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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

MS Teams makes me really paranoid. I take my mouse with me to the toilet and moves it around to not trigger the away notification ...

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Same here - as well as coffee/piss breaks, sometimes I just need to sit away from the screen and think on a problem for a while, or work it out on pen and paper. But I know this will leave an 'Away' gap in whatever they are using to log, and that might look bad on my metrics.

I've found that resting something heavy on one of the modifier keys, e.g. Ctrl, does the trick nicely.

Oh that sounds easy I will try that.

Get a USB mouse jiggler for this situation - have used them in the past with great success.

Not enough anymore. Now you have to jiggle and click. And the clicks can't be random. They have to be on UI elements every so often.

In the MS App store there is an free app called move mouse. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/move-mouse/9nq4ql59xlbf?ac...

non store version: https://github.com/sw3103/movemouse

I installed an app called cliclick https://www.bluem.net/en/projects/cliclick/

Then I wrote a script to move the mouse randomly across the screen.

I'd post the script but I did a clean install. It wasn't very in-depth, though.

  1. Write an endless loop

    2. Generate 2 random numbers 

    3. call cliclick to move the mouse to those coordinates

installing apps is another thing that will be watched and limited. a one line powershell script will do this and would be less noticeable since the system and admins run powershell stuff on the computer everyday anyway.

  Echo "Keep-alive with Scroll Lock..."

  $WShell = New-Object -com "Wscript.Shell"

  while ($true)
  {
    $WShell.sendkeys("{SCROLLLOCK}")
    Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 300
    $WShell.sendkeys("{SCROLLLOCK}")
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 240
  }

oof, Powershell users have a very different definition of “one line” then I do. In bash I'd run

while true; do xdotool key Pause; sleep 240; done

while(1) { (New-Object -c "Wscript.Shell").SendKeys("{Pause}"); sleep -m 240 }

Note that you use xdotool which is external so you are cheating. On Winodws you can do better with AHK which is compared to xdotool like spaceship to bucycle.

That’s over 80 characters long.

Note that comparing AHK to xdotool is like comparing a Titanic-sized roll of Flex Tape to duct tape. I don’t use boats that have taken a lot of damage, so I don't need Titanic-sized Flex Tape.

Thats because you cheated. You also don't know how to count. This is 78 chars and few more can be removed.

I cheated? You edited your comment.

  root:~ # xclip -o
      while(1) { (New-Object -c "Wscript.Shell").SendKeys("{SCROLLLOCK}"); sleep -m 240 }root:~ # xclip -o | wc
        0       9      87
  root:~ # xclip -o | wc -c
  87

Just replaced scrollock to pause to be identical as your case.

You need xWindows to count chars ? Noice :)

> Just replaced scrollock to pause to be identical as your case.

I noticed.

> You need xWindows to count chars ? Noice :)

Tell me, oh Windows master, your superior spaceship ways of counting characters.

You two are hilarious (:

You don't have to install apps, you can run them from directory.

I bring my own Mac, no dice on powershell :)

If you're on Mac, there's a nifty free app for keeping your computer from sleeping called Amphetamine, which can move your mouse for you at a set interval.

It's pretty ridiculous there's no setting in Teams to disable that, and I really hope no one is monitoring those status icons so closely.

There's also Jiggler for Mac, works pretty well though it doesn't fool Apple's own "App Nap" sleep mode for apps, sadly. The Mac stays awake but apps still stutter like crazy when I come back to the computer, they're clearly waking up in some way.

Put your mouse on an analogue clock's face. Use a clock that has an arm for seconds.

I'm not a programmer, but for this purpose I run a PowerShell script to hit the Scroll-Lock key every 5 minutes. It works _perfectly_ (almost too perfectly)

  Echo "Keep-alive with Scroll Lock..."

  $WShell = New-Object -com "Wscript.Shell"

  while ($true)
  {
    $WShell.sendkeys("{SCROLLLOCK}")
    Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 300
    $WShell.sendkeys("{SCROLLLOCK}")
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 240
  }

AHK is better for stuff like this, something like

    #Persistent
    SetTimer, CapsLock, 60000
    return

    CapsLock: Send {CapsLock}

AHK is very small, 0 on resources and this script is visible in tray. You could even enable/disable it via another hotkey or when specific app (PDF reader) is started.

Use this instead otherwise it's quite obvious: Random, Time, 5800, 6400

You can program an Attiny (like a USB Digispark) to send inputs over USB also, can't be detected at all :)

If a company is willing to watch your productivity, it's probably already monitoring your USB ports. That's been done for at least a decade.

At my company, anyone plugging in a USB device sends an alert to IT Security and you get an immediate visit or phone call.

Well it pretends to be a mouse so it shouldn't raise very much concern (how do they expect you to work without one? ;) )

xdotool mousemove_relative

Wait until you realize your company is taking screenshots of your desktop to make sure you actually are working.

I've never been worried as my long breaks are necessary for Programming. I always get the job done. My biggest concerns are economic as I'm high pay and they are often let go.

Is this proven with Teams?

The screenshots thing came to my mind back in 2010 when I worked at Intel and we were never quite sure how they monitored us. I created my own C# application that with calls on user32.dll. It not only move the mouse and perform clicks, but it's also named as a vendor utility (e.g. LenovoUpdates) that can be minimized to the system tray. I use it to open up various programs (email, browser, code, etc.) and I get to define where it clicks and how long in-between each set of clicks. If you were to open it up, you'd have no idea what the hell it is. The buttons are so generically labeled and the saving/loading features are done using F-keys. Still going strong after 10 years :)

That might have worked in 2010, but when it comes to bot detection it's You vs Big Company.

I recently lost the battle of defeating a bot detector.

Perhaps, but I've yet to see evidence of needing any level of sophistication beyond "move the mouse" just to show you're online and in most companies that's even overkill as 15 minute breaks are typically not an issue. If they are, time to look elsewhere.

I created my program because I had a ruthless boss at the time, but I don't think any spying was ever going on. I use it now out of convenience when I take extended breaks and peace of mind from potential jealous co-workers complaining I'm not online when I should be or something stupid along those lines.

Any details?

What applications and what measures did you try? Feel free to share just links.

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