IT advice required

[senecio]

Picked up my new work laptop yesterday (Dell Latitude E5400). We've been migrated across to the new corporate template from the US and my old ThinkPad T43 (bless its soul:cry:) was too old to come with me. In the move I have lost my local administrative privileges and its unlikely they will return.

Access to the net from work is through a proxy server, which I used to be able to disable when I was at home. Now the only way to access the net from home is via my ISP, through the VPN and finally through the work proxy. Very slow, cumbersome and annoyingly filtered by the fun police.

Is there anyway to get around this, or am I stuck?

[GC]

When you get Home, switch it on but dont connect the VPN up, then open to Internet Explorer go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections Tab > Lan Settings, then untick the box " use a proxy server for your LAN" Just remember to switch it back on before you go back to work or it wont connect there. This all depends weather your Administrator has locked you settings or not.

[Fishman Dan]

Picked up my new work laptop yesterday (Dell Latitude E5400). We've been migrated across to the new corporate template from the US and my old ThinkPad T43 (bless its soul:cry:) was too old to come with me. In the move I have lost my local administrative privileges and its unlikely they will return.

Access to the net from work is through a proxy server, which I used to be able to disable when I was at home. Now the only way to access the net from home is via my ISP, through the VPN and finally through the work proxy. Very slow, cumbersome and annoyingly filtered by the fun police.

Is there anyway to get around this, or am I stuck?

It will be enforced by policy. Even if you could hack it, it would be reapplied next time you logged in.

Now get back to work and stop being a security flaw in the network.

[senecio]

It will be enforced by policy. Even if you could hack it, it would be reapplied next time you logged in.

Now get back to work and stop being a security flaw in the network.

Security flaw my arse. All I want to do is use my laptop for personal use in my own time. This is explicity allowed under our computer use policy.



When you get Home, switch it on but dont connect the VPN up, then open to Internet Explorer go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections Tab > Lan Settings, then untick the box " use a proxy server for your LAN" Just remember to switch it back on before you go back to work or it wont connect there. This all depends weather your Administrator has locked you settings or not.

That's what I used to do. It is now locked under an enforced policy like Fishman said.

No other ideas, is there no way that I could mimic the proxy set-up at home via software?

[Sydney Hacker]

Security flaw my arse. All I want to do is use my laptop for personal use in my own time. This is explicity allowed under our computer use policy.




That's what I used to do. It is now locked under an enforced policy like Fishman said.

No other ideas, is there no way that I could mimic the proxy set-up at home via software?

Maybe buy your own pc for home and then you can surf whatever sites you like :wink:

[Fishman Dan]

Security flaw my arse. All I want to do is use my laptop for personal use in my own time. This is explicity allowed under our computer use policy.

That's what I used to do. It is now locked under an enforced policy like Fishman said.

No other ideas, is there no way that I could mimic the proxy set-up at home via software?

You're whinging to the wrong IT guy. Web-surfing at home opens your notebook up to all sorts of nasties that can then be brought back into the office network.

It's pretty common these days. Virus protection is only so good. We recently had a virus outbreak that was brand new - we ended up submitting to and advising McAfee about the outbreak and had to wait for them to create a fix.

[henno]

Don't listen to Fishman. Circumventing company IT policy is what keeps the IT department in a job. ;-)

http://portableapps.com

Download your browser of choice from there. Create a folder called "apps" or something in your "My Documents". Bypass the proxy that way, rather than messing with IE.

Otherwise use a linux livecd or even buy a large usb drive and boot a whole other operating system that way. There are always ways. As I type this my data is tunneling through our corporate firewall, bouncing off my server before it is finally sent unencrypted to ozgolf.

[Fishman Dan]

Or get a mac.







[There... I said it!]

[senecio]

Don't listen to Fishman. Circumventing company IT policy is what keeps the IT department in a job. ;-)

http://portableapps.com



Cheers Henno, looks like it may even run from a USB drive. That means I don't have to leave anything on the hardrive.

Surely there are certain tasks that shouldn't require admin rights. I have to log a job with our IT department so to get the file associations changed so that it knows I want to open .csv files with Excel.

Very frustrating.

[henno]

It helps when the global administrator password for all PCs in this particular Top 50 Australian Company is an easily guessable 7-letter lower-case dictionary word.

Dumbasses.

[Sydney Hacker]

It helps when the global administrator password for all PCs in this particular Top 50 Australian Company is an easily guessable 7-letter lower-case dictionary word.

Dumbasses.

Dumbasses is 9 letters :lol:

[billybaub]

Portable apps are the way to go. Go and buy yourself a passport hard drive or the likes and just load all the stuff on there. Most of the time you can even run things like photoshop etc on there...not that i endorse those illegal copies :P