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Lock my computer: Always[1][2]. Check for keylogger thumbdrives: I use a laptop so it would be immediately obvious. But now that you say it I haven't checked t

Lock my computer: Always[1][2]. Check for keylogger thumbdrives: I use a laptop so it would be immediately obvious. But now that you say it I haven't checked the charger USB-outlet on the back of my cabled keyboard. [1]: it has happened I have failed. Once a year or something. [2]: I sometimes try to allow myself to go downstairs in my own house to fetch a cup coffe without locking when I am alone, but I find it so stressful in practice I always lock it. I don't need to know but it is a good habit. I'm otherwise normal :-)

hotpotamus 4y ago
I've worked in places where that once a year slip-up would mean you sent an email offering to buy lunch for the team or get your background changed to a David Hasselhoff pinup picture from the 80's. I do feel weird locking my computer when I'm alone though.
- francis-io 4y ago
  One place I worked, it was common practice to email something semi embarrassing into a public slack channel from the unlocked pc.
- SargeDebian 4y ago
  Screenshot of the desktop, rotate that 180 degrees and set as background. Hide all icons and the taskbar, then rotate the whole screen 180 degrees. Maybe a bit of tape underneath the optical mouse.
nickjj 4y ago
What bugs me is when this is applied to remote workers in a way that seems optimized for in-office environments. For example IT enforces that your screen becomes locked after 15 minutes of inactivity and also ties in your local computer 's user login password to your SSO login to access everything. It's a contradiction around password best practices. If you force people to input their password multiple times a day then naturally people will gravitate towards easier to type passwords. If the idea is "but what if you go AFK in a public place and forget to lock your screen?!?", that's not a valid reason. If you were working in a coffee shop and went to use the restroom for 4 minutes or turned your back for 2 minutes then your machine could be compromised (or even worse stolen). It's extremely reckless to leave your gear unattended in a public place. It can really break morale to input your password and MFA half a dozen times a day, especially when you're alone in a locked apartment where the laptop hasn't left that location in a year.
- Terretta 4y ago
  TouchID or windows machines with Windows Hello touch solves morale issue. Then they don't type most of the time and the length of 'memorable passwords' (like correct-horse4BATTERY!staple) isn't a problem.
  - amelius 4y ago
    I suppose you could complement that with a camera + AI that recognizes when you leave your computer.
    - fortran77 4y ago
      My Windows Surface unlocks with their depth-camera. I don't know if big corporations allow this sort of thing on their laptops, but it's very handy for us in our small consulting business.
  - __turbobrew__ 4y ago
    Yea, my work uses touchid for day to day logins and it works really well
- AgentOrange1234 4y ago
  Oh yes. Having my machine lock very fast when I wfh is really annoying. Past that, with so many systems to log into, I sometimes feel like all I do is authenticate and authenticate all day long. SSO is probably saving a lot of this, but at my megacorp it still sucks.
- pwg 4y ago
  > What bugs me is when this is applied to remote workers in a way that seems optimized for in-office environments. > For example IT enforces that your screen becomes locked after 15 minutes of inactivity If your OS is MS-Win, try playing an audio file when you don't want the auto-lock to go off. Provided IT's "checkbox security" parameters [1] did not include turning this off, MS-Win does not timeout lock the system if an audio file is playing, which makes playback of an audio file a way to prevent the timeout auto-lock from happening. Note that this won't help with any 'presence' indicators that go "idle" or "away" with no activity for some time. If this works, then you can create an audio file of 'silence' with sox to use to play back when you don't want the auto-lock to trigger: sox -n silence.wav trim 0 10:0.0 Creates a ten minute long wav of 'silence'. If you want it smaller, compress the wav with lame into an mp3 or fdkaac into an aac file. Then launch playback of the silence file, and set windows media player to "loop" when it reaches the end of the file. [1] Much corporate/govt. IT "security" is "checkbox security". It is the equivalent of IT having a "compliance form" with a long list of "configured settings" with check-boxes next to each, and so long as they can go down the form and "check all the boxes" they deem their setup "secure". Whether it is actually secure is not important, just that it "checks all the boxes" on the "compliance form".
sargstuff 4y ago
> [2]: ..... Ah, no mention of water proofing computer to protect against robotic dog innocently spilling moring coffee/tea on computer.

