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

11 points by niche ↗ HN
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?

12 comments

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[dead] opless
You have any holes in your computing devices right?

Here's a sure fire way to make sure the malware is removed.

Get some tinfoil roll up lots of tiny balls of tinfoil and poke them in the so called air vents until they fill up. This is how the malware gets in.

Don't be tempted to do a half job and cover up the holes, it has to be small balls of tinfoil. It's the surface area to size ratio that's important - so smaller the better!

If you see any smoke that's the malware being forced out by the electromagnetic fields of the tinfoil balls. This is expected behaviour.

junto
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!

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

Post a picture

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

justintbassett
If one were bugging a telephone line, I think they'd use something far less conspicuous
wglb
And the telephone line is either the bottom one or the one next up.
wglb
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.
partisan
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
Is your name John Nash?