Surfing the internet with VPN enabled

jjshabado · #1 03-19-2007, 12:03 AM

I connect to a VPN sometimes to do work from home. Today I forgot to disconnect before surfing to some NSFW sites. I'm pretty sure that traffic has gone through my work VPN. Which is bad. Anybody know differently?

kerowo · #2 03-19-2007, 12:13 AM

Yea, I'm pretty sure that if you are connected to a VPN all your networking traffic is going through that connection. If you get called on it tell them you forgot to turn off the connection. Unless it was the companies hardware that should get them off your case, if it was on the companies hardware blame it on your "newphew" who was over to visit.

jjshabado · #3 03-19-2007, 12:22 AM

Yeah I checked an IP checking site and all traffic seems to go through the VPN. It was all done on my personal hardware this weekend (so non-work hours). The really bad part is that my brother was over and as a joke went to some not so great sites as a joke. Put that together with my other viewing today and... [censored].

LuckyTxGuy · #4 03-19-2007, 01:36 AM

Just a thought....if the company isn't actively blocking the NSFW sites then they might not be (probably aren't?) monitoring the traffic either. I could definitely be wrong on this one, but I'd figure they would have these sites blocked/filtered anyway. Let us know how it turns out. Just be honest about what happened. It was an honest mistake done on your hardware and on your own time.

ohgeetee · #5 03-19-2007, 10:25 AM

Not blocking blatantly pornographic sites almost always means not actively tracking them as well. Don't bring it up unless its brought up. Your network guys don't get a "jjshabado has been browsing porn!" email whenever you hit a bad site.

Usually, you have to piss off the boss, then he goes to network guy and says "jjshabado tried to bang my girlfriend, check his internet usage so I can amass ammo to fire his ass"

In the future, be careful. There are also ways to route internet traffic through your local connection while on VPN, depending on how your VPN and home network are setup. Check with your network guys to see how.

pa3lsvt · #6 03-19-2007, 05:51 PM

My company's IT policy clearly states that when my home machine is connected to the corporate VPN, my home machine is an extension of the corporate network and I must follow all IT policies (i.e. no horse pj0rn sites).

That said, if you had access to horse pj0rn via the VPN (no filtering) then your IT guys aren't checking for it, so you're fine.

jjshabado · #7 03-19-2007, 08:56 PM

This is why I love the internet. It'll be a couple of months before I can laugh at myself in front of my friends. But with a nice anonymous internet forum, I can laugh at myself right now (well, kind of).

Here's an update to my personal embarrassment. My boss came down to talk to me today at the very end of the day. I sit well out of the way of anywhere he would have been passing by. He came up to me, I started to blush and get embarassed, he got this kind of funny grin on his face. We made small talk for 5 minutes, and he left. I'm pretty sure he knew, and could tell I was embarassed, and knew that he knew.

I do have to say I work for a great company with good management so I was not really worried about getting fired or anything like that (well a little worried, because I'm paranoid). I did think that I would probably get a meeting/email that basically said "don't look at porn while connected to the company network". Of course the next couple of weeks are going to involve me wondering who at work knows. But I can handle that. Embarrassment is good for me every once in awhile. Hopefully I've had my quota for a couple of years now.

Freakin · #8 03-19-2007, 09:22 PM

lol, this should go in BBV.

I'm glad you're not in any real trouble, since that would be sucked.

TobDog · #9 03-20-2007, 01:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Of course the next couple of weeks are going to involve me wondering who at work knows

[/ QUOTE ]
Answer to that is, how well does the it guy know/like you? My brother in law is head of security for a Wall Street company and he "informs" the family of all the stuff he sees that people think no one knows goes on, so, people know, they may not care, you may be looked at differently by a few people, but if your job is not in that big of danger, so what, you learned your lesson and got over it, they should too.

tobdog