Work from home? Don’t watch porn on your corporate VPN
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Are you working from home due to COVID-19? Certainly me. As I write this, I’m sitting on my posh Manhattan manor, dog at my feet, partner across the room (I also work from home), several computers running [email protected] Because I need to do something to help save humanity. I also access the company’s systems and services using the VPN my employer gave me, but I wouldn’t use it for anything else. Especially porn.
Did I just say porn?
I did, in fact, just use the word porn. Whatever you think of pornography, it is legal and what people do with their personal time is up to them. It’s also common to look at it when you’re stuck at home. I am not here to judge.
What I’m here to do is remind everyone how a VPN works. When you run a commercial VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel between your device (computer, phone, router, etc.) and a server controlled by the VPN. From there, your traffic continues to the wilds of the Internet. This setting means that your ISP and anyone on the same network where you can’t see what you’re doing. Anyone viewing you from outside will not be able to see your real IP address (and therefore cannot see your real location) and will have a hard time correlating your movements across the web.
When you use a corporate VPN provided by your employer, it is a little different. It still creates the encrypted tunnel, and it still routes your traffic to the server. People who are on the same network as you and your ISP are still blind. People watching from outside will still not be able to see your real IP address, and they will still have a hard time tracking you.
The main difference is that your employer’s VPN connects you to your employer’s network. When you’re connected to your employer’s VPN, it’s like you’re sitting at your desk, connected to your employer’s Wi-Fi or Ethernet. You may be at home in pajamas, but in the eyes of your boss and your company’s IT, you’re on the corporate network.
It’s your boss’s world
I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been told by people smarter than me that you have no expectations of privacy when using your employer’s network. You should never seek legal advice, but it makes sense to me that this includes a corporate VPN as well. Although technically similar, personal and corporate VPNs work quite differently.
A commercial VPN should do everything in its power to keep you anonymous. The best services go to great lengths to ensure that no one, not even the VPN company, knows what you are doing when you are connected to the service.
The same does not apply to corporate networks. Your employer may monitor activity that goes against company policy, such as downloading BitTorrent files, mining Bitcoin, or browsing pornography. Employers may also need to keep logs of activity, which is something VPN companies should not.
It’s always easy to pick pornography as something you shouldn’t look at in public, but I would also like to invite you to think about other things you might not want to do in relation to a company. The unencrypted messages you send can be seen by your employer, along with personal information you may be sending unencrypted – such as medical records, credit card numbers, etc.
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Personally, I try to avoid doing that Which A kind of personal work on corporate networks. Not necessarily because I don’t trust the employer either. I just want the information not to be accessible to anyone other than who I intend to. It’s unlikely that our company’s IT team would be looking for interesting gossip or SSNs, but I’d still prefer not having this information simply to be found.
The emergence of professionalism
It’s easy to remember you are at work when you are at work. At your desk, under the unforgiving fluorescent light of your desk, you’re probably in the business mentality. You must act appropriately at work, dress appropriately for work, and surf the web in an appropriate work manner. You probably won’t look at porn, because that’s a scary thing to do in the workplace.
When you work from home, none of this is necessarily true. You can leave your pants in the wardrobe and call meetings from the toilet. All of this convenience makes it easy to forget that you’re still at work, and that if you’re connected to your employer’s VPN, your employer likely has a window into your web browsing.
So as you work from home during this pandemic, remember to keep in mind where your web traffic is going. If you don’t need to use a VPN for your company, don’t use it. Double-check if it’s off before doing anything you’d rather not see. Use a personal VPN the rest of the time to make sure your connection is secure and more private.
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