Comments for Can my company monitor my IM conversations at home?

Comment from kara on 2007-01-31

2007-01-31T12:48:18Z

how could i find some of past convos that ive had in the instant messaging?

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A comment on: Can my company monitor my IM conversations at home?

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Comment from nikki on 2006-06-12

2006-06-12T21:59:21Z

I have a ? can we instant message not at home but in other placse?

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A comment on: Can my company monitor my IM conversations at home?

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Comment from Charles on 2006-06-02

2006-06-02T20:41:13Z

http://www.aimencrypt.com/ has information on how to encrypt AIM. It is probably possible to encrypt other protocols using similar methods, but I haven't really looked into it. The certificates you can download from aimencrypt can be broken by someone who really knows what they're doing, but should prevent 99% of IT people from seeing what you're saying. If you want to be protected from 100% of the IT people, you need to generate your own certificate, which can be a complicated process. Of course, the encryption only protects against people watching your traffic as it goes over the network. If you're IM-ing from a company-owned computer, you still need to keep your hard drive clean. Leo has several other articles about that.

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A comment on: Can my company monitor my IM conversations at home?

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Comment from Leo on 2006-02-17

2006-02-17T23:52:21Z

While on the surface it's hard to disagree with that statement, it makes a couple of assumptions that I don't really like.

1) Your IT department may not know. Or they may get it wrong. Depending on your company there may be several levels of competancy in the department (or incompetancy, if you're cynical), and they might just think they know, guess, or get it wrong. Especially since it's something that's typically configured once by one person and ignored until needed, it's not in front of them each day, so they don't need to remember it every day.

2) They might lie. Unethical and as wrong as it is, there are companies out there who may choose to explicitly hide this information, for fear of not knowing whatever it is you are doing. The thinking might be that if you have to ask, you must have something to hide, so we better watch.

I'm not saying that 99% of all companies aren't going to be honest and accurate - but if you work at that 1% that might not be, asking could be both missleading and problematic.

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A comment on: Can my company monitor my IM conversations at home?

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Comment from D S Ulmlan on 2006-02-17

2006-02-17T22:27:19Z

Ask the IT department. They should be able to tell you what is going over the company equipment and how to make sure your personal stuff isn't.

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A comment on: Can my company monitor my IM conversations at home?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
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