surfing

[rick]

Hi All

I am new here and this is my very 1st post ...& hopefully at the right forum place

the company for which I work has some strict norms for 'surfing' websites while at work  . They do register the usage and sites an employee goes to and as far as I know each time a webpage is refreshed it surmounts to a 'surf'  behaviour on the website (internal in the company). To circumvent this I use teamviewer to connect to my home PC and I 'surf' on my home PC rather than through the company's internet webserver. However for this I am reliable on the company's network connection to the outside world.
Question is :  can the company still find out that I am surfing on pages via Teamviewer on my home PC ? and can they also see the pages I go to (on my home pC) ?

Thanks in advance
Regards
Rick (teamviewer private user)

[ERS]

Interesting that they have such restrictions on surfing but allow for you to install teamviewer...lol
Unless the have the ability to monitor your screen at work in real time, i highly dobt they can "see" what you are surfing via teamviewer and your home PC

[rick]

Thx. ERS !
I know it's kind of bent...but I am the admin. of my PC ( so I can go about with installs & uninstalls etc.) but 'surf time' is being send to Big brother at times
Thanks for the info, I think I know enough
which basically culminates to a surfing binge now   

ps: any place I can give kudos to your post somewhere ?

[rick]

Interesting that they have such restrictions on surfing but allow for you to install teamviewer...lol
Unless the have the ability to monitor your screen at work in real time, i highly dobt they can "see" what you are surfing via teamviewer and your home PC

Hi

I also in the mean time rec'd an answer from the Teamviewer support staff and it goes like this:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thank you for your interest in TeamViewer.
All TeamViewer sessions are encoded and secured but your company can find that you are using TeamViewer.
If we may of further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us again.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

any ideas what the support meant by 'but your company can find that you are using TeamViewer'  ? I have the asked the same from them but anyone can make this a bit more elaborate for me here  ?

Thanks 

[matt]

By checking logs, they should be able to see IP addresses (your home IP address), and the port (usual TeamViewer Ports), and probably which software initiated the connection (TeamViewer)

[rick]

Ok Thanks
much appreciated.

[Danl]

Yes, it is straightforward for the company, on consulting logs, to see that you are connected to an external IP, which they might be able to guess is your home IP. Should they be able to do so, whether you are using TV or not, they could conclude that you are "surfing" your home computer, and they might guess that you are doing so with TV. Not sure if that's going to look a lot better to them than surfing some website directly. As in, "you're doing home business while you're at work??" But no, they can't tell what you are doing on TV.

[rick]

Yes, it is straightforward for the company, on consulting logs, to see that you are connected to an external IP, which they might be able to guess is your home IP. Should they be able to do so, whether you are using TV or not, they could conclude that you are "surfing" your home computer, and they might guess that you are doing so with TV. Not sure if that's going to look a lot better to them than surfing some website directly. As in, "you're doing home business while you're at work??" But no, they can't tell what you are doing on TV.

<..on consulting logs> : the teamviewer logfile gets created on my machine ( and I am the admin of my machine).so theres no way they can check the log on my machine( in a practical scenario)....but I suppose you meant other kinds of logfiles for the system admin ?

-secondly if 'they'  check their logs (not the teamviewer log) will they always find the same IP address ( to my home router ). My internet connection at home is DHCP ..thus dynamically distributing the IP address. Not a real network Guru I am  , but am I connecting to the same IP address ( to my home router ) everyday ....or am I connecting to 'differently allocated' IP addresses on my home router ( considering the dhcp config that I have @ home )?

[Danl]

Yes, your home router is probably connected by a dynamic IP, which means that it isn't guaranteed to stay the same. (In fact, it usually does stay the same for a long time.) So it's unlikely that your bosses will be able to trace your connection straight to your home. But if they see that you're connected to an IP that belongs to a consumer server company (Comcast, AT&T, etc.?) and isn't used by your company, they could guess that you're not doing company business.

The issue isn't, I'm guessing, being connected to home, or a particular surfing site, but not doing company business. So when they come to you and say, "what the #$%^&* are you doing spending so much time connected to ww.xx.yyy.zzz?", you'd better have a good answer.

[vastexaminer]

So, maybe this is a more basic question, but here goes.

What kind of information is passed back and forth between two computers on TV? Not the URLs of the sites being visited, I take it?

[matt]

Display data, keystrokes, mouse location...

[vastexaminer]

How does TV compare to Remote Desktop? Is TV using remote desktop in the background?

[matt]

Completely different technology that achieve similar ends...

Teamviewer is more like VNC than Remote Desktop
Each has it's purposes.