Can't get Yahoo Messenger to work at company's premises

38141

Hi,

I'm a yahoo messenger user but for some reason, I can't get it to work at my company's premises. Anyone have any idea of what the problem here is?

kippy

Your company more than likely have it blocked by a firewall or web proxy. Not too much you can do about it.
Kippy

matt-dublin

go to start, run type in cmd and press enter
when the dos screen opens type in ipconfig.
copy the ip address beside default gateway

go to the proxy settings of yahoo messenger...

put in the ip address you copied there, and type in 80 for the port.

that should get you connected

otherwise ask your network admins to unblock tcp port 5050 on the firewall (best option)

38141

No that didnt work unfortunately, and I dont think i could ask them to do that, i'm sure they would say i was compromising security or something

subway

38141 wrote:

No that didnt work unfortunately, and I dont think i could ask them to do that, i'm sure they would say i was compromising security or something

thats because you are!!!
read your AUP on IT for the job.
breach of it = breach of contract = out the door with you

matt-dublin

If you ask IT to do it there should not be a problem.

If IT do allow it you will not be in breech of contract.
Just ask them or mail them asking is there any way to get Yahoo instant messenger working...
otherwise move over to MSN or Google talk as they both have web applications.

ie. webmessenger.msn.com

GerardKeating

matt-dublin wrote:

If you ask IT to do it there should not be a problem.

If IT do allow it you will not be in breech of contract.
Just ask them or mail them asking is there any way to get Yahoo instant messenger working...
otherwise move over to MSN or Google talk as they both have web applications.

ie. webmessenger.msn.com

They can be blocked as well by any web proxy.

kippy

If you ask IT to do it there should not be a problem.

If IT do allow it you will not be in breech of contract.
Just ask them or mail them asking is there any way to get Yahoo instant messenger working...
otherwise move over to MSN or Google talk as they both have web applications.

ie. webmessenger.msn.com

If you do ask and decent IT department to do it, they will look at you as if you have two heads.
If IT allow it, they are in breach of company policy and as such wont do it.
Unless you have a businees justification for using Yahoo messanger and get this approved by HR, there is no way any IT department should allow you access to it-even then, depending on the IT and HR policy makers you will find it hard to get access. Not worth the hassle in looking for access to be honest.
In all likelyhood all messanging apps and wesites are blocked.

matt-dublin

Ìm an IT Manager, and in most cases where an internal implementation of SIP or office live hasn't been deployed they allow it as its an outbound port and nothing is being returned in.
Most hr departments don't have anything to do with IT un less someone's getting fired or hired.

Most cases of opening/blocking ports are decided by Internal IT Security/MIS or depending on the size of the IT dept a sys admin will do it.

If he's able to download messenger its most likely he has access to all internet sites, which in that case provides more of a security risk than allowing IM.

Most companies allow IM to be used but yahoo isn't one of the more popular ones, MSN and Google Talk are generally allowed. Primarily because MSN by default routes through port 80 if it can't find its own port.

Àlso it depends on company policy as not every company has the same policy.

All you would have to do is say well i'd use it to message joe on the other side of the office to save me having to get up every ten minutes to get info off him, and it takes me 5 minutes to get to him and thats nearly a quarter of my day wasted running up and down the office so its costing the company money blah blah blah

kippy

Most hr departments don't have anything to do with IT un less someone's getting fired or hired.

IT and HR work together on company IT policies. Sometimes HR ask IT to implement specific policies. If you have no interaction with HR then there is an issue with your policies and they way in which thay are implemented. Not much point having and IT useage policy of it hasnt been passed by HR, since they will be the ones who will need to act on it if it is broken. HR will also generally determine the amount of employee monitoring that takes place in the company, IT work with HR in this regard. If something is against policy IT should work with HR to redefine policy as needed. There are reasons for policies, not all of which are written by IT and the business need for Yahoo Messanger should be passed by HR. If using messanger is against policy, IT should not allow it, simple as.

All you would have to do is say well i'd use it to message joe on the other side of the office to save me having to get up every ten minutes to get info off him, and it takes me 5 minutes to get to him and thats nearly a quarter of my day wasted running up and down the office so its costing the company money blah blah blah

There are other ways to do this-which are more than a replacement for yahoo messenger.

Kippy

matt-dublin

9 times out of 10 HR will ask IT to define an IT policy, most of which conforms to email useage, definition of usage of internet blah blah blah...

kippy, by the looks of things your in violation of your IT policy, have you a business reason to be on this site?

Static M.e.

