Blocking Websites Subtly

For various reasons, I want to limit the access to certain websites on the network I have at the store. For more various reasons, I don't want it to be obvious.

It's easy to block websites by using the router's internal controls. However, when a person attempts to go to a website blocked in this fashion, the screen blatantly tells the person the website is blocked.

The ideal solution for me, would be for the web browser to APPEAR to be trying to navigate to the website, and yet it's crawling very slowly in trying to do so. Like the spinning timer mouse icon just keeps going and going. There's no indication that the website is blocked. There's no indication that the browser isn't trying to reach the website. It would just look as though the browser is attempting to reach the website, but the person trying to get to the website would think that either the internet is being slow, the website is down, or something else is wrong.

If you're wondering, my reason for this would be that I would then hear about the person complaining about the slow internet, and thus allow me to pinpoint more accurately the people I need to address. If the website were just blocked, and they saw a message seeing it was blocked, I would never hear about it. Further, they would probably just find other ways, or other websites to waste time on.

If the ideal solution isn't available in any way, shape, or form, then any other solution that just simply doesn't look like the website are being blocked might work as well, depending on what kind of messages were displayed on the screen.

Anyway, anybody have any ideas on how I could accomplish this?

Don't know anything about this item, just know stuff like this is out there.

Of course, you could buy a good old fashioned spy camera and put it in the location where you can see monitor screens. Cameras look like clocks, plants, whatever...

Quote: konceptum

For various reasons, I want to limit the access to certain websites on the network I have at the store. For more various reasons, I don't want it to be obvious.

It's easy to block websites by using the router's internal controls. However, when a person attempts to go to a website blocked in this fashion, the screen blatantly tells the person the website is blocked.

The ideal solution for me, would be for the web browser to APPEAR to be trying to navigate to the website, and yet it's crawling very slowly in trying to do so. Like the spinning timer mouse icon just keeps going and going. There's no indication that the website is blocked. There's no indication that the browser isn't trying to reach the website. It would just look as though the browser is attempting to reach the website, but the person trying to get to the website would think that either the internet is being slow, the website is down, or something else is wrong.

If you're wondering, my reason for this would be that I would then hear about the person complaining about the slow internet, and thus allow me to pinpoint more accurately the people I need to address. If the website were just blocked, and they saw a message seeing it was blocked, I would never hear about it. Further, they would probably just find other ways, or other websites to waste time on.

If the ideal solution isn't available in any way, shape, or form, then any other solution that just simply doesn't look like the website are being blocked might work as well, depending on what kind of messages were displayed on the screen.

Anyway, anybody have any ideas on how I could accomplish this?

Funny, this is exactly how it works at my job. I could ask the sysadmins how they accomplished it, or just poke around the network and try to figure it out myself. I'll let you know if I discover anything. This kind of thing is actually interesting to me...but as a software developer I don't actually have a lot of experience in networking stuff.

Quote: AcesAndEights

Funny, this is exactly how it works at my job. I could ask the sysadmins how they accomplished it, or just poke around the network and try to figure it out myself. I'll let you know if I discover anything. This kind of thing is actually interesting to me...but as a software developer I don't actually have a lot of experience in networking stuff.

If you do find anything out, I'm really interested. Please keep me updated.

Quote: rxwine

Don't know anything about this item, just know stuff like this is out there.

Of course, you could buy a good old fashioned spy camera and put it in the location where you can see monitor screens. Cameras look like clocks, plants, whatever...

The thing is, I'm not really interested in monitoring the employees. I just want to prevent them from spending so much time on the internet. For similar reason, I don't need spy cameras.

I've had this type of issues with employees in the past as well, although it hasn't always had to do with internet surfing. When I have an employee that, 90% of the time is a top producing excellent wonderful employee, I don't really feel like I want to ding them for the 10% of the time they 'waste' doing something else, whether it be internet surfing or what-have-you. But, I have also experienced excellent top-performing employees succumb to various time wasters until they become a sub-par employee. I know that if I can stop the time wasting activity, I maintain the top performing employee until they realize they can get a better paying job elsewhere. :)

What I would really like, ultimately, is the "internet is slow" effect to be on the computers/router about 85% of the time. I don't want to completely deny by good employees from wasting a little bit of time. I'm not unrealistic enough to think that they won't just find another way to waste time So, I'll give them the opportunity to waste some time, I just want to be able to control it a bit, but without it being so obvious.

One bad thing about this idea is the employee will initially waste more time hoping that the site will eventually load.

Quote: konceptum

If you do find anything out, I'm really interested. Please keep me updated.
The thing is, I'm not really interested in monitoring the employees. I just want to prevent them from spending so much time on the internet. For similar reason, I don't need spy cameras.
.

While I don't know if this idea will work, maybe you could openly factor in "Internet break time". Tell them, they can use "15 minutes Internet time" over the course of the day, as long as get their work done, (or don't interfere with anything work related)

Obviously, you'd still have to say, No to certain sites (no porn, etc.,).

They may not feel that have to hide then at least.