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Instant Message, Instant Transcript
shams42 writes: "Although the internet has been far from private for some time now, it seems that public awareness and concern over this issue is mounting. This article at CNN discusses the issue of companies monitoring instant messages for cyberslacking or leaking company secrets. There is also the possibility of them being included as evidence in court cases."
Jabber over SSL would solve this problem.
Finkployd
Ah, yet another story that makes me happy about my 50% purchase of CarrierPigeons.com!
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Use SSH link to your PC at home to run text based IM client and/or web browser from your home address.
I've not heard of an employer that monitors Port 22, and even if they did, it's encrypted so they can't pick up what you said.
Best program for this is PuTTY (assuming you use NT at work)
The whole thing assumes you are using *n?x at home and can run an SSH daemon on it.
OF course best of all is to not shout from the rooftops what should be said in private.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
People think Instant Messages are like phone conversations - no record is kept, they can say pretty much what they like. People used to think the same about Corporate email too.
Nearly every company today has an Internet Acceptable Use Policy. Said policy covers allowed surfing habits (work related only, etc), as well as appropriate email useage (no sexist jokes, spamming of jokes). Once companies realise that IM traffic is essentially the same as email, they will need to incorporate policy on usage into their existing AUP.
Naturally there's privacy concerns here. People don't like their every word and action at work scruitinized. However, as Pamela Housley (director of compliance at Thomas Weisel Partners investment banking firm) said in the CNN article,'It's just easier to archive it all. I don't have the manpower to have somebody look at this all day long.' This will hold true in most cases.
Most companies already archive all email sent/received by work accounts as a matter of course. However, that's not to say people actually read all those emails. They're there with the sole intent of keeping a record to cover the company's ass if something goes wrong - such as a client accusing an employee of doing something they were not asked to do. If said employee can turn around and say 'I was asked to do it via email, and HERE IT IS!', the company is fine.
Face it - IM traffic sent/received at work will end up being logged as a matter of course. It has to if companies want to keep themselves out of a legal quagmire. However, just because your communication via IM is logged, doesn't mean someone is going to actually violate your privacy by reading it. In fact, most AUPs specifically prohibit the reading of another's work communications without the proper authorisation.
Keep in mind that you're using work assets. Keep in mind that you can, and will, be held responsible for abuse of said assets. Stick to the AUP, and everything will be rosy.
Janie took my gun...
Actually we use Lotus Sametime in our company quite a lot for instant messaging.
Being a multi-national company, without this we would be spending a lot of money on international phone calls (although I believe we are looking at VOIP for this too)
It also allows you to share your desktop so you can collaborate on a document. Sometimes we use a combination of the instant messenger and the phone for this.
You can also see if the person you are trying to reach is at their desk before you try to reach them.
It is less intrusive than a phone call and more immediate than email.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
After every questionable comment you might make in a message just put ;-). Problem solved.
;-)
For real though, I really don't care if people see my IMs. 99% of it is just jibber-jabber anyway, so who cares.
If your are dumb enough to write messages like "My boss is an asshole" over IM, then that is your own fault if your get busted.
First of all, the only reason I use IM these days is for work-related purposes with co-workers on an internal Jabber server. Okay, we do our share of chatting that's not exactly work-related, but who doesn't have f2f conversations with people at work about things that have nothing to do with work?
In any case, why I consider the instant transcript a "feature" is because my co-workers and I do tech support. We talk to each other frequently about customer issues. These transcripts often contain useful troubleshooting information. It seems awfully silly to type something more than once, so once a conversation is done, it's copied straight from Jabber into a case note. We usually do not make those kinds of notes viewable to customers, but they are good for internal documentation.
For those of you who have issues with your employer "snooping" on what you're doing, I would not expect any sort of privacy with respect to your computer usage at work. However, your employer needs to tell you your computer usage is subject to monitoring. Employers who fail to notify employees of monitoring are subject to serious trouble if they decide to take advantage of any information they find out as a result.
-- PhoneBoy
The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone, including the poster.
Privacy at the work place...
You are in a building that you don't own..
You are sitting in a chair that you don't own
You are using a computer that you don't own
You are using a network that you don't own
You are using bandwidth that you don't own
Why do you have any expectation of privacy?
It's simply a given.... If I am talking on my cell phone in the middle of the IT department I have no expectation of privacy...
If I am 'yelling' my conversations over the network why do I have expectation of privacy...
If I want to chat personally or sell company secrets I will do it at my home where I DO have privacy... But, not at work
The famous workplace, where your freedom is checked at the door.
