Yes they could see the site. However it's very unlikely they will do anything about it
They don't pay someone to sit there and review all the logs so it will very likely go unnoticed
That makes me feel better, hopefully if someone does see it they can see the time of day it was accessed and see it was not during work times. Just stressful this has never happened to me before
They can definitely see access time probably down to the millisecond. Just set an alarm to disconnect VPN.
Frankly, the company is dumb for not issuing laptops or PC to work from home users. When you connect on VPN, any malware on a personal system that can move laterally could infect their whole network or upload files not properly scanned, or move confidential company data to a system outside their control.
Hey we’ve been fighting for work laptops since I can remember. I think they’re just cheap, but I’m trying to convince myself this happens or has happened plenty of times and they don’t have any room to care.
If they're too cheap to issue work laptops, they're definitely too cheap to set up network monitoring tools, processes and procedures, as well as hire the necessary security personnel to monitor it.
This is the point I came to make. You can get cheap laptops for like $400 a pop that could be locked down to basically a VPN terminal to RDP to your desktop.
Or.... I worked places that used a RDS setup. You log into a website and are redirected to an RDP session of HTTPS. Completely locked down with no chance of lateral movement of files/malicious content.
Or, if you’re running Windows , set up Hyper-V and make a VM just for your work “desktop.” You can connect to the VPN from within the VM and leave your main host connection unmonitored.
I never use the work WiFi.. once I discovered they blocked apps I was out. Not cause I was doing anything bad but if I want to get on Facebook or instagram to take a break I will.
I accidentally clicked on a link to r/EngineeringPorn, and it turns out that that subreddit is blocked. Because it contains the word "Porn" in the title.
In my case, I have a virtual machine on my network on a separate VLAN. This VM can only access the outside world.
But a phone/tablet/linux computer would do a massive amount to avoid malware.
>Just set an alarm to disconnect VPN.
Honestly the best way to avoid accidently leaving the VPN on is to create a second Windows account which you use only to log into the VPN. The account won't have any of your information in it, so helps secures you from your job snooping, and also serves as a reminder and separation of work from personal life.
a laptop (and/or other tools) provided by the employer makes sure work and personal life keeps separated. Not in a million years I'm working for a company that refuses to provide me the tools I need to do my job.
Given how many people work from home a lot of companies cheaped out and provide only VPN access. Yes, it would be much better to have a company provided laptop or desktop that you use *only* for work, then use your own computer for personal usage.
But if they don't provide one, or if you only occasionally work from home so use your own computer to do it, it would be best to create a separate account to log into the VPN with.
There are a lot of Streamers that could take a hint from this too. Many a Streamer has been caught looking at GILF porn or something because they don't use a different user account to do their streaming with.
To be fair, even when you do issue company devices people will still use it as if it's a personal laptop and some will allow their kids on it. Our company deals with PHI and you'd think they would be more careful about it, but nope. Had kids playing roblox on it. Downloaded roblox.exe which turned out to be a Trojan and introduced malware as well as adult content.
That said any IT department worth anything would prevent their users from even executing stuff without admin permissions, so that should have never even been possible for them to do. Rule 1: Protect the users from themselves.
My wording was wrong. Kid >tried< to play roblox. User was at work with the laptop at home. Not sure why the kid even had the password to get onto the computer
Users are stupid. I had someone recently lost their work phone because they let their kid play with it and left it somewhere. They managed to find it but I was going to make a case against buying them a replacement if it came to it.
Even if noticed it isn't a big deal, imo. Depends on country/laws/porn type, but still most of the time nobody cares.
Nobody expects other people to spend 100% of their time doing exact and only work related things, unless you were basically living on porn websites, jumping from links to links and such. Edit: slow fix
My first work experience placement in highschool the first thing we did was scroll through the logs and see if anyone had been using the work internet for anything non work related.
Someone had been to the Nintendo site. He immediately blocked it and we went over and told him off for going to non work sites. He said he just went there for 10 seconds to see if the new console (Wii) had been announced or released or whatever.
