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Old 03-26-2019, 12:50 PM
 
Location: Middle America
10,945 posts, read 6,985,426 times
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^ Yeah, either cheapness, or big wifi fans. I know some younger people who quickly fall in place in any new area, scurrying to find out the wifi passcode so they can log in, even if they have no compelling matter to look at on their phones.
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Old 03-26-2019, 01:25 PM
 
46,755 posts, read 25,667,740 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by macroy View Post
Absolutely - the owner of the network can pretty much add any tools they want to monitor the traffic flowing across their network. Whether or not they actually do it is another question.

In the end, most companies provide a guest wifi so that they don't have to worry about the traffic and the risks these personal devices bring on their internal network. Monitoring traffic isn't exactly easy or effortless, and most IT/security departments are busy enough trying to keep company data in and malicious actors out. The guest network is often not something they tend to worry about...as much.

If you are really concerned, use a VPN service. Albeit some places may actually block those.
That's pretty much it. Most corporate IT departments are busy enough keeping production-critical stuff running, the guest network tends to be there for the purpose of "Connect whatever, we don't want to know and we don't want to be bothered" and it is generally the lowest of the low priorities.

Operative word: Generally. I've worked networking in a place where people brought in their personal laptops for the purpose of hosting bittorrents. Of copyrighted movies. And we were a movie studio. And it made the press. You can bet the guest network was a priority for for few weeks. But if people wanted to watch Tour de France on their iPhones, who had time to care?
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Old 03-26-2019, 03:27 PM
 
6,066 posts, read 14,988,859 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MLSFan View Post
...

No one cares to monitor anything until it is time to get rid of someone, then they pull logs and pile on the justifications to get rid of him
I half agree. You're totally right I think for most employers. Most ethical employers.

I recently left an employer, though, because they were of the rare (hopefully!) breed that seemed to enjoy invading employee's privacy by any means necessary.

They used the WiFi to see what we were up to on our personal devices if we used the WiFi. They also strongly encouraged (not so far as to insist, but almost) that we download the time tracking app onto our phones "as a convenience" to clock in and out (even salary employees who don't need to clock in and out...) and request/schedule PTO and etc. But I learned over time because of the nature of my particular position and my responsibilities that the app was used by management to see their physical locations - even when they were not supposed to be at work. If someone called in sick, for example, they would watch their movements - or at least the movements of their phone. It was so good that when I tried watching myself, I could even see what part of my house I was in.

They also watched email - which is totally within their right - but they also went in and deleted my email without talking to me about it, which may have also been their right legally but ethically it just felt very wrong to me. Not to mention inconsiderate as I needed those emails. They also signed into my workstation when I wasn't there as me, logged into my email as me, and deleted emails I had saved. I only found this out because I came in one day and they had forgot to sign out! lol

It was a very weird place to work!
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Old 03-26-2019, 03:31 PM
 
Location: (six-cent-dix-sept)
6,639 posts, read 4,520,468 times
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the programs to use would be things like ethereal/wireshark, snort, ...
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Old 03-26-2019, 03:47 PM
 
Location: (six-cent-dix-sept)
6,639 posts, read 4,520,468 times
Reputation: 4730
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryanms3030 View Post
...
Sure most people are doing boring stuff that nobody cares about. But say you underperforming at work and they are looking for justification to fire you and they can just pull a report that says you are surfing Facebook for 8 hours a day at work then they have just cause now.
too many false-positives.

even when a fone is off, its still doing hundreds of things like updating email, querying facebock, looking up twister, checking for texts, ...
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Old 03-26-2019, 09:31 PM
 
2,076 posts, read 4,051,643 times
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When you are connected to any wifi, the wifi provider can track certain things such as:

1) What remote IP addresses you're connecting to on which ports.

2) The quantity and speed of bandwidth you're consuming.

3) If you're using unencrypted HTTP (which is not used that much anymore), they have full unrestricted access to see all traffic between you and any websites you're connecting. They can see passwords you send, logins, search terms, images, etc.