Agree 100% with Kippy

He could be allowed Matt its lunch time :@) or working from home .. or research or.. cus he is the boss :P

kippy

9 times out of 10 HR will ask IT to define an IT policy, most of which conforms to email useage, definition of usage of internet blah blah blah...

kippy, by the looks of things your in violation of your IT policy, have you a business reason to be on this site?

Again, IT and HR work together on the policy....HR may ask for a more restrictive one than IT have defined etc.....
HR are the people who make the decisions when someone breaks policy, not IT.

I am actually at home today.
Kippy

matt-dublin

HR have to go to IT to define if there is a breach of policy or not.

kippy

HR have to go to IT to define if there is a breach of policy or not.

If there is a grey area, which is technical in nature, of course they will have to go to IT and discuss the merits of the breach and see if it is against policy. If it isnt against policy but HR feel that it should be, policy is updated, but employee may get off with a warning. After the update has been made the grey area is no longer there, hence if it happens again employee may be shown the door.
But HR work with IT to plan and manage policies such as this.

EDIT, Apologies to the OP for bringing the post off topic.
There is of course, as Matt has said, a chance the your company have no policy for this, in which case you could ring IT and clarify the situation.........

matt-dublin

I love the boards,
where everyone thinks there right an will not accept a variation because its what they do.

kippy

I love the boards,
where everyone thinks there right an will not accept a variation because its what they do.

I am explaining to you what best practices are in this regard. If that's not what you do, then I have no problems with that, but the way in which you advise the OP is of course based on your variation of how you implement policies. I think its good that the OP has an understanding of the possibilities before diving off to IT and expecting the world off them.
Kippy

matt-dublin

IT are not going to start throwing off hr guidelines and policies if you ask them to allow IM,

Its what they're there for, they'll either yey it or ney it and explain why.
Simple as that.

If your IT dept are decent people it won't be a problem, if they're lazy they'll promise you the world and never deliver, if they're strict they'll just say no.

kippy

IT are not going to start throwing off hr guidelines and policies if you ask them to allow IM,

If they say no, they have to have a reason. If this reason is in the company policy then yes, they will tell you that it is against policy.

If your IT dept are decent people it won't be a problem, if they're lazy they'll promise you the world and never deliver, if they're strict they'll just say no.

If against policy, IT departments should say no, unless HR have given the okay for this person to have messenger. HR, and indeed the legal department in bigger companies can then take the heat should a lawsuit ensure for whatever reason down the line.
Kippy

matt-dublin

@38141 ask your IT dept, see what they say, you won't get in trouble.

it would be like slapping a puppy for wanting to go out in the rain

subway

matt-dublin wrote:

it would be like slapping a puppy for wanting to go out in the rain

jaysus, thats a pretty insulting thing to say to the chap.
ask someone you sit beside before running off to the helpdesk.
theyll let you know the score with apps etc.

basic rule of thumb in these situations would be-
if its blocked then its blocked by IT
if IT have blocked it then its blocked for a reason
that reason is the AUP
the AUP is made by IT to HR's specification
the AUP is in your contract so its in your interest not to break it...or at least not get caught breaking it.

matt-dublin

not directed to anyone,

i was aiming at if you were to get given out to for asking it a question it would be like slapping a puppy for wanting to go out in the rain.

metaphors

kippy

Matt,
I see where you are coming from. There is no harm in asking IT what the policy is on this. At least you'll know for sure then.
Kippy

38141

The answer for those who are interested is meebo.com. This handy little program bypasses company firewalls very effectively

kippy

The answer for those who are interested is meebo.com. This handy little program bypasses company firewalls very effectively

Thats pretty smart all right......
Have you read anything of the last few posts?
Have you rang IT and asked them if it is okay to use this?
By its very nature, you are now blatently breaking the terms of your contract and more than likely-IT know full well that you are.
Kippy

38141

Ok for anyone who is interested, meebo.com have a free service which allows you to bypass walls, and you can log in using yahoo/google/msn id, and all your friends will be there also

Static M.e.

If your IT dept are decent people it won't be a problem, if they're lazy they'll promise you the world and never deliver, if they're strict they'll just say no.

