I don’t think there’s anything wrong with posting this in GQ, as there’s nothing illegal about my question…
One of my coworkers, for some reasons, suspects that someone at work is monitoring us through taking screen shots of our computers. Maybe another method. Didn’t get a chance to find out why she thought that… but I found myself curious about it.
I’m allowed to do misc computer stuff at work (web, IM, etc) so long as it’s not interfering with my work. But the idea of someone taking a screen shot and, for example, catching a private IM conversation bothers me.
What sort of software is most common for this sort of monitoring? Would I find a process in my process list for the program that monitored me? What should I look for?
If you have an internal network, everything you do on the internet is going through a company-owned machine at some point. They can easily monitor everything that goes through that machine without any of you noticing. If you’re online at work, assume your employer is watching everything you’re doing.
When I handled networking I was shocked when I started to find a key stroke logger. It wasn’t turned on and no one had a damned idea how it got there. After much researched I learned it and a lot of monitoring devices where there but for lack of a full time IT person never used.
One thing you need to be very careful of is employement agreements thru H/R. I found in my office everyone signed an agreement saying NO PERSONAL uses for computers. Did everyone do it. Yes. But the fact remained, even if you had written authorization from the General manager you were still in contempt of your agreement, in my company at least.
So it was an easy way to get you laid off quick.
Depending on what rights you have to your computer. Most of the times you can look in your registry and see. But unless you are a computer person DON’T DO THIS. It’s too easy to screw things up and then you’d have to get your IT person to restore it and he’d want to know why you were in it.
As for IM that is downright foolish. You can download devices that can capture IM such as Yahoo and AIM very easily so it may be your co-worker who is capturing your personal IM. These are not encrypted and very easy to intercept by anyone.
Especially if your networked. As I said to the employees if you wouldn’t want the General Manager or the CEO to see it. Don’t send it.
Can you bring a laptop into work? If so then buy your own laptop hook up to wireless network and set the laptop next to you for your IMs etc.
The best programs will not show up as tasks or are named things that look like system files. In many cases as already mentioned you don’t need to load software on the PC’s because the tracking goes on at the server level. Depending on the types of networks and or intranets your company uses they can intercept damn near anything you are doing. Several monitoring tools are alos hardware based like this keyboard and will arise little suspicion to even saavy users.
If you don’t want to get in trouble, do your work. No matter how sneaky you think you are there is an IT tool to find you.
This will reveal key loggers & monitoring root kits if they are installed on the PC. Network access monitoring via the server (if occurring) is not something I really think you’re e going to be able to detect.
There are keyloggers and site loggers that are commonly available to anyone with the money to buy them. I’ve bought one. They include options like hiding their presence from the user entirely.
As said above, if you’re running through a corporate network, it’s possible at the least that all your net usage is being logged.
We were told outright when we were hired that every single phone call is recorded, and that even if we delete the email off our machine, it is still on the server along with any IM we send in or out of network. Heck, they can even track what we print out.
I even have the dubious pleasure of sitting more or less where I am under constant observation by the security camera - but since I work in the building totally alone all day sunday this is not a bad thing, at least they will have a nice clear shot of whoever comes in and kills me=)
ALthough we do have a discussion on right now if we are being recorded even when we are not on teh phone. When hung up, I still every now and then get that little beep tone that in a call signals I am being recorded…so I just automatically assume that everything I say and do at work is monitored and behave=)
Just to echo the already stated opinions… if the guy’s the least bit concerned, he should just assume that he’s being monitored. There’s no reliable way to tell. Hell, even if he finds a monitoring program on his system, it could very well be a trap – disable it and another, better hidden program could let his bosses know that not only is he doing things he shouldn’t be doing, he’s hacking company computers to remove security features. Even without that, the sudden lack of monitoring feedback from that program could trigger a security response – akin to a security camera suddenly going blank. It’s a bad idea either way.
It’s a bit different in your case since you’re actually allowed to do things provided they don’t interfere with your time, but if the stuff is meant to be private… well, just don’t send it over company resources (computers, internet connections, telephone lines, mail systems, ANYTHING that they own or control).
If you have your own laptop that you can use (meaning not company-owned or company-controlled in any way), consider getting a cellular Internet plan that’ll let you bypass their networks. Then, unless they’re physically monitoring your typing somehow or sniffing radio traffic, you should be okay.
The worst thing you can do if you think you’re being monitored on your work computer is to try and install things to circumvent/detect it. If they are monitoring you and see this activity it might be viewed as grounds for termination (depending on where you work, of course). A little bit of forum posting is not likely to get most people in too much trouble, but installing an app to remove the monitoring software is likely to make them think you’re about to do something seriously bad.
Besides, there’s no sure way to find out. The only way to be sure would be to wipe the PC and install the OS yourself, which may or may not be feasible where you work.
Oh, and all internet activity is most likely logged to some extent, even if it’s just aggregated stats at the firewall. People may not be reviewing the data, but the data is almost certainly there.
Thanks for the info. I’m not too concerned with it, but I did want to figure out a way to at least see if that was the case or not. There main computer savvy guy in the office is my supervisor, and I know he’s cool with us playing on the internet as long as work is getting done - he even told me that right in the job interview. However, I hear conflicting things about the main boss, and it doesn’t seem like it’d be above him…
I knew that network traffic can be monitored at any point - I’m not truly worried about the security of IMs and such. I’d prefer they not be read, of course, but I’m not sending love letters to my ultra secret gay lover armondo.
I was wondering about the screen shot monitoring program specifically - I knew that the process would have to show up on my computer somewhere, even if innocuously named, so I was wondering what to look for. I’ll try out that blacklight program.
Even with a detection program, you can’t be sure. Properly done, spyware can be very difficult to detect, especially if they’re placed on the computer before the monitoring/detection program. The spying programs and the counter-spying programs are always battling for supremacy and there’s no reliable way of finding the former without using another computer-- and even then you have to know exactly what to look for.
From the Blacklight website:
(Emphasis mine). That particular paragraph is talking about malware, but the same thing applies to spyware.
The worst thing you can do in this case – if you really care about your privacy – is to have a false sense of security. Don’t trust them. Don’t trust their computer. DON’T TRUST ANYONE!
But seriously, detection progs on the same computer can only notify you when they actually detect something – a scan with no results doesn’t necessarily mean that your computer is clean; it only means that the detection program failed to find anything it recognized.
Not to mention doing this could make you feel safe when someone could come by and reinstall monitoring apps after normal working hours. As mentioned above, the only safe way is to get your own machine, with your own wireless setup using your own wireless provider.
I saw an employee get nailed for using a FAX line near her desk for accessing dialup because someone started asking why the bill for the fax line was 25x more than last month. Many business phone lines are billed per minute even for local usage.
I have found keyloggers on my work computer. Dont know if management installed them. However I have no problem about removing them with say spybot etc as if anyone questions it I just innocently reply that I though they must have been spyware downloaded inadvertently from the net, and felt it important that the security of our computers be maintained at all cost.
