"Big Brother"

[sillygirl]

Hey ya'll -

Need some suggestions - big brother is coming to town. We are a small office, separated from the rest of our company by several states. Up till now, we have operated independently in terms of internet access.

The home office is in the process of setting us up on their WAN and will have the ability to monitor every workstation, internet activity, etc. Not that any of us are doing things we shouldn't, but we don't want "big brother" watching every single thing we do (such as accessing our personal e-mail accounts during lunch, IM'ing each other (within the office), etc.

We are thinking about maybe setting up a separate wireless network on our own but wanted to throw this out to you guys to see if any of you have run into this and overcome it.

Let me know,

Kim

 

[RealBlackStuff]

A flawed idea. "Big Brother" will also be monitoring your activities over the wireless network or whatever else you want to set up.
Only those PCs that are NOT connected to the company's WAN can do what they want.
(And I don't mean: pull the WAN network cable temporarily, the absence from the WAN will be noted as well).
Better to try and make an arrangement with the boss or IT-people, but you'll have only a small chance, because they (boss and/or IT) must have their reasons for wanting to monitor you in the first place...

 

[sillygirl]

Big Brother

They are on a mission to monitor everyone - we're all (several offices) being connected by the wan. We were thinking about using another source, separate from the existing work stations, to use with a wireless (we knew our absence would be noted....). Some of us never have need to log into the existing metaframe now as weuse a program that lives locally (no plans to move that particular program to the wan).

So we were thinking maybe laptops with wireless connections.......?

btw - go guinness.....and harp......and bass.....and......!!

Kim

 

[Nodsu]

The main question is how and what exactly are they going to monitor and whether anyone is going to bother looking at the monitoring results.

If they are going to put some "management" software on the PCs themselves then it is pretty clear you can't use those computers for whatever you don't want to be seen.

If the PCs will be clean and only the network traffic through the WAN link will be monitored then you just need your own internet connection and set up the PCs so that all the WAN traffic goes through the WAN and all the internet traffic goes through your own internet connection.

If there will be network monitoring devices then you will have to build your own separate network not connected to the monitored one.

I am very curious what sort of a company would actually waste resources to watch so closely over their employees. The maximum paranoia I can imagine is general monitoring of internet traffic (looking for porn and illegal references, hoggers and chatters if chat is not allowed) and some profylactic overview of the workstations to make sure no "bad" software is installed.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

No problems setting up a separate network with wireless access, BUT...
Where is the wireless network getting its connection to the web FROM?
Install a separate ISP? At whose expense? What if someone comes in unexpectedly to fix an issue with the company WAN, or just someone from management, how do you explain the extra hardware?

Grow up and bite the bullet, if they are out to catch you, they will!
Do you want a job, or surf the net on the dole?

PS: Bass is not Irish, would not touch it with a bargepole...

 

[Liquidlen]

Would it not be more appropriate to wait and see exactly; what type of system is installed, what type of watchdog software is used and what the network manager allows in terms of personal activity at the individual workstations.
There are just too many permutations .Get back to us after it is installed.


BTW , I would not mess with Real...'s Guinness if I were you.