4) If you're using HTTPS, they can only see the hostname (Google). But they can't see the content of what you're transmitting or receiving. They can't see a login/password, what you searched for or what results, what the images your receiving look like, the content of videos you're watching, etc. If you're using HTTPS on Google, they don't know if you're searching for a new job or something work related. HTTPS security is considered bulletproof if you're using the latest versions. No workplace can intercept, unless they have injected a trusted root certificate, which is possible and not uncommon on a work owned PC, but your own personal devices it's basically impossible unless they force you to install something or modify the configuration of your device.

And of course if you're using a VPN, they can only see that you're transmitting traffic to a VPN provider. They can't see what sites you're talking to nor the content of your traffic.
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Old 03-26-2019, 10:31 PM
 
607 posts, read 970,984 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Adriank7 View Post
The new company I work for tells everyone we can be on their WiFi (they used to have us use the Employee one but now we are told to log on to the guest one). I’m just wondering if they can check what websites you are on from your personal phone? Like can they check if you are on FB on your iPhone? Not that I have time to be on my phone much but if I use Spotify on my phone to listen to music will that slow down the network?
There is no privacy anymore with all of the mobile devices and connections. They can get any info they want if they spent enough money to get access to it. Heck, the government can tap your phone without you even knowing and they can see your texts, calls, etc.

If you don't want an employer seeing the sites you visit, you will have to use a connection outside of anything the company uses. No matter where you connect to everything is traceable.
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Old 03-26-2019, 11:20 PM
 
3,882 posts, read 2,334,973 times
Reputation: 7440
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adriank7 View Post
The new company I work for tells everyone we can be on their WiFi (they used to have us use the Employee one but now we are told to log on to the guest one). I’m just wondering if they can check what websites you are on from your personal phone? Like can they check if you are on FB on your iPhone? Not that I have time to be on my phone much but if I use Spotify on my phone to listen to music will that slow down the network?
Yes, which is why you should always use your own cell phone's data plan and not go through the company WiFi if you have a concern about this.
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Old 03-26-2019, 11:29 PM
 
3,882 posts, read 2,334,973 times
Reputation: 7440
Quote:
Originally Posted by Florida2014 View Post
I can't imagine any company putting the time and cost into doing this. Let's say there are 1,000 employees in their building, plus guests, cleaning service employees, vendors, etc.......how are they going to pinpoint who's doing what? And why would they care or bother with such nonsense? It's not worth the time/effort to do something like this unless there was some child p.orn ring coming out of that location. You can safely Spotify/Facebook to your heart's content.
It is a very easy setup to do this and it costs nothing. Employers have already been doing this for the company's LAN, so including the WiFi connection is easy. They can tell who is doing this by analysis of the data being exchanged. You indicated they don't care unless it was for something illegal, so they have it in place and can be constantly monitoring and doing a data collection to only look at it if there is a need.

The lesson here, you have a phone on your desk and they can listen to your calls if they wish, so use your cell phone. Same thing with using their technology for internet access, use your personal cell's data plan. You don't think it is an issue or concern, then proceed that way, but please don't come post to C-D complaining about it cause you have a required meeting in HR tomorrow with your management regarding your internet usage and access.
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Old 03-26-2019, 11:36 PM
 
Location: TN/NC
34,812 posts, read 30,860,538 times
Reputation: 47095
Quote:
Originally Posted by rummage View Post
Yes, which is why you should always use your own cell phone's data plan and not go through the company WiFi if you have a concern about this.
The fact of the matter is that most places don't have the personnel or even desire to audit this. Our corporate guest network requires no logon, and it certainly isn't bound to corporate AD. Anyone within range of the access point can connect, accept on the captive page, and use the internet. The picnic tables of the beauty school across the street are in range of our guestnet

I've accidentally had porn open on my phone in my most recent tab, get on corporate guest, then that porn streams when I open Safari. As far as I know, it's the Wild West. That department certainly doesn't have the tools, personnel, or budget to audit anything other than the most egregious violations from Webcat.

I only used it in my previous office because Verizon data was even worse in that part of the city. I played hundreds of Hearthstone games on corporate WiFi.

I've surfed for years here. I have a good idea of what is blocked now. Small gaming websites are blocked - Reddit isn't. I spend most of my surfing time at work here, as the website is so basic that it blends into the business background. I spend a lot of time on Reddit and news websites as well.
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