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This happened to me years ago. I was put in an empty office at the opposite end from my boss, and because he couldn't walk up behind me to see me working, he s
by sbarre 7y ago
This happened to me years ago. I was put in an empty office at the opposite end from my boss, and because he couldn't walk up behind me to see me working, he secretly installed a program on my computer that took a screenshot every 30 seconds (or so?).
I quickly noticed that my computer was hitching regularly (when the screenshot was taken - this was in the late 90s BTW), and so investigated my computer on a day when he wasn't in the office.
After finding what looked like malware on my computer, I checked with other colleagues - and the other owner - and no one had any idea what it was.
So we put the office network on lockdown, halted everything and started the process of rotating all our passwords and scanning every computer in the office looking for signs of intrusion, etc..
We lost a solid day of productivity for everyone, and when we finally reached the other boss, he owned up to what he had done, and the other owner - who had spent the day in a panic - wasn't thrilled about it to say the least.
The irony was that I was probably the most productive person in that office (in my humble opinion).
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y agoWhere I live what he did is a fairly serious criminal offence.
- adwww 7y agoWaves in European...
- usui 7y agoWhat does this mean?
- cheeze 7y agoadwww is implying that this would be illegal in EU (unsure if that is true or not) and is "greeting" the other poster saying "hey, I'm European too"
- adwww 7y ago> this would be illegal in EU Not quite, but privacy rules that protect employees from overzealous employers are common in most European nations (EU or not), to varying degrees.
- sbarre 7y agoI believe he's referencing European privacy laws in an unnecessarily oblique manner.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bmn__ 7y agoIt's a snowclone/memetic mutation of the "Laughs in Spanish" meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laughs-in-spanish https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laughs-in-spanish
- tnolet 7y agoIn Dutch law and pretty sure German law an employee has the right to privacy. This extends to the personal use of company supplied equipment.
- ianai 7y agoIt appears to be standard practice everywhere in corporate America.
- californical 7y agoIt's standard practice if you agree to it in your employment contract.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoAnd if you don't, you generally don't get employed.
- jlarocco 7y agoThat's not true. I've been working in software for almost 20 years and have never had spyware like this installed on my PCs. I've worked for companies with over 70k employees, down to start ups with fewer than 100. Both in office and remote. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's definitely not normal, and I would personally never work under those conditions.
- novok 7y agoAs a contractor or a full time employee at the 70k people companies? Was it in the past 10 years? If you used a company provided computer, did you investigate what was running? Did you go beyond the typical process manager and look into the kernel modules list? They often don't disclose explicitly that this stuff is running, because it rightfully creeps people out and the 'security' types don't want people to know.
- HenryBemis 7y agoContractor here, I mainly work on mega-big corporations. I always check what run on my PC. I never use the work machines for anything personal. FFS I don't even use their guest wifi. I stick to my data plan. I have noticed the last few years that BlueCoat is on the rise. From some article a couple of months back I read that the company/Fund that owned BC also bought Sophos.
- sbarre 7y agoNot in 1998 it wasn't.
- gambiting 7y agoIs it? What kind of crime would it fall under, and where is that?
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y agoNorwegian privacy law.
- gambiting 7y ago"privacy" is not a crime, you need to be more specific. I would maybe understand if the employer was taking pictures of the employee with a webcam, but they were taking screenshots of the machine owned by the company - how is there any expectation of privacy if you're using company equipment?
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y agoI updated comment.
- lodovic 7y agoThe toilet is company equipment, too.
- gambiting 7y agoThere is an expectation of privacy when using the bathroom though. There isn't when using a company issued computer, your employeer controls all the software on it, controls the network traffic - why would anyone have an expectation that what they use it for remains private? It's like there's no expectation of privacy when using an industrial lathe - it's meant for a specific purpose, if you use it for private purposes while at work, you shouldn't be expecting that to remain hidden from your employeer.
- Symbiote 7y agoIf I take a personal note using a company-issued pen, must that be disclosed to my employer? It's not black and white, and many people will have some expectation of privacy when using company-provided equipment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoNo where is this a criminal offense in the USA. In fact, “spy software” installed on company computers is widely common.
- tzm 7y agoSpying on your employee, or using covert monitoring tactics, is rarely legal. Not sure on the criminality, but privacy laws are enforceable. Also, there's a distinction between monitoring and spying. Ex: California Social Media Law (2013) https://readwrite.com/2013/01/15/californias-new-privacy-laws-stop-employers-from-social-snooping/ https://readwrite.com/2013/01/15/californias-new-privacy-law...