For people so concerned with freedom, it is astonishing that the entirety of a person's basic rights are handed over like a movie ticket once the workday begins.
And to top it all off, everyone DEFENDS this by saying, "well, they sign your paycheck."
Newsflash: signing a paycheck != control someone's life.
Here are people who tell you what to do 40, 50, 60 hours a week. What time to sleep. How long to spend eating. What kind of house you can buy. Where you must live. What to say. How to dress. How many phone calls to make. What web sites to visit. And so on. It's worse than grade school. If you don't like it, you're "downsized."
Personal life is not to interfere in the workday. No personal activities of any kind are to be conducted at work, unless you're a manager and you have kids. Then you can "take the afternoon off" or leave early on Friday any time you feel like it. All time off is given begrudgingly, even if it is pre-approved.
Now they'll just help themselves to every word typed or spoken during the workday. Excuse me, but why is the workplace exempt from a person's inalienable rights? Why are companies allowed to treat people this way? Why is a paycheck carte blanche to control someone's life?
If it isn't company business, PAYCHECK OR NOT, it isn't company business. Period. People should be given the freedom to be people before corporate drones.
This may sound strange, but if a company is recording your chat sessions, instant messages, or e-mail communications, you can sue them for copyright infringement.
:-)
Sure, it would get all the merit of some of the recent patent lawsuits, but it's perfectly legal. At work, you have no expectation of privacy and often you even explicitly waive these rights by AUPs, as others have mentioned, so you have no legal high ground.
However of all the AUPs I have seen, none mention the property transfer of your communications, which are effectively your thoughts and are unique to you. This is called your "likeness". You are expressing it in your messages and chat transcripts, and by your employer snooping on you and storing records, they are effectively "copying" your copyrighted material, which you can claim copyright to.
Unless you're in a contract situation, the only works your company owns are those, which it has commissioned. Despite popular belief, it doesn't own everything you do at work -- only the work from your assigned tasks/projects/whatever.
I am no legal expert by any means, but at lunch with a lawyer friend I brought this issue up, and he said if he had a client in this situation he would have whatever logs found non-admissible due to copyright infringement. He then told me about likeness and how it can be used against an employer and possibly even to be on the plaintiff side of a suit. I found it interesting he would challenge this privacy issue from this interesting angle.
I guess you're best actually doing work while at work. If you must have security, use the various methods of encryption. Don't be stupid.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Even when you encrypt your traffic, it will not protect you from traffic analysis.
.xls spreadsheets from an server in Poland and all the URL's have /..%20%20/ in the path, I give that user a call.
I happen to be the dude in between management and the users on my site. I refuse to eavesdrop on my users. Not all of my users realize it, but we've got a pretty liberal policy (don't break the law, don't be offensive to others, don't use excessive bandwidth during business hours; that basically sums it up).
Some of my users know me for cracking down on porn or MP3 downloads, and think I'm reading their every keystroke. Because if I wasn't, then how would I know that they were doing stuff that they weren't supposed to do?
The reality is, when I get complaints about Internet performance, I run some quick scripts on the logs to find out who is hogging the system. If, after eliminating the obvious business use connections, I'm left with a top ten and number two is downloading a gazillion of
Usually, the user will accept the lecture that his contractual obligation to stick to the corporate guidelines is not optional. I sometimes learn through the grapevine that such a user thinks I'm a fascist. So be it. If other people can't work because of egregious abuse, I have to intervene.
Do I even look at the stuff they're downloading? Not if I can avoid it. The only times I look at what they're downloading is when they start yanking my chain, giving me the go around that there is no law against downloading Warez or porn. Maybe there isn't, I've got no clue. I do know what's in their contracts though.
Most of these issues are dealt with amically. People sometimes don't realize how big their impact on the corporate network is, and even if they do I usually let them get away with it if the abuse stops. They're usually pretty happy when I tell them I've got no clue what they were downloading, but could find out when forced to.
Over the last year, IM became a bit of an issue because of the way their stupid tools communicated (if only they used persistent connections they'd fly right under the radar). At some stage, 30% of our proxies capacity was used to serve a few dozen IM sessions and it really started to hurt web performance.
It's always funny when they let it escalate to management level, and I can at that stage let them rant about the invasion of their presumed privacy, and then drop the bombshell that I didn't even look at what they were downloading, and that it was trivial traffic analysis that gave them away, and that the reason they were in that meeting was because they incriminated themselves.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.