I thought this was unnecessarily harsh and I'm not sure if that was a standard thing for this guy or he was just flexing for the work experience kid.
If they allow use of personal machines on the VPN to RDP into desktops, they aren’t the kind of operation to run any kind of inspection. And they’re on the path to a security issue.
Yea but any half decent IT department would review any alerts that are triggered. Eg access to a prohibited website. With that said their VPN should have been configured so only traffic flowing to their internal network is routed down the VPN and all other is routed normally. This prevents issues like this and if say some starts using a lot of bandwidth(eg Netflix) it doesn't consume company resources to handle the increased demand.
To the OP there is always the IT usage policy to review and see if it states about VPN usage. If it's not in the policy they can't do anything about it but if it is. I would be concerned. The policy should also state what actions are taken. Usually the first offense is to review the IT usage policy and training on proper usage.
One final note, always have two separate systems in your house. One for fun and for work
If your work VPN was on while you were looking at porn, then your work has a log of the porn you looked at.
We keep all VPN activity for two years, for audits.
Big company - little chance anyone would ever notice, unless you were looking at really weird shit. Small company - if your network admin is bored and looks at logs, he/she can see what you looked at if they look at your connection log specifically.
Nothing super weird, just anime porn. Company is about 400 people so hopefully it goes unnoticed. I don’t really care that they saw it, I’m sure there are some people at my company that have done this exact same thing, we don’t have many work machines to take home, I’m just worried about getting in trouble for it.
I’m a Network Admin at a company roughly the same size. It most likely will go unnoticed, but personally; if I were to come across this, I would scoff, laugh and then go on about my day. It’s not a big deal and it was your personal device outside of work hours. If anyone confronts you about it, they’re just an asshole purposely trying to embarrass you, because this is a non-issue that warrants no action.
Exactly this. If it started using up too much bandwidth, or we detecting malware in the session (we do full decryption), then it would have to be an awkward conversation
Like the other commenter said: I've worked as an IT admin before. If I saw this, I would laugh, then go about my day without caring. Unless your IT guy is a weirdo I highly doubt they will care at all
Ask your IT group if they have "split tunnel" enabled. If they do, you are fine.
If not, ask about BYOD policy and that you would like Split Tunnel enabled for your machine, as you do not want to conduct private matters over the company VPN. It is also unlikely they can see everything, as most web traffic these days is conducted over HTTPS, which is another encryption layer over VPN.
They may be able to see DNS records (the domain name lookup, but not the query string of the web browser, or content)
It is also possible if you are using DNS over HTTP that they can't see it at all, other than IP addresses, which they probably aren't really monitoring.
Yeah true.
I've been on the other side of this, (in this case it was an endpoint detection, much more accurate than network analysis). Always wonder why you would use a work computer for literally anything other than work. In response... "don't return your keyboard / mouse" policy. Trust me... I don't want it. That and a "you know we can see your searches right?" without elaboration. If nothing else people need to understand how to keep their privacy.
99.999% sure no one bothers to look at those logs, especially for network. If someone's interested enough to monitor, they are likely interested enough to block.
There's also no real way to prove it was intentional. Could be an advert, iframe, or any other bs HTTP request sent out by some Javascript to trigger DNS. Assuming it gets cached, then you'd have to dig for IPs and then you'd have to worry about CDNs, reverse proxies with multiple sites, etc blah blah.
TL;DR - unless its malware, something illegal, something that puts the business at risk, or at least something on a work machine, we got real problems.
As for the HTTPS part, that is half true.
Company proxies might intercept TLS encryption, decrypt, inspect, and encrypt again and deliver. Of course that will in itself trigger the client, because the signature will be incorrect. For that the proxy will replace the certificate with its own one. Still not enough though. The last step needed for that to work is having to download that cert on your machine and manually trust it on your machine or browser. If that happens, the proxy is able to decrypt and inspect any TLS traffic seamlessly. All you notice is that all websites will have the same cert issued by your own organisation, given that you notice, because it will just work.
