Ask HN: How do I audit my employer for invading my privacy?

11 points by niche 11 years ago | 11 comments

For real: here is a little story, I work for a Fortune 500 botnet, I brought my work laptop to a friends house, VPN'd in from their house and now their network is absolutely fried (strange behavior, weird connections, etc)...even after replacing the router. Additionally, I am almost certain my iPhone is bugged, and these strange little saucers appeared on my telephone poles a few months ago. I am almost certain I have been "surveiled", join the club right? But seriously, how can I go about proving they are invading my privacy? How do I expose their malware?

jolan 11 years ago |

There's a community dedicated to discussing these sorts of things:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badBIOS/

niche 11 years ago | |

Thanks! I posted a new comment about the saucers under this...

gesman 11 years ago |

>> strange little saucers appeared on my telephone poles a few months ago..

Post a picture

niche 11 years ago | |

http://s13.postimg.org/7e04u78cn/IMG_0414.jpg

tptacek 11 years ago | | |

Isn't that just an insulator?

Here's an easy and safe thing you can do that might make you feel a bit more in control of your thoughts: drive around your town looking at the electrical poles, and notice how many of them have the same discs on top of them. Rationally, your neighbors can't all be targets of surveillance of some random company.

wglb 11 years ago | | |

Er, dude, those are glass insulators from the 50's or 40's or maybe even earlier. It looks like that pole is disintegrating starting at the top from weather, and they added a little short shaft to support the insulator, so it might not be on all poles. And it is quite likely the ground wire, as the next wire down--the one wrapped in a twisted pair--is the actual high voltage one.

justintbassett 11 years ago | | |

If one were bugging a telephone line, I think they'd use something far less conspicuous

junto 11 years ago |

It is more than likely that you aren't being bugged. The network issue might well be just a misconfigured home router.

You have two possible choices:

- Technological (wireshark/MITM) to look at network traffic

- Sociological (trick your employer into admitting it)

Assuming that you aren't bothered about risking your job, then you could always do something that triggers your employer to act in a way that demonstrates that you are being monitored.

I don't have any great ideas of what you could do, but please make sure it is legal and ideally doesn't break your employment contract!

partisan 11 years ago |

My concern when I had a work issued laptop was that they would see the network traffic my wife was generating by streaming YouTube videos and playing video games and assume it was me. Fortunately, it seems that was not the case.

I am not one to turn away from a good conspiracy theory, so don't get me wrong. I just think you can see any patterns you want in the random noise of life. It is a strange set of symptoms your friend is experiencing, but why would they destroy your network, hampering you from being able to do work?

vgeek 11 years ago |

Is your name John Nash?