Blocked address

[dspeidel]

The company I work for just announced that come 11/19/01 employees will be unable to check internet based email. This annoys me. I do not think anyone spends an excessive amount of time reading personal mail. It will lead to most internet mail users giving their work address to there friends thus adding to the system load.

Enough of my complaining. . . I am more interested in the feasibility of writing a script to fetch my mail from internet based mail service. This script in the begining would just place the mails on a webpage for reading.

Could this be done? Would it be able to get around the firewall/proxy? I think it might fail because the firewall/proxy will not let anything visit the mail server.

Your comments welcome.

D

[shkuey]

Why wouldn't you just set up your other mail accounts to auto-forward to your work address?

[dspeidel]

I am more interested in theoritical work arounds - that might not save anytime (I have a mail client that can get the mail from the blocked addresses).

[ammo]

Well, how will they block web-mail in the first place? Blocking the url of known web-mail sites?

Ammo

[Ouroboros]

can't you set a POP mail retrieve?

[chsh]

Originally posted by ammo
Well, how will they block web-mail in the first place? Blocking the url of known web-mail sites?

Easy, in their firewall config they just block outbound connections to www.hotmail.com, www.yahoo.com, etc., etc.. Not too difficult actually.

I'd tell you some ideas on how to get around it, but as I'm a Network admin myself, that sorta goes against what I should do, don't ya think?

[dspeidel]

I have a pop client that can get the mail. I found that
http://us.f100.mail.yahoo.com/ got to yahoo mail
http://mail15.bigmailbox.com/users/antionlineorg/ got to antionline mail. I discovered if I clicked tools/internet options/connection/Lan Settings and uncheck
automaticly detect settings and use proxy script from xyz.com the internet was wide open again -this floored me. Talk about 1/2 assed solution.

Thanks for all the comments,

-D

[Tedob1]

You can loose your job for not complying. is it worth it?
the admin can control what comes through your smtp server by using an smtp virus scanner. that is not the case with outside servers.
If the employees dont co-operate a more expensive solution would be necessary, like ISA server. then besides no private email, they could and would stop downloads of anything but http documents and only allowed sites at that. this is an expensive solution and it might be more cost effective to replace offenders.