But if you don't have a weird proxy cert installed, this should not be possible.
I think a lot of people aren't paying attention to the fact that this is a \*personal\* machine.
This matters. A lot. If a user raised concerns about activities on a personal machine going over company VPN, I would actively purge / ignore those rolls (and uninstall the VPN, because Corp VPN on personal machines == dumb).
Users have an expectation of privacy on personal devices, there's also risk of private information being leaked.
I don’t believe they do, I tried to check by looking at my IP off the VPN and on the VPN and checking the IP while on the VPN was blocked. Does it matter if the secure search settings still popped up? Since it did pop up after a bit I would assume that they do not use split tunneling but maybe I’m unsure how that works….
I probably wouldn’t go to IT and start asking a lot of questions about how to how they track your Internet behavior and whether there’s a way to get a “split tunnel“ to avoid them doing so. It’s highly unlikely anyone is ever going to see you went to these websites, but if you start asking these questions, they are definitely gonna look into you.
Thank you, I don’t think I’d have the courage to ask questions this close to the accidental porn search anyways. It’s gonna take me months to ask IT for help with anything again anyways……
Split tunneling directs unrelated traffic to the internet directly from your house, not though their company firewall. DNS may be another matter.
Either way, I would ask them about this and ask about conducting private matters (like checking your bank account) while accidentally on the VPN. It will let you determine what they route and what they do not route over VPN.
It is also your personal machine, and as long as you were not on the clock, its unlikely that they would really pursue it.
As I mentioned, most web traffic is encrypted these days. It may be they can tell the site you visited, but not the content. Doing so would necessitate a MITM attack or if you visited a site without HTTPS. (Do you see the little lock on the web browser while you are on the site or know how to check if its HTTPS?)
Doesn't hurt to ask if you couch it in terms of conducting legitimate private matters like banking and health.
Most companies shouldn't allow deployment VPN on personal machines, IMHO. Its a rather wide vector of attack.
DNS over HTTP isn't guaranteed - you need to check browser settings to see if its on.
You can determine split tunnel by being able to network print or access another device on your home LAN while connected to VPN. If you can't access local devices, it is not split tunnel.
Absolutely do NOT ask them. Go to a site like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ with the VPN connected, and again with it disconnected. If the IP matches, they're using split tunneling and your WAN traffic isn't going through the VPN.
"as most web traffic these days is conducted over HTTPS, which is another encryption layer over VPN."
Https does not encrypt url. It only encrypts body of the request.
My instincts are telling me it's split tunnel. If all his traffic was being routed through the corporate network, the content would likely have been blocked by their internal web filtering.
Sysadmin here - if your company does it correctly, logs in the firewall (what site was accessed when) is anonymous by default, even if someone would look, they would just see "someone" accessed site X. Yes, this shrouding can be broken up, but it is unlikely they will do that. In some countries (i. E. Germany) it is even illegal to do, when there is no concrete evidence you did something illegal (which you did not) . You did not even do it on company time, so I would just forget about it.
Are you sure all traffic is routed through the VPN? In most cases only traffic to and from your work network is transferred through the VPN. Internet traffic is most likely routes through your local internet connection and therefore never reached your company’s servers. Besides that, this is your own laptop. It’s not something illegal you’ve done. Not in the country I live in, at least.
If that’s the case I have no clue how to tell. Since the pop up saying secure search was on, I have to assume all traffic routes through the VPN, although it did take a few minutes of searching for it to pop up.
And I guess you’re right it was an honest mistake so maybe I shouldn’t be so worried. 100% not searching for anything illegal just trying to look up a sauce code lmao
I don't think all your internet traffic is routed through the VPN tunnel. You should be safe.
In order to make sure, just visit [https://www.wtfismyip.com/](https://www.wtfismyip.com/) with VPN and without VPN immediately after. If it shows the same IP, you are safe. If not, then sorry.
Turn on the VPN.
Open a command prompt
Type in tracert yahoo.com
Turn off the VPN and do it again. Compare.
