Comment by crispyambulance | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crispyambulance | Hacker News Reader

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crispyambulance

> I am certain most managers that implement this are antisocial fucks.

I agree.

But the surveillance tools have been around for A LONG TIME, and people haven't really complained much about it.

The thing is whenever people ask questions about how the surveillance is performed and how to respond to it, the answer (in the USA) has traditionally been something like "It's your employer's equipment, they can do whatever they want with their equipment-- don't do anything on it unless you want the man to know."

Now, "the equipment" is at home. I don't think that makes much difference, but yeah, there's some interesting edge cases like turning on camera/microphone in employee home without employee consent.

It makes me wonder about countermeasures.

Is there a way to know if you're being screenshotted or some enterprise shit-ware is logging stuff? Yes, it's always true that it "could happen". I would like to know if it IS happening. Is that even possible?

> Employees were to install software called Hubstaff immediately on their personal computers so it could track their mouse movements and keyboard strokes, and record the webpages they visited.

They were told to put this on their "personal" computers. Not work computers. This is way over the line.

Yes, of course, putting something like that on a personal machine is odious.

But how do you tell if that or something like it is on your work machine? Look for "hubstaff.dll"? ... half kidding, but seriously how do you tell if there's corporate fuckery on your work machine (eg screenshotting, logging time on URLs, keylogging, etc etc)?

Apps for auto mouse movements exist. It's also possible auto feed a stream of recorded video to the cam. If my employer automated stuff to spy on me, I would automate to feed the troll in that same manner.

Yeah, but is there a way you can tell?

Did the device come from corporate? If yes, then you know :)

Unless you have access to Admin and can see ALL processes running, then no. Well, I guess you could try and analyze all data leaving your computer... but is it worth it? If you're working from home, just use a different computer for non-work stuffs.

In my experience, there is no way you can tell -- even if you are an Admin -- not unless you are highly skilled and technically competent and possess detailed knowledge and understanding of computer and program behavior.

OK, but many folks have a fair amount of control over their work PC's. For instance, they can install software manage services, etc.

This "surveillance-ware", I am suggesting, can be thought of as a kind-of malware and be detectable in some way, either on the disk or as a running process.

I am surprised that no one has created something to check if such surveillance software is running or perhaps even actively screenshotting.

wireshark

Easy, just assume that they are doing it. Most probably don't, but you shouldn't do anything on your work machine you don't want them to see. Just keep your personal laptop in your bag (if possible) and use that instead, or do the thing on your phone.

I don't know how much of what these pieces of software are capable of on Mac (because of all the privacy stuff in Catalina that requires the user to agree) and Linux (because I doubt there's a huge market for these tools on Linux), so if you don't have Windows on your machine you are probably even more okay. But in any case, assume they can.

Yeah, that's the safe advice, but it's really unsatisfying.

Sure, the man "could" do it, but it's a separate and more interesting thing to know if it is happening.

You can modify the suggest answer here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3047375/simulating-key-p...

to instead of simulating a single keypress, have it open a text editor and simulate typing in the source code of the app you're working on. That way any keylogger running will pick up a lot of code. If manager is dumb enough to use a keylogger he probably won't recognize that it's the same code each day.

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