What a load of crap... and you call yourself an IT manager, clearly the IT manager (You) should have at least the understanding of why most organisations ban IM

Im quite sure your the "Decent" sort of chap who lets users do whatever they please... and I'm sure they love you for it! While other strict IT Depts sit around and think of ways to screw the staff. Zzzzzzzzzz

petes

38141 wrote:

Ok for anyone who is interested, meebo.com have a free service which allows you to bypass walls, and you can log in using yahoo/google/msn id, and all your friends will be there also

If Yahoo IM is blocked then by using this site to bypass the restriction in place is breaking the company policy. IT will know anyway.

matt-dublin

Static M.e. wrote:

What a load of crap... and you call yourself an IT manager, clearly the IT manager (You) should have at least the understanding of why most organisations ban IM

Im quite sure your the "Decent" sort of chap who lets users do whatever they please... and I'm sure they love you for it! While other strict IT Depts sit around and think of ways to screw the staff. Zzzzzzzzzz

I allow things that i feel won't pose much threat to my network...

think of it this way, you have a laptop user who installs IM, brings his laptop home and is able to get onto IM, the machine contracts a worm through IM while at home and the anti virus doesn't catch it. he then brings it in and it propigates. either way they get on.
Or like the fella above, who find a way around it...

you can't block everything, so what you do allow you monitor.

Yahoo, MSN and google talk connect to centralised servers....
easiest way to monitor is to allow access on the afformentioned ports directly to the servers.
Keep anti virus and anti spyware updated.

As i said im an IT manager, not Director, or HR, i didn't say yey or Ney to allowing of IM, i suggested it to my Security team in Israel and they okayed it.

In the majority of small companies in ireland there's only one or two IT people, no more needed...
therefore if you ask them they're not gonna tell you to ef off...

I can understand the theory behind it but as 84121 proved above, there's no point cos there's always a way around it...

Just like when sites are blocked people use proxy sites like frastproxy.com etc. etc.

I will allow things within reason, its not like i just have an open firewall outbound. i think i have about 8 outbound ports on my firewall, and that includes smtp, yahoo, http, https, msn, ftp, icmp, realaudio (tcp & udp) one or two other things.

I would estimate by most corporate security standards that would be highly acceptable, certainly by what i've seen going on at some client sites i know of.

And i do know of several companies IT depts that affectivly don't do stuff just to piss people off, ie. the more they say no the less people ask.

If you don't have an IT background then "clearly" you shouldn't be discussing this

TimTim

matt-dublin wrote:

I would estimate by most corporate security standards that would be highly acceptable, certainly by what i've seen going on at some client sites i know of.

Depends on what sector you are in. In one place I did work experience, unless you had a legitimate business reason to be on the net, you weren't allowed on. Even then it was firewalled to hell. This was in a financial company though...

JDxtra

I’m responsible for IT in a financial organisation. If somebody asked me to permit instant message for them I’d think to myself “waster” and then reply nicely, “no”.

It does depend on the company though - some are clearly more relaxed than others. However you don't want to stick out as being a potential time waster by spending all day on Yahoo messenger!

kippy

Matt-Dublin's IT policies are his IT policies and they are sufficient for the needs of his company.
They may not be as tight as other companies but as he said all are different.

Matt, There are ways to make it impossible for an employee to use any form of messanger, I am sure you are aware of many of these, and in the strictest companies, there will be no way to use messanger.

As for people taking their laptops home, giving people admin rights on machines is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster in most cases.

There are also other "legal" implications of using instant messaging software which havent been touched on here. For instance the storing of coversational data on either third party servers or on the users computer which may be illegal in many instances, were either one of the users not aware that the information was being stored. It's something we ran into in a financial company I worked on when we tried to bring in internal instant messaging.

As Matt-Dublin pointed out, smaller companies do not have to worry so much about all these implications.

The OP is happy enough for the moment despite the warnings.

Kippy

matt-dublin

Thanks Kippy,

We have our own implementation of IM here using office live 2003, using federation, most of the users here now use their own internal accounts to connect to users on yahoo and msn.

Because of this we can archive all messages sent to and from the users, the external users recieve a message before the conversation saying that the messages are being recorded for hr policies.

Quite nifty actually.

I can also see where the financial side of thins, for security the only access most banks etc have is access to corporate email. Which is completly understandable. But as im working in a software company there's different needs.

Matt

Static M.e.

Apologies Matt for getting irritated with your comment I shouldn't have, I meant to post last night but haven't had a moment till now.

I felt at the time that you tarring IT Admins as being pricks or lazy if they didnt allow users access to whatever the general staff wanted regardless of policy or the security risks involved.

I tend to get annoyed with people such as the OP who try and circumvent IT security settings and policys so I was just venting really.

Again sorry for snaping.

matt-dublin

No problem, I'm kinda one of those IT Admins as well, i just get to tell htem what to do