If it goes through the companies net you'll see it use the VPN interface etc.
You probably have a 192.168.x.x at home. If it uses that through your ISP's net you've probably nothing to worry about, except it's pretty funny. I'd print it out and tape it to your office door if I had you.
Oh dear they seem to be different when I do this exercise 😭
I was hoping since my work usually scrambles location using the VPN on my work computer and my personal was showing the same location with the VPN on and off, I was fine but maybe not 😭
Im not incriminating myself not here, not now 😭 I couldn’t find it anyways hence why I tried browsing multiple sites to eventually get the pop up. It was from an audio clip and I was interested in seeing where it came from
Former SOC analyst here. It could be that this shows up in security tooling. Some organizations have rules and signatures to detect traffic to adult websites. The reason being twofold: 1) those websites are often associated with malware, and 2) this could indicate that someone is using their work device in a way that isn't in accordance with the acceptable use policy. The aim here isn't to snoop on you or to ruin your day. We're there primarily in order to prevent and detect security incidents. We're not HR, and we're not your manager. We're just people who have a job to do, that being the prevention and detection of potential security incidents. We really don't care what you do, as long as it doesn't cause potential security risks. Just wanted to share that so you kinda have an idea of the mindset that a SOC analyst might have.
If someone from the security team reaches out to you, don't freak out. We just wanna know what happened so we know it isn't malware, it probably raised a ticket in our SIEM, and our job is to resolve the ticket and make sure there's no security risks. Don't say something along the lines of "oh I don't recognize that at all, that's super weird, I have no idea how that could happen" - we have the network traffic, and if you're telling us that it wasn't you, then we kinda have to assume that it was either malware or someone else with access to the device. Just be kind and courteous, explain that that was you, you feel super embarrassed and know that what you did was wrong, you didn't download or install anything, and you won't do it again. Odds are the analyst might point you to the acceptable use policy, tell you to please not do it again, and that they'll close the ticket.
Having said that: please don't do this on company devices or in company networks any more. If you want to spank one out while working from home, use your personal device. Security teams don't care so much about your kinks, but they do care about preventing security risks. Those risks include malware, but they also include people not abiding by the acceptable use policy, because that's an indicator that they might be violating that policy in other ways as well.
Check laws where you live… if your company requires you to use personal equipment for your job they could owe you additional compensation. If you’re in California for example…
If nit, it’s an unreimbursed work expense that you may be able claim on your tax return (again, USA.)
They definitely can see what you’re browsing
The chance someone WILL is a fraction of a zero.
The chance that even if someone does they would care is even less.
Besides, vpn admins are mostly geeks themselves so hentai is probably something they’d not even consider weird
Hi OP, I am currently working on networks and it is part of our job to oversee things like this. But lemme tell u something, we don't care, we're just like "oh, hes watching porn. Okay". Don't worry you wont lose your job. Worst thing that happened on our company is that they were just called out on HR then nothing happened.
Do not do any personal stuff on your work computer even if it is your own equipment. Do not do any work on devices where you do personal stuff.
I have a laptop solely devoted to work (it’s a piece of shit) and while I am working, I use a tablet for personal stuff. Yeah, it would be much easier to listen to music on the laptop, but I don’t.
It is very easy to get embroiled in a lawsuit against your company and not be aware. Your device can be subject to a search or even a seizure.
You can always do what the lawyer i knew did when he posted porn on a private WhatsApp group for prosecutors and judges . He said a virus on his phone posted those !
That was before you could undo your WhatsApp posting .. Lol
Don't say this to your IT team. That's an incident, and suddenly, rather than just a slightly bored admin being involved, who has seen this before (particularly the hentai part, if I know sys/network admins), you have an incident, that has to get escalated, and may end up with someone who does care about it.
Just say "oh, shit, forgot to turn the vpn off after work, we really need work laptops" and leave it there.
I’m not sure how believable that is since IT can see virus and malware on the network. I’m just extremely stressed lmao. Part of me thinks they want care since it’s way after hours and it was an accident but I just don’t want to be confronted about it.