- novok 7y agoThey install cameras everywhere, they have a full rootkit on your machine, they log every network interaction and email/chat and they let themselves do it through 100s of pages of policy documents that you have to sign as a condition of employment. It might as well be covert in practice.
- agkkeoo 7y agoUsing snooping software for recording of all command lines, including arguments, is common practice at many companies. Also when network connections are recorded it does not stop at a list of ips, surveillance software commonly also provide easy-to-consume search facilities and cross reference capabilities, dashboards including comprehensive history and supplied annotation, i.e can tell when and how often you visited facebook.com, what you looked at, how much time you have spent at non-essential sites, and of course it also does this when you're at home using your employer's laptop for WFH or anything else. The same is true when using a company phone when travelling, it can not only tell your employer where you're staying currently, but also where you usually stay at your holidays. One such software is ms atp, if you have "Advanced Threat Protection" installed, it does occur. I would be surprised if it holds up in any EU court, because when I worked with development of similar software, long before gdpr, it did not.
- 7y ago
- lmilcin 7y agoIf this was 90s then as I remember there were not yet standards to deal with this kind of problem. Actually, thinking about this now, I don't even remember they existed this type of software in 90s but I might be mistaken.
- mathgeek 7y agoIt definitely existed in some form by the late 90's. I recall very basic surveillance and remote control software being installed on school machines back then.
- na85 7y agol0pht's Back Orifice tool (see: spyware) existed back then.
- sbarre 7y agoI think this might actually have been what he used. I am actually still friends with the guy (we were both quite young back then, and you learn from your mistakes), and I tease him about this incident at least every few years.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoprob not if you agree to it. You are getting paid to work, the computer is owned by the company so ...
- cfv 7y agoOn this previous company we used to get a network message on every login explaining to us that since this was company hardware there was no such thing as an expectation of privacy. They would install all kinds of stuff to monitor our computers, and continuously require explanation on why we installed this or that tool. It wasn't fun.
- qwerty456127 7y ago> because he couldn't walk up behind me to see me working, he secretly installed a program on my computer that took a screenshot every 30 seconds > The irony was that I was probably the most productive person in that office (in my humble opinion). The easiest and the most efficient way to ruin my productivity is to look at my screen. I can't work (nor can I pee - a funny coincidence, that's called "paruresis") when somebody is watching.
- uoaei 7y agoSame here -- until recently the door nearest my desk was the one the CEO would use to enter/leave the office. The first thing you see when you open that door is my 21" screen, and it was nerve-wracking the whole time. Now that I'm home I'm so much more relaxed, and way more productive as a result.
- jlarocco 7y agoOff topic, but related to this... I had, what I felt, was the best seat in the office at my previous job. We had an open office with short cubicles and standing desks, and the cubicles were arranged so that two people shared a small area with two desks/cabinets/etc. For a while, it was wonderful. My "cube-mate" worked from home 4 days a week and only came in for meetings, and we had a window on one side and an empty desk on the other. It was about as great as an open office can be. And then my manager moved into the cube nextdoor, and arranged his desk so that when he stood at his standing desk (which was most of the time), he was looking directly over the cube wall at me and my monitors. It made me very self-concsious and uncomfortable, and was (a small) part of the reason I left, TBH.
- downerending 7y agoLooking back over my career, there's an obvious inverse correlation between being watched and being productive. Well, except that I'm able to look productive while being watched, and arguably that counts as "productivity". Just not the kind the company probably had in mind. Works the other way as well. I don't want to be able to see what others are working on--open offices are also distracting for this reason.
- shostack 7y agoAs a silver lining it sounds like you rapidly improved your company's security practices.
- pnw_hazor 7y agoWow - at one consulting/project shop place I worked, a manager questioned the veracity of my buddy's time-sheet entries. We both quit that evening with zero notice and started our own company.
- ctor21 7y agoHow'd that company turn out?
- pnw_hazor 7y agoIt was just your basic job shop, we had 8 C/C++ developers. Everything was okay for a few years until we hired a "professional" sales guy who wrecked our project pipeline. We handed sales over to him. He lied about prospects for eight weeks then quit to go somewhere else. We were doing okay before him, but we naively thought hiring a pro would help us grow. We were bootstrapped so when profit/revenue looked like it was going dry up we shut down rather than go into deep debt and went back to real jobs.
- wolco 7y agoFor those in that situation now. I found that vming into another box stops screenshots unless that box has it on. If on windows 10 booting to linux would work as well.
- wmu 7y ago> The irony was that I was probably the most productive person in that office (in my humble opinion). It's a cognitive bias. I'm pretty sure I came across such example in Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow".
- tvararu 7y agoOne of the many reasons why I prefer working as a contractor where I have to provide my own gear. Everything I run is by my own choice.