Quote:
Originally Posted by GhostPirate
depending on the type of monitoring firewall he has. Some will record your traffic and play it back like a movie.
your best bet is this, get your own internet connection. If you do something that gets the law involved, they will trace it back to him.. then HE will not be happy and you are out the door
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Bottom line, no it isn't illegal (as in being charged with a misdemeanor or felony) to communicate with a provider on a work PC. It is stupid for a number of reasons. Anytime you share someone else's network, you risk them having your data and monitoring you.
In Texas, businesses can fire at will so they don't even need a reason to fire you, but traffic to and from a site like eccie or porn could easily get you fired and using a work PC for non-work activities, especially nominally illegal ones could mean you would get no unemployment insurance and could even get sued (though unlikely).
If you are communicating or browsing through a browser where you go (the metadata like the Snowden NSA thing) is usually kept by IT or even on your PC. The content is not kept unless your employer is using key logging software (in which case you are hosed). If you use your company e-mail, then they will have all your messages and the content in most cases. Either way, you are probably hosed if they care at all about this sort of stuff. Best not to expose yourself to this possibility. You are a little less exposed if you work from home with a company laptop (your network not theirs), but it still is not advisable. I have my own laptop and an iPad, but I never use my work laptop for personal stuff, especially sketchy stuff like the hobby.
There are ways to get around this to defeat the surveillance if they are doing it (you never know) but they take some understanding of what they are doing and how to defeat it so it isn't for the technically challenged. For instance you could use a virtual machine (on a USB key if you like) to browse and communicate (even using anonymizers on top of that) and then revert it to clear all the data - also, if you connected your laptop through your own hotspot rather than the company network, they wouldn't have logs or "metadata" - of course you would have to know what I'm talking about. If you have to do this at work, then get an iPad with 3G, use your phone or buy a hotspot of your own to use with a pad or phone. Hot spots can be acquired for $20/mo or less. Better yet, get a tablet and use Skype or one of the other apps that allow you to have an anonymous hobby phone on that device so you kill two birds with one stone.