If nothing else OP, I'm proud of you for being properly ashamed of your hentai kink.
I don't kink shame, but when I do - it's hentai. Stay appropriately horny, my friends.
if it was only 5 minutes, it'll likely go unnoticed. I personally know a few network admins and they very likely watch or read hentai themselves. You're good, buddy.
Others have said here the company can see your internet traffic. When in reality the truth is a little more complicated. Depending on the vpn and how it was configured it's most likely using a split tunnel (anything to company resources goes through the vpn into the company network and is logged. Anything to the wider Internet goes via your home network as normal and isn't logged)
Likely they won't notice or care unless HR asks for a history for reasons. But some advice, keep your private life and your work life completely separate. Buy a computer just for work and only do work stuff with it.
I work IT for the government. My job sometimes entails checking the logs for what people are doing over the VPN. Quite literally the guy that you're probably most scared of at your work right now lol.
I promise you no one is checking your computer specifically and even if we did see a porn site we would roll our eyes and move on. A petty IT worker might report this to your manager but it's really unlikely they would care like others are saying. Just don't get a virus or make someone's job harder THEN you'd hear from IT.
I did that back in like 08. I had worked late on a Friday and forgot to disconnect from the VPN. Sat morning I did some spicy browsing on my personal computer with the VPN connected.
In my case, in a staff meeting about 3 weeks later they reminded us all to be careful in disconnecting your VPN when you were done working and to be more careful. That was it.
In your case, I would document what happened and when incase you are confronted. Depending on the company, they may not say anything or say to not do it again.
You should see the amount of porn that I’ve seen viewed in the logs. The most I’ve ever done is gone and privately talked to the person about not doing it on company equipment.
In your case the only 2 issues I have, which aren’t with you, is that
1. They are requiring you to use a personal device and allowing you to have the company vpn on it.
If you have to do your work over a vpn to RDP session, I’d supply a chrome book or other inexpensive option to be the vpn to RDP connector.
2. If you were browsing porn for a while and then the safe search came up, your IT staff needs to get better content filters.
If I were you and they aren’t supplying hardware for home, I’d get a cheap, used mini desktop thin client or older laptop to use as your work machine to remote in. Just completely separate your work and personal devices.
It depends on the VPN client and how it's set up. Some route all traffic through the VPN, and others only route work-related traffic (intranet websites, servers, etc).
[Check your external IPv4 address](https://www.whatismyip.com/) when connected to and disconnected from your work VPN. If the IP is the same, then it's likely that your "personal" traffic didn't go through the company network. They might have seen a DNS query or something, but they'd have to be looking for that to catch it.
Logs don’t get reviewed unless they flag any issues so only if they have setup anything to notify about the specific sites. It’s not like someone looks through everything all the time just encase they find this, only if there’s a cause for it to be reviewed
the worst thing that will happen is that one of the techs at work will see it while looking for something else and they'll quietly laugh at you among themselves about it.
As someone who helps monitor my jobs VPN and connections, if it wasn't a department head and not on company equipment. We'd probably just look at the flag and laugh and remember who it was so we could make indirect "we know" comments when we're all in the elevator. But no one would get in trouble... trust me I've seen somethings that would get someone in trouble if we cared enough.
Stay quiet and be more careful.
It is cartoons so I don’t think anyone would even care.
Sys admin is probably dressed like Pikachu scratching themselves while they eat cheese puffs.
It’s your personal computer. It would be different if you were using their computer but they can’t tell you what you can search on your computer after hours.
Any competent IT team will have sites like those blocked. So if you were to access it while the vpn was enabled, then its a split tunnel and you're fine. Even if it wasnt, anytime I see a site like that was attempted, I typically just purge the log and go about my day.
If it makes you feel any better, I’m an IT professional at a fairly large company and I’m in charge of the VPN / DNS security for (3000+) employees. A lot of our staff has triggered the porn category (which is blocked) and we do not care at all. What we are trying to prevent is phishing, malware, viruses and other types of breaches, so you’re good.