hotpotamus 4y ago

I've worked in places where that once a year slip-up would mean you sent an email offering to buy lunch for the team or get your background changed to a David Hasselhoff pinup picture from the 80's. I do feel weird locking my computer when I'm alone though.

francis-io 4y ago
One place I worked, it was common practice to email something semi embarrassing into a public slack channel from the unlocked pc.
SargeDebian 4y ago
Screenshot of the desktop, rotate that 180 degrees and set as background. Hide all icons and the taskbar, then rotate the whole screen 180 degrees. Maybe a bit of tape underneath the optical mouse.

nickjj 4y ago

What bugs me is when this is applied to remote workers in a way that seems optimized for in-office environments. For example IT enforces that your screen becomes locked after 15 minutes of inactivity and also ties in your local computer 's user login password to your SSO login to access everything. It's a contradiction around password best practices. If you force people to input their password multiple times a day then naturally people will gravitate towards easier to type passwords. If the idea is "but what if you go AFK in a public place and forget to lock your screen?!?", that's not a valid reason. If you were working in a coffee shop and went to use the restroom for 4 minutes or turned your back for 2 minutes then your machine could be compromised (or even worse stolen). It's extremely reckless to leave your gear unattended in a public place. It can really break morale to input your password and MFA half a dozen times a day, especially when you're alone in a locked apartment where the laptop hasn't left that location in a year.

Terretta 4y ago
TouchID or windows machines with Windows Hello touch solves morale issue. Then they don't type most of the time and the length of 'memorable passwords' (like correct-horse4BATTERY!staple) isn't a problem.
- amelius 4y ago
  I suppose you could complement that with a camera + AI that recognizes when you leave your computer.
  - fortran77 4y ago
    My Windows Surface unlocks with their depth-camera. I don't know if big corporations allow this sort of thing on their laptops, but it's very handy for us in our small consulting business.
- __turbobrew__ 4y ago
  Yea, my work uses touchid for day to day logins and it works really well
AgentOrange1234 4y ago
Oh yes. Having my machine lock very fast when I wfh is really annoying. Past that, with so many systems to log into, I sometimes feel like all I do is authenticate and authenticate all day long. SSO is probably saving a lot of this, but at my megacorp it still sucks.
pwg 4y ago
> What bugs me is when this is applied to remote workers in a way that seems optimized for in-office environments. > For example IT enforces that your screen becomes locked after 15 minutes of inactivity If your OS is MS-Win, try playing an audio file when you don't want the auto-lock to go off. Provided IT's "checkbox security" parameters [1] did not include turning this off, MS-Win does not timeout lock the system if an audio file is playing, which makes playback of an audio file a way to prevent the timeout auto-lock from happening. Note that this won't help with any 'presence' indicators that go "idle" or "away" with no activity for some time. If this works, then you can create an audio file of 'silence' with sox to use to play back when you don't want the auto-lock to trigger: sox -n silence.wav trim 0 10:0.0 Creates a ten minute long wav of 'silence'. If you want it smaller, compress the wav with lame into an mp3 or fdkaac into an aac file. Then launch playback of the silence file, and set windows media player to "loop" when it reaches the end of the file. [1] Much corporate/govt. IT "security" is "checkbox security". It is the equivalent of IT having a "compliance form" with a long list of "configured settings" with check-boxes next to each, and so long as they can go down the form and "check all the boxes" they deem their setup "secure". Whether it is actually secure is not important, just that it "checks all the boxes" on the "compliance form".

sargstuff 4y ago

> [2]: ..... Ah, no mention of water proofing computer to protect against robotic dog innocently spilling moring coffee/tea on computer.