My employer has set me up with a home office, BT line in, wireless router and laptop. They have also given me the WEP/WAP key for the router so I can use my personal laptop and Wii through it.

Now obviously I realise that the IT department can monitor my internet usage when on the works laptop and connected through their VPN, quite rightly so.

But if I just connect my own laptop through the router, without the VPN, is there anyway of the IT dept knowing what I am doing.

I know the STW collective will be shouting not to go on the porn sites etc but it isn’t that, I just don’t like the idea of being spied on whilst not working

BB

Theoretically, yes. Likely, No.

What kind of router is it? If its just standard BT kit then you should be fine. If its kit supplied by your IT department then it may log access. If push came to shove I’m sure your work could get logs from your ISP/BT if they wanted too (but might be a lot of hassle)

pretty much the only [reasonable] way they could do this is by setting up the router for remote admin, i.e. they can log in from anywhere to “check the status” of your router – you would be able to find out if this is the case if you have the username/password (not the WEP key) for the router.
Otherwise…….. no.

My view – if your company are paying for a separate line and router then you ought to treat it like works kit and have a ‘private’ internet connection for your own use ‘out of hours’/private stuff. You may find their router will send all traffic through a works hub or something (unlikely) but best to be safe.

It is just a standard BT router, and I do realise that they could get my history from the ISP (BT) but that sounds like an awful lot of hassle for them to go to without good reason.

It was more if they can just monitor my use without contacting BT?

BB

If it’s the standard bt business hub, you can reset the password with the WEP key that’s printed on it. You could turn off remote admin etc if you really wanted to. But I didn’t tell you that, ok. 🙂

wwaswas. I do have my own line and router in the house but at weekends/evenings when there might be 4 laptops, a Wii and a PS3 connected to it, it would be god to share the load with the works set-up.

Hence the question about privacy.

BB

fair enough – if you’re not doing anything to worry about or that would break your company rules on equipment/internet use then there’s nowt to worry about in any event.

Why would they care?

They pay a flat fee for the ADSL line, it affects them not one jot if you use it for personal use.

Your company will almost certainly get bandwidth figures from BT as part of the business deal they have with them though, far easier than messing about with remote logons and the like.

Here’s what I’d do in your situation. Ask the company if you can use it for personal use.

edit: And don’t use it for anything dodgy.

It depends. Its possible to use other utilities to log what you are browsing then interrogate that next time you are online.

Do BT routers still come out with WEP encryption rather than WPA as default? I thought this was an urban myth.

They pay a flat fee for the ADSL line, it affects them not one jot if you use it for personal use.

I believe there are tax implications – it’s seen as a perk if the company pay for ADSL and it is used personally.

Our lot install a second line for business use only to make it easy. Crazy but true.

I believe there are tax implications – it’s seen as a perk if the company pay for ADSL and it is used personally.

In which case the official answer about ‘can I use it for personal’, will be ‘no’. In reality, they’ll never check unless you get caught downloading dodgy porn or hacking NASA.

Exactly, hence why our policy is just completely retarded.

I’d have thought a signed terms of Use document agreeing to only use for business purposes would be enough, but I’m no HR guru.

The weird thing is, as I have a desk in the office (although I’m generally working on servers a few countries away) I don’t get my internet connection paid for. So if I have to work out of hours, I travel to the office to do the work and charge the travelling time in my OT.

Actually I work over my connection, notebook in one hand, bowl of Wotsits in the other but you get the idea…

I was in this situation. I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk / hassle / tax implications and switched it off. I now just use my BT line broadband. Not worth the potential grief IMHO. I am working in the public sector though, where the potential pain is probably greater.

I do have permission to use it, and I don’t plan on doing anything dodgy at all, but if one of the kids clicks on a non work safe link I don’t want to get the sack!

BB

Legally, they have to tell you if they’re monitoring you. If they haven’t, and they are, they’re breaking the law.

Realistically, I can’t see them doing it. Legality aside, it’d be non-trivial for them to do it and I can’t immediately see why they’d bother.

Do you have to run any software on your work PC to connect to the office – i.e. a VPN client – or does it link to the office as soon as you connect your PC to the router?

If the latter then the router may be set up to do a site-to-site VPN link in which case all your traffic will probably be routed via your office and subject to inspection by your companies firewalls. These would probably pick up any dodgy site access and report it to the sysadmin.

I ruled that out when the OP mentioned turning off the VPN, but yes, good point.

To use my works laptop I have to use the vpn, my personal laptop will connect to the web with no software running.

BB

Then it’s just a standard ADSL line. You could probably quite happily use it safely without any fear of retribution using your personal computer. They will never know unless they demand an investigation from BT and in reality, probably couldn’t give a toss.

It is highly doubtful that they are or even can monitor your usage, or that they care.

Non-issue in my opinion.