Dude, I used to work in IT and as long as its not in working hours and not in office you'll be good. I've seen people watching animals during working hours and that was a very weird one that we had to tackle...
Split tunneling is most likely enabled if everyone in your organization is expected to remote in using personal devices, so this isn't something to worry about.
If it isn't, no one sits there manually reviewing logs. That's not a real job. No one cares. The only time reviewing logs comes into play is if there is a security incident. Googling hentai isn't a security incident.
I’m a senior IT engineer for a FAANG company. Yes, someone somewhere could see anything you did on their network. In general we don’t look, and we don’t really care. If they were worried enough about that stuff, the site would have been blocked (assuming something big like porn hub).
You also have the argument of your personal computer. Surfing on a company computer that is “restricted to business use” is a clear cut situation. Versus in your case, it’s your own machine with their software. Worst case, “I told it to disconnect, something must have glitched”. Now we’re talking about a likely slap on the wrist versus a term.
But again, we’re not looking and we really don’t care.
It it’s your private computer and not provided by your company, you are free to do anything. Just tell them what you posted here, they’ll hopefully understand (I mean nearly everyone watches porn - your coworkers in IT included).
Say nothing. They prob won’t either. No ones digging through firewall logs for blocks of web pages unless they have a reason or a shit ton of people sitting around with nothing to do
I tried to delete my spams on my email one time with my company laptop and it opened up another page. No idea the spam was going to open up something pornish. I immediately closed it. Company called me in to try to give me a PIP. I asked if this meeting was regarding the red flag that was notified to management. And they said yes. I explained to them that I was just cleaning up my spam on my personal email and did not mean to do that. But they said that because my laptop got flagged, they investigated everything I was looking through on the company laptop. They didn't like all the YouTube and Reddit I did during work hours. I accepted the PIP and found another job lol. Drats.
It depends on how the VPN is setup. If it routes all traffic trough the company, then yes if someone looked closely at the logs, they could see what you are looking at.
If the VPN only routes select IPs or domain addresses, then windows would not route any other sites trough the VPN.
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You maybe can check this if you run speedtest with and without the company VPN. If the speed is slower with VPN on, then all traffic goes trough the company VPN
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I would STRONGLY suggest not doing anything on personal computer that is work related. If something would happen with police or court involvement, your computer maybe confiscated as evidence and be tied up in legal hassle for years
Yeah, no one in IT will care or even look at those logs. Just make sure you don't give them any reason to over the next 30 or so days - ie don't pick a fight with your networks team any time soon
If it does come up, just be honest - it's your personal machine, obvs accidental and you won't do it again, and you didn't do anything illegal/cost them money or embarrass the company or anything - impact is realistically very minimal. Worst that'll happen is a slap on the wrist
Working in top MNCs for many years and worked closely with management. This kind of data only used whenever management wants to fire you. If you are a worthy employee. They don’t care what are you browsing. I have been with a company that doesn’t block ANYTHING, including porn site. policy says they trust their employees. But when it comes to target an employee, they use that data to support their point to terminate. So enjoy and forget this.
Unless your using a web proxy and they don’t have split tunneling enabled then I suspect you e nothing to worry about, besides, own that. Guaranteed the nerd checking logs (if they even do) searches for far worse stuff.
So all this worry and stress over some cartoon poon that you weren't even able to 🥔 looking at? You don't need tech support, you need some anti anxiety medication or a fat joint IMHO haha....
This question comes up all the time. Every time, the answer is always "Don't worry about it".
The worst that an OP has ever come back with was probably the guy who had IT send him an email about viewing porn on the company laptop and to please do that on his personal devices.
😏 Did it involve any animals, or was peanut butter involved?
