147 points

This is why keeping work accounts, machines, and activities separate is always a good idea. In this case Gary did have “something to hide”.

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29 points

Nonsense! Calum is doing what Calum does at home. If the company doesn’t want to see it they shouldn’t be watching him like that when he’s at home.

Remember: Calum isn’t feeling well. Any doctor would say Calum is doing his part to get better and stay healthy!

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75 points

Calum is using a work machine for personal actuvities, though. A little Youtube never hurt anyone but straight-up watching porn “between enquiries”, which sounds like during work hours or something, is kinda not on.

Work shouldn’t distrust employees this much and these measures never lead to increased productivity but Calum is also a complete fucking idiot.

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23 points

I read it as likely to be a personal computer using a remote connection, mostly because Gary told Calum how to hide the screen on the remote connection instead of telling them not to do it on a work computer.

Either way, being called out for watching porn while apparently working from home due to something they need to recover from is priceless.

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2 points
*

Work shouldn’t distrust employees this much

If he’s using an RDP connection then it’s not about work not trusting him, it’s about him leaving all the defaults on. Standard behavior for RDP connections is for the computer to essentially just take commands from a remote mouse and keyboard as if they are commands from the local peripherals.

The computer doesn’t know anything about the remote connection, so it’s just operating as usual which is why everyone can see the screen, because under normal operations that’s but a computer does.

The email is just advising him to maybe change some of the settings so that it doesn’t behave as default.

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36 points

You seem to misunderstand. The tech isn’t saying, “Hey, we’re watching you,”, they’re saying, “Hey, your monitor here at work is showing off everything you’re doing and everyone in the office can see.”

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11 points

Any doctor would say Calum is doing his part to get better and stay healthy!

Calum is expelling his demons and should recover twice as fast!

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-3 points

Akshually - jizzing will take valuable energy and resources away from getting better.

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9 points

When I used to travel for work, I carried two laptops despite the hassle.

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7 points

A decade ago, I watched a scientist at a conference plug his laptop in to the conference room, wake it up, sync to the Big Screen, load xvideos tab he had up, and then watched him flounder for a good 20 seconds to try to figure out how to close it and save face before loading a PowerPoint.

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5 points

My manager did that but he had the porn side open on a different tab. He spent the entire presentation not noticing.

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1 point

Was he at least watching something good?

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2 points

If BYOD was allowed I’d probably get a laptop with two M.2 drives and keep work and personal on separate OSs on separate drives, both encrypted so they can’t access each other’s files.

Best of both worlds.

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6 points

I’d rather not wear out my hardware for work

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3 points

Nope. If I have to wander around going to various work sites and getting the laptop rained on, baked by the sun, sprinkled with dust and grass cuttings, and generally getting kicked about it’s going to be a work device not my own.

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126 points

I also work from home and use my work laptop for work only. Not even googling stuff, nothing. Just work. Never even opened the media player or went to youtubes website once.

I have my own computer running on a separate screen and I can do and watch whatever the fuck I want during working hours. I can play a game or watch a movie and nobody knows. Its that simple.

Same with phones. Never use work phone for personal stuff.

Its not even being tech savvy, just common sense ffs.

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12 points

Same here. It also removes some hassle when changing jobs. All of your personal stuff is on the computer you own and all of the work stuff is on the the computer the company owns. Just turn in your work laptop and you’re done with that place and on to the next.

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6 points

I work in the IT department for my company so I know for a fact that there’s no monitoring on the work laptops, which is super strange but whatever.

Still I wouldn’t use the work laptop for anything other than work activities because despite the fact I 100% know there’s no monitoring I still don’t trust it. Besides, It’s unprofessional, and although I don’t really care about that all that much, it’s good to get into the habit of not doing personal activities on a work laptop, because one day they might start monitoring, and this way I’m already in the habit of not doing anything personal.

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7 points

Additionally, never connect your phone to the company WiFi

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4 points

Definitely if they require you to use sso, but if it’s just guest wifi that anyone with a password can access, I wouldn’t worry about monitoring.

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4 points

This is the way

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75 points

Why is he watching it inside the remote connection window instead of his own browser?

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66 points

Boomers

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12 points

I don’t understand how it’s such an impossible concept for them.

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6 points

You’ll understand more as you age

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4 points
*

Remote connections have being a thing since before Windows, so they really don’t have “boomers” as an excuse. Lacking the critical thinking skills of a dung beetle is more what I was thinking

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73 points
*

Thanks Gary,

Now that I know you can see me, I can wank much better.

Best, Calum

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4 points

PS Can you help me figure out how to get my camera up over there?

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48 points

I have been working from home for years and my employer is not watching our screen. However about a decade ago we received a company wide email from an admin reminding everyone that they can see DNS requests when we’re connected to the VPN.

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33 points

Thats why i have a laptop for work, solely for work, nothing but work right next to my big rig

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17 points

Wait they didn’t give you a laptop? If they want you to work remotely they really should be giving you a device.

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3 points
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Nah, i actually wanted to use my own equipment (tax purposes). All the shit is web based anyway

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1 point
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They have to in this country. As we deal with not-secret-but-private stuff at my job, they had to supply us some gear to lock down and we DMZed it.

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13 points

Sounds like he’s remoting into the computer in the office from another computer at home (pretty common in IT since you probably have admin tools perfectly configured on that computer and specifically configured for its network config) but with Windows Remote Access it lets the person physically at the computer see everything by default. But i would really hope that someone in IT would be painfully aware of why you shouldn’t do sensitive personal browsing on a work computer or a work network

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5 points

I don’t RDP that often to physical devices, but I’m pretty damn sure the default settings for RDP forcefully logs/locks out your user on the physical device and only your lock screen is visible. I have never tried it but I’m also pretty sure it’s possible to have two logged in users at once, one using RDP and one using the physical device.

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2 points
*

I was blanking pretty hard when I wrote that and meant to write RDP while thinking of TeamViewer. Need to post stuff less late at night

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1 point

Remote access with continuum/connectwise, TeamViewer, etc gains access to the screen including for control but doesn’t normally black out anything locally.

If its in a common area with speakers, anyone can both see and hear anything done on the machine.

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1 point

For desktop windows this is not true. A remote sign in will sign out the local user and vice versa

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4 points

pretty common in IT

I’ve never heard of anyone in IT regularly remoting to their work computer.

If we remote anywhere it is to a jump host, and those are terminal servers, so no monitor connected.

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4 points

Yeah this is a pretty weird setup they’ve got going on.

Like you say they’re going to be remoting onto their work computer and then having their remote connection remote onto another remote terminal server.

It’s a holographic holodeck all over again.

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1 point

I think it’s kind of an old school way of doing things. My old sys admin boss did that every day up until her retired.

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8 points

That means they’re monitoring them … Gotta exploit that, see what happens.

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