Blocking personal email at work
October 2nd, 2009
I just found out that we started blocking access to Gmail at work. The reason for it being blocked was that too many people were on it during the day using a good deal of bandwidth. However, Gmail is the only email service that is blocked. Is this fair to Gmail users at work? Is it their fault that Gmail rocks and is a very popular service? If one email service is blocked, shouldn’t they all be blocked?
I am not in favor of the way this was handled. I would have come up with either throttling the bandwidth to all outside email site, or block them all. I don’t think its fair to allow some people access to their personal emails and not others. It’s kind of like saying people with red vehicles cannot park in our parking lot, but all other vehicles are allowed to.
I strongly feel that this need to be revisited.
[poll: 6]
**************UPDATE 10/16/09**************
We are now blocking Hotmail as well. We are getting a lot of emails asking us to unblock it. It’s kinda fun to see all the reasons why they need it unblocked. I still think that blocking personal email is not right as long as a user isn’t abusing it.
Categories: Computers
