How to tell if your company is monitoring you at work
2:41 AM Edited by Blony
Businesses are typically well within their
rights to install software that monitors company-owned computers and reports
back to IT with details on exactly what employees are doing on the company’s
dime. There’s nothing wrong with spending a few minutes here and there checking
out the latest status updates from your Facebook friends or the latest tech
news here on BGR, but some employers might not agree. Of course the safest play
is to keep personal browsing and chats on your smartphone, but there are also
several ways to determine whether or not your computer is being monitored.
Heading over to your IT department and
asking if your computer is bugged might raise a few eyebrows, so Yahoo News
assembled a few more subtle tactics to help you find out if your company is
spying on you.
For Windows users, digging through your
start up and programs folders for entries like VNC, Shadow, Web Sleuth and
Silent Watch is a good first step for catching lazy IT workers who didn’t
bother covering their tracks.
If that doesn’t work out, the next step is
to snoop around in your Windows Firewall settings to see if permissions have
been granted to any suspicious programs. Windows Task Manager is a big help as
well, but be prepared to search Google — or Bing, or Yahoo — for every process
you don’t recognize, and there will likely be dozens.
If you’re on a Mac, Yahoo News says the
best thing to do is check out Activity Monitor and search the Web for unknown
process names to see if they might be spying software.
Remember though: Depending on the solution
your company is using to watch you, your IT department may be able to figure
out that you’re hunting for monitoring software pretty easily. Search the Web
for application and process names on your phone if possible, and definitely
don’t try to delete any suspicious software you find. Instead, use that
knowledge to your benefit by performing personal tasks on your phone. Or, Yahoo
News notes that a VPN service will allow you to surf the Web securely, thus
hiding your traffic from the corporate network.
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