The Brian Lehrer Show

If you log in to a web mail service such as gmail using HTTPS, that only applies to the login page. Your login data is usually sent using HTTPS, but then the actual mail exchange can be viewed by many-a-savvy hacker

Be very careful using the comments the author on the radio is suggesting, she is leaving out a lot of details (I'm sure due to time constraints). IT professionals are good at what they do.

While web-based e-mail was still blocked at my job, some co-workers found a clever way to get to gmail:

For some reason, our company's security settings cannot block Gmail if you launch it from within the Google "Talk" program.

Of course downloading Google Talk was also blocked, but I downloaded the setup file on another computer, and e-mailed it to my work address. But then there was another problem: my work e-mail security blocked the attachement! Refusing to give up, I burned that setup file onto a CD and brought THAT to my work pc. I was able to install Google Talk that way, and launch Gmail!

I honestly would have quit and gone to another company if I had stayed totally unable to use my web-based e-mail for eight hours a day. I hope this suggestion helps some listeners!

A simple solution is to carry a U3-complaint thumb drive. You can run your own version of Firefox from the drive, and automatically load your saved tabs each time you start it. But it doesn't work on a Mac.

Plus, you're not affecting the Registry entries on the PC you're using. The Web sites you go to will see the company's IP address, but you can use a proxy service to mask this.

In case you lose it, it's password protected

I work in the IT field. What you haven't addressed is the number of users who download some tools (codecs) to watch videos and end up downloading viruses or spyware. These end up wasting a lot of everybody's time. The internet is a lot more dangerous today than it was in the past. Would you like to be in a hospital or deal with a bank where most computers are infected with viruses, password stealing trojans or spyware?

IT professionals work hard to protect companies from hackers. Please don't make their life more difficult.