My comapny is spying on me - What can i do?

[Gooch]

Email I got from the Corporate Head at work:

We would like to remind everyone that all (SHITTY COMPANY I WORK FOR) employees are responsible for using email and the Internet in accordance with company policy. These systems are provided for conducting company business and are intended for that purpose alone. Everything created, sent, received or stored in the system is a company record and property of (SHITTY COMPANY I WORK FOR); therefore no privacy rights exist with reference to this data. In addition, the company can monitor sites visited, chat room activities as well as all email communication. Please be aware that when you delete an email it isn’t eliminated from the system – data is backed up and retained for an indefinite period of time.



Questions for someone:

1. Can they monitor chatroom activities?

2. Anyway to mask or beat the system?

[QuickStop]

get a laptop and satelite internet connection



Edited By QuickStop on 1034729112

[AdolescentMasturbator]

They are technically and legally able to do it.

You could use a site proxy like subdimension or anonymizer but program ones tend to be better like say MultiProxy or JAP because they tunnel thru hundreds of ips so it looks more discrete.



Edited By AdolescentMasturbator on 1034729366

[QuickStop]

so i was right then?

[Galt]

Bill Gates monitors all your traffic and if you get 50 replies to this post, you will win a free trip to Disneyworld

[Gooch]

how exactly can they monitor chatroom activities...that's what I'm curious about (i wonder if they referring to AIM?).

[AdolescentMasturbator]

They may have programs that log everything. They do this to weed out potentially offensive stuff because they get sued often by whiny employees who were too nosy and read someone else's email and got offended.

[Buttmunch]

Switch the wiring with the closest person to you.

Then when they come looking for the guy who is downloading kiddie porn, they bust your neighbor.

[Galt]

I am no techie, from they can save all static pages, but there is no way for them to save any dynamic pages, java applets, chats, etc.

AIM, Yahoo messenger, maybe, but I think even that might not be possible.

I think it's more like Joe McCarthy waving a handful of pages saying that he has a list of communists just to scare people straight, when in fact he had nothing on anyone.

[Arthur Dent]

Not only can they track every IP you visit, if they want they can record every single keystroke of your computer for later review and comparison. Most companies don't bother cause it's expensive for the software licenses and the manpower to review the records.

How big is your company? If it's more than a hundred people, you have to raise a flag first. Like being in the top ten for total internet usage or attempting to access banned sites repeatedly.

Your on dangerous ground if you start messing with proxy avoidance and such. Could raise a flag and cause them to watch closely for an excuse to fire you.

[Gooch]

There's over 700 onsite, and over 1000 company wide. I can dig and see exactly what they have...but i'm trying to get a bead on what is possible. Chances are, they won't go for the keystrokes. They are a private company, not some public big brother monstrosity...however, they are trying to set tone b/c of some wildly outrageous email behavior that had been going on...so they are latecomers to handling the email/IM/chats and are overreacting, to boot.

[FollowThisLogic]

I would think that, without the ability to log keystrokes, they wouldn't be able to monitor chat activity. They probably also wouldn't be able to get the data inputted on a form (like a board post), but they'd be able to see that you went to CDIH.net...

[fbd]

but they'd be able to see that you went to CDIH.net...

a site that has an over 18/under 18 choice at the front page...probably raises a flag or two. lay low from work for a bit, or use anonymizers until they calm down

[Kid Afrika]

Most SYSADMIN's worth their salt will use a proxy server. As I understand it that proxy server can record any and all activity that goes through it. That means anything you send is logged by who sent it and where it went. The way I see it, if your supervisor is happy with the quality and quantity of work that you do, then you have nothing to worry about. That is as long as you are talking shit about your company, or sharing sensitive documents.

How can you beat it? Easy, get a laptop with a modem and use a dial-up. That bypasses all internal networks and gives you a straight pipe to the Net on which your company has no control.

[Gooch]

Does anyone know about this software????


Anonymizer Secure Tunneling SSH Service

Protect all of your online activities with Anonymizer's maximum-strength encryption service.

Secure all of your Internet communications (email, web surfing, newsgroups, IRC, ICQ, etc) with strong SSH encryption

Includes all of the features of Anonymous Web Surfing, including the optional Anonymizer Privacy Button.

Protects against the most sophisticated forms of snooping.
* Not compatible with AOL
Note: Secure Tunneling SSH service requires SSH encryption software. If you do not already have software, we recommend our Ultimate Security package, which includes the Secure Tunneling SSH service and custom Anonymizer SSH Tunneling software for easy setup and use.

You can use your Anonymizer Secure Tunneling account to encrypt the Internet activity between your computer and our servers. This prevents any servers between you and us, such as your ISP, from monitoring your activities. Anonymizer Secure Tunneling accounts allow you to encrypt your incoming and outgoing email, surfing and news posts through a method known as port forwarding. This service can be used independently of or transparently in conjunction with Anonymizer Surfing.


Diagram of how it works

[Kid Afrika]

Gooch, you do realize that you could be fired for installing unauthorized software on your company's pc, don't you?

[Keyser Soze]

You could, but its a grey area and it depends on your company, how valuable you are, if you are productive, if you aren't sharing company documents or talking shit about them, and if its not interfering with your work.

[Gooch]

I authorize the software, Kid. Plus, I am not purchasing it, but trying to assess. (the only software we are not allowed to have is AIM, besides unlicensced stuff).

Frankly, I will continue to do what I am doing b/c there are no set legal precepts of what sites I can or can't be on (in my company bluebook) though I won't be delving into the porn/racy/bizarre nethers for materials for sig pics at work...however, the email situation is not a prob. As for the chats...not an issue either.

[PlasticMan]

What about FTP? Could my company see the FTP site that I accessed, or file names, or (yikes!) the actual files I downloaded?

Once upon a time, before I came to my senses, I would occasionally d/l porn off a non-existant server...

[PlasticMan]

while I'm all for getting the last word in, I had really hoped that someone would know the answer to the ftp question...

Anybody?
Anybody?
Buehler?