My company, which will remain nameless here on my website, recently announced a change in policy. Got the annoucement last week. It made the news in various places later. I waited to comment here until after it took effect.

Effective 8 August, the ability to log on through the [company] network to e-mail accounts at third-party Internet service providers (ISPs) will be disabled. Employees, therefore, will not be able to log on to their third-party Internet accounts through the [company] network to send or receive e-mail. This policy also includes a ban on the use of Internet-based chat rooms, forums and bulletin boards from the [company] network.

What a crock and step backwards. They claim regulatory and virus security reasons, but both things could be handled without doing this sort of thing if they wanted to.

Of course, they haven’t actually blocked MY mail, they haven’t noticed the nice little server in Chris’s basement I use for this stuff yet I guess. But I am thinking I better respect the policy anyway. They did block one of the internet forums I check regularly though. Grrr! Oh well, I shall live.

I’m thinking of more regularly taking my personal laptop into work and using the cellular connection to get to the net for that sort of stuff if I need it while at work, that way bypassing the corporate network entirely.