
Ask HN: Do most employers monitor your work computer? -  feelingspiedon
I work at a growing B2B startup with around 100 employees.  Without warning, the sysadmin has started having the developers install JumpCloud, Desktop Central, and AnyDesk on their company-issued laptops.  They create an extra admin account for their access, force the developer to change their username, and change the home folder name for the software to work.  From what I understand, they are doing this to try to get a security certificate that a client is demanding.<p>It would be reasonable in my opinion to have this software on a computer that stays in the office, but developers at my company all bring their laptops home every day and also often work at home for either the entire day or part of the day.  Employees have flexible work hours too.  In practice, for developers at least, this laptop serves as both a work laptop and a personal laptop.<p>I feel really frustrated by this whole situation.  I really like working at my company, and I work both at home and in the office.  However, I don&#x27;t feel comfortable installing this kind of monitoring, remote-access, root-control software on my computer, especially one that I bring home!  I like how it is now that I can be logged into my personal email account on my work computer and know that I am the only one able to access it.  We use our personal GitHub accounts also at work, and this will implicitly give my company access to it as I am logged into GitHub at work.<p>I understand that it&#x27;s a company-owned laptop, but is it unreasonable of me to want this kind of software off the computer that I use?  Would I have a hard time finding a reasonably-sized company that does not require this kind of software to be installed? 
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ianceicys
Ummm...Never do personal work on a company-owned laptop.  If you work anywhere
it's monitored.  What's dumb about your current company is that they are having
you be aware of what's being installed...that's really poor IT.  Using personal
Github accounts at work means your code...ALL of your code is potentially
property of the company.  Lawyers love these area...cuz companies win. 

Ask\Demand a company laptop if one isn't provided then you don't have the
required tools to do your job and find a different employer. 

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ThrowawayR2
> " _I like how it is now that I can be logged into my personal email account
> on my work computer and know that I am the only one able to access it._ " 

That's a poor assumption even with no monitoring software installed on you
computer.  If the company asked to access your computer immediately (e.g. if
they think it's infected or if you're laid off unexpectedly), you would not
have a leg to stand on to refuse no matter what personal data or log-ins you
might have on it.  I had this happen once when a tool I was developing for load
testing was generating enough traffic to attract the attention of IT;
fortunately all I had on it were a few music files. 

It's the company's computer, not yours.  End of story. 

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Hippocrates
Like yours, current, and last companies definitely have some spyware-ish tools
installed on the laptops.  I wish there was some tool or documentation on what
it is doing and what the capabilities are.  I've tried to look into it but
there is not much information available. 

I find it annoying to haul around and switch between two laptops (especially
traveling).  Here's what I have done:

I bought an external SSD and a usb 3.1 type-c enclosure for about $120-130 on
amazon and use it as a boot disk (hold option while booting).  This way I can
boot my work laptop into a physically separated OS for personal use.  I use
whole-disk encryption on that disk via FileVault. 

I also symlink my source code dir to a separate volume on the internal SSD
drive so that I can access it from this second OS if I need to pull some code
over to work on it. 

Warning: I recommend testing this with a cheap USB stick before buying the
drive because booting from external disks can can be disabled with profiles. 

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OrionSubnet
It's common to have web monitoring for sure but I have never worked for an
employer that requires screen viewing or remote-access software installed.  It
shouldn't be difficult to find an employer that doesn't use these tools
internally. 

Of course that all depends on the nature of what the company does. 

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byoung2
_In practice, for developers at least, this laptop serves as both a work
laptop and a personal laptop._ 

I have a company-issued laptop and I have never opened my personal email or
even a non-work browser tab on it.  I assume everything is monitored and
recorded.  Get a 2nd laptop for your personal use. 

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BoorishBears
> Would I have a hard time finding a reasonably-sized company that does not
> require this kind of software to be installed? 

No.