At my first job about 15 years ago, my coworker in the cubicle next to me showed me this strange program running on his computer. We saw that it was running on

At my first job about 15 years ago, my coworker in the cubicle next to me showed me this strange program running on his computer. We saw that it was running on a weird port, so I tried to telnet into it (and the software crashed). The next day, he was fired and I was brought into a room and basically interrogated. They asked me if I intentionally crashed their monitoring software (which I didn't, I just was curious about what was running on his computer). Come to find out, they were monitoring all of us all the time. I suspected this was the case a few months earlier because one of my managers started randomly bringing up topics I had in a private AIM (aol instant messenger) conversation. That day, they told our entire team we were being monitored and we had to sign a consent form or be fired. I signed it and promptly started looking for work during my lunch hour the next day (I would drive a few miles away and use my laptop in my car). I left two months later. This was all about 6 months before the 2008 downturn and the company I left was in the loan business. I would have most likely gotten laid off in the cuts.