. Bah!

 

[quote="TattooDog

Some of the activities that are prohibited are:

Conducting commercial activities
Gaming, lottery or betting
Using commercial auction sites (eg e-bay)


Edit - Dixie Gooner beat me to a reply. Bah![/quote]

Gaming lottery or betting, does this mean I should cancel my sports lottery subscription?

 

Interesting one.

Technically, it sounds like you can't check the results online, but you can look them up on the hard copies of Sports Memos! :?

 

Has someone been selling off floaty things and bits of kit then???

 

Ah, you'll be referring to the Secretary of State for Defence and his scandalous and highly ill-advised sale of arguably needed hulls?

It wouldn't surprise me if he did use ebay.

 

Been looking on Ebay for a type 22 but nothing for sale yet

 

Keeping my eye open for an Aircraft Carrier, unfinished project, going cheap.

 

the same restrictions are being applied to industry aswell , particularly ebay ! some thing to do with lost working time

 

Selling bits of kit? I think most people in the RN would be going onto E-bay to buy good kit! :wink:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but we've never been able to access Hotmail or any type of webmail via the IGS have we as they allow us to bypass the IGS Releas phrase

As for the likes of ebay (and other sites where you can send some form of message) it's only been a matter of time. I've been on an operation where all outgoing email was suspended for security reasons. Internet access remained but was withdrawn when it was discovered (yes by me the IS hitler) that people where intending to order flowers and goods online so they could include a message which may have indicated ship's operations.

 

Gents,

May I remind you that any release of information regarding IGS restrictions and release phrases on this forum is a breach of OPSEC and any occurance of such will see this thread deleted.

 

And I thought I was an IS Hitler - Sorry Chief, I'll wind my neck in if that was aimed at me!!!

 

T'was a gentle reminder t_c and not just aimed at you! We don't really want this site and ARRSE to get blocked by the IGS......

 

Duly noted!

 

Just remember that these things are put into place for many reasons such as bandwidth accessibility etc.

The reason you can't access Hotmail etc is because of the plethora of viruses that would innundate MOD CIS systems in no time at all.

 

I must say I can well believe this action has been taken. We have had monitoring software installed on our system (as do all MoD networked computers now!!) - Erascent reports how much and exactly what is loaded on your PC, so your MP3s, JPEGS, GIFS etc are all displayed. I was amazed at how much people are loading on machines - 80Gb of music in one instance.

Then there is IGS access, no kill joy by any standard and whilst I'm sipping my 2nd brew of the day I'm using it now but there are some people here who seem to making a career of it and do little else. If this gets them back to work then actually I'm not so fussed. That they now monitor and detail what sites are requested and how much they are used is just highlighting how much the system has been abused. So cheers to all who did abuse it because now we all get a privilege removed.