How to keep an employee from web surfing/personal email at work?

Is their a way to monitor or somehow capture browsing history on an employee to track how much personal time they're spending at work surfing the web/facebook, and chatting via email to people in her personal life?
Any suggestions?

 

You can block facebook, myspace kind website another way is to use some tracking software.

This tool is for personal use www.iambigbrother.com , search google for business tools.

 

There's got to be a lot of programs out there that can do this like:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=block...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

if you close the access totaly is not good because some times people need to surf for the work. it is better to use program that gives limited access to sites like google or anything else that you like but not to other sites.

 

use dd-wrt on the router to block specific urls, eg facebook, etc

 

It's a free software that you install on a computer that will tell you how the user spends their time, not only on Facebook but all other sorts of data. Very cool.

 

Try using 321meet. It enables you to share your employees screen as well as controlling it. With that, you can browse his/her history as well as tracking their active programs. Using this product helps me to track their computer usage. It's really great and economical as I'm using it for free!

 

If you've got the money then get yourself TeamViewer or just hire your employees from oDesk.com the next time heh

 

Get a keylogger for browsing history etc.

 

There are alot of options, you can create a small linux server (old 266MHZ intel processor will suffice, so any old computer is fine), two network cards and run a squid proxy to block FB/social networking and msn traffic, Simple and extremely affordable solution

 

If they're working right there in the office, you can check the browser history at the end of the day. Otherwise, you'll have to get some tracking software or block certain websites.

dolphin fact

 

If you can't check the history the best way is to block facebook, myspace and etc.

 

well obviously 321meet.com is an online meeting solution and not really a security tool that would monitor employees from web surfing and doing personal stuff..

As far as monitoring, can you not just block sites that you think are distracting him/her from doing her work?

 

One company I worked at used their own server as a dns server and routed certain sites to other work related sites. Desktop shark is a great monitoring tool though, can be used over the network too. Google it for more info.

Also, not sure whic country you are located in but certain kinds of monitoring such as keylogging on office computers is legal however you must notify employees - in case you capture bank login details for example without them knowing.

 

You can block any site you want from your network.. "how to block a certain site", Google it.

 

If you wanted to get real draconian you could force them to use your company proxy server and lock them out from being able to make changes.

I have seen more studies that say fighting with employees over restricted websites (unless you are in a regulated industry) wastes a lot more company resources than allowing them to surf (mostly - not talking about porn or other stuff) freely. People can generally find a way if they want to, and you just force them to waste more time finding a workaround.

 

Well, you could setup your office/ work space as a network and simply block the IP's of the sites you dean not acceptable.

You may also, once a network is setup, make accounts for each employee in your system and limit the things they can do in there account for windows or linux. Once you do that, you can simply blacklist the sites in internet explorer with specific site names, IPs, and categories. Then simply lock all settings in Internet Options in IE.

There is a lot of way to go about doing this.

 

You could either block the social media sites or let them install a time tracking software. There are lots of time tracking tools that are free, you could check out TimeDoctor. I've been using it for months now and it's been really great. If you want something else, you could also use the odesk's time tracking tool.

 

I actually like the idea that you are only seeking to monitor how she uses her computer for personal matters and not totally blocking her access. That is because talking from experience, totally blocking access for personal emails, Facebook, etc could backfire and could even make the employee more unproductive.

Use some kind of non-restrictive tracking software that would track her computer work and activities. Non-restrictive because you still allow her access but this time you have supervision and you would exactly know how she spends her work hours. That way you could confront or take necessary measures for her to comply.

 

To be honest, tell the employee to only use the work computer for work related business. He you catch him using personal websites during work time, fire him. He is obviously not doing his job to full potential. So therefore, you can find someone better.

There shouldn't be a need for blocking websites. You gave this person a job and they better do that job.