this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
6 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

31701 readers
270 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
all 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

if you don't have your personal browsing using a private profile of a secondary browser which you know you can delete, you are doing it wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I can still see that activity. You're still doing it wrong.

Personal device not on corporate network or you're doing it wrong.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As an IT administrator, if your org has GPOs controlling if you can delete your browsing history or not, there is no chance you will be able to install a second browser without admin credentials.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I can confirm there are places where that is possible.

Also as long as they do not whitelist executables, you could use a portable version of a browser.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And you would still get caught on the company device trusting company CAs, thus enabling them to decrypt all your traffic.

Use a personal device on a personal network for personal stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I was talking about the history on device, of course I agree: never expect privacy on a device controlled by someone else.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Joke's on you, I'm the network admin in the office.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m an infrastructure analyst and at my workplace I implement such rules for specific reasons: 1) we need to be able to have evidence should an employee act maliciously with a company device. We do also monitor all queries but it’s passive. We can drill into your browsing history in great detail but won’t unless we have to (speaking personally here as I follow the code). 2) people will do dumb shit. And will lie to get support. Now, having been on the other end of a support ticket, I get it. Unless you lie a little, you may not get support promptly. Therefore, it’s part of my job to check what’s the lie and what’s the actual issue, which includes being able to see the download history. I would not be surprised if malware is accidentally downloaded and then it autonomously removes itself from the download history as It has happened before. Strictly speaking, this is done for both your safety as well as that of the company. And generally speaking, you should NEVER use your work laptop/phone/iPad for personal use because of all of the above.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I use my personal laptop at work, no issues. Employer can't see what I'm doing which is the way it should be.

If they don't trust me, don't hire me then.

I would never work anywhere where people like you can watch what I'm doing. Luckily I'm in IT so I choose where I work.

I despise companies who don't give employees privacy. The reasons you gave means nothing. You can always argue for anything to protect the company. Who protects the employees?

Safest for the company would be if you have employees in small cells being watched by guards around the clock. That would be really good for the company.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If you've connected your personal laptop to your work wifi, they 100% can see all your browsing history (specifically whats passed through their network).

Hell, I only run a simple homelab and I can see the exact traffic/browsing history of every device on my home network. I'm only tracking via dns traffic, but your https traffic can even be intercepted and decrypted pretty easily. So don't even trust that.

This doesn't require installing anything on your device to fully monitor you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You’re not wrong. It really comes down to how ethical the IT/company is. And we are, purposely so. Also we have dns-over-https and No other identifier is parsed through. So we can see and block someone browsing porn on the guest Wi-Fi, but we’d never know who it was. Look, I’m not saying things are perfect, but there are people like me who look out for both the user and the company. The goal is ensure that users privacy is respected and that the company is protected agains misuse, malicious intent or just plain bad-luck. This is the “code” I was referring to. As IT people we have to behave ethically for business we operate in. It’s not perfect but nobody is trying to be. This is all best effort from all parties.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Your ethics goes out the window when being told to do something by your employer.

Maybe you try to look out for the user, but it's completely wrong that employees should have to trust you to do that.

"Company being protected from misuse" is a blanket term for survellience, same as "fighting terrorism".

I still stand by my opinion. Companies need to trust employees and not run survellience programs against them. It's just wrong.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Sure but I work from home. Don't use their wifi except when I'm in the office. I could connect to a VPN and they would also see a connection to a VPN, but I don't care enough to do that.

But when I'm at home, working on my computer, they don't see anything.