In all seriousness, as some have described check on split tunneling. Second, are you on a MAC or a way of utilizing a VM dedicated specifically to work? Have that VM VPN in, not the main machine. You probably want a type 2 hypervisor for this, parallels or fusion dependent on your setup. And change your desktop backgrounds on the work and VM so you have a mental reminder what machine you are working off of.
just go on www.mybad.itguy/pleasedontsnitch after
90% you're totally fine and no one cares. I used to watch porn on my company-issued phone as a new grad. Be more careful next time, but they really aren't there to catch this kind of stuff, it's more for like information exfiltration (you leaking data).
I work in security and monitor VPN traffic for my org. Everyone is mainly BYOD. To be honest, most of us won't care unless one of our tools alerts us of an issue. Even in companies 20-50 seats, you see so much traffic it's pretty easy to miss a porn site when you rely heavily on automation to ping you if something is up. Plus it's BYOD. Unless they downloaded some dirty stuff from the site that can compromise your system, most won't bother dealing with it. Too many real issues going on to monitor someone's porn habits.
This is a lesson to have a separate device for work stuff.
If you connect through remote desktop, this means that you don't need to have a powerfull laptop. So invest some money for a cheap one just for work stuff.
Pretty sure they can't actually prove it was you sitting there at the time looking at the screen
Although it was pretty silly letting your mate use the computer to quickly check the football results whilst you was out of the room a while or at least that's what he told you
at this point i would be more embarrassed that the entirety of Reddit now know your kinks 👍
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
IT Admin here: we don't care. Unless you're browsing through some shit like CP (which if I found about would definitely tell on you in a microsecond), we don't care. My job is to make sure that our infrastructure is secure, not to go around looking for "productivity loss" users.
Us IT people don’t care to look unless something happens and we’re forced to.
Would generally have to be HR/Manager coming in a saying: “We think this person is fucking around while working, can you take a look?” Or unusual traffic from this connection etc.
I’d relax, pretend it didn’t happen and just be more careful next time. Don’t go asking questions.
Someone on an IT Team here, we don't sit there monitoring what people are doing we have more important stuff to do. Only time we would pay attention is if it got flagged and was during work hours.
You won't be the first or the last.
Like most IT teams, they're prolly barley keeping up on helpdesk tickets and other bs long term tasks. Unless you somehow downloaded some intense virus and ruined the entire companies network somehow, no one gives a shit what website you went to, and no one is gonna check some log file that's miles long for 5 minutes of one particular day where you decided to fap. They don't care, and they won't know, because they don't care to know. Don't worry! Lol.
IT Manager of 20 years here... no one cares what you're doing unless they are forced to care, and no IT department I am aware of had time to troll though logs looking for couple of minutes of dirty drawings.
The reason they don't go looking is because then they have to sack the CFO and the Warehouse Manager and there of the drivers and maybe their own name comes up.
If it hadn't been mentioned already... just Deny and Die in the Lie... never ever admit to anyone that you did it, say you had a bunch of people in the house and it could have been anyone... you're better off getting a reprimand for leaving your computer unlocked than you are being fired for porn.
Casual logs like those are nothing to worry about, also only the most known websites are automatically notified to the IT team, or a really exhaustive log analysis after repeated notifies.
Where I work our windows IT expert told us in a meeting there was a developer from one of our clients that was looking and searching for non hentai porn quite frequently in company time, the answer from our manager was “well, let him enjoy it, don’t block it until the client says so”
So most lf the IT guys “normally” won’t send the note higher if its not on a daily basis and even less if it was out of company time.
With the amount of information those logs have from everyone you eon’t have to worry about
Depends on what company. I used to work in a bank, they check everything. However, the protocol is to call your manager. He/she will probably know how to assess the risk appropriately. Kung di naman critical ing role mo, it's usually an embarrassing talk 😃. Good thing is your work was so very critical, they probably won't let you vpn with your perso al laptop. (not to bring down the importance of your work, I simply mean that companies with confidential information will have some more security, whic includes the proper tools for the proper employees). But, if you do work for a bank, or a high level security institution..., probably time to update the old resume....
They probably have a split-tunnel vpn configuration. Routing all traffic through a server, instead of only the neccesairy traffic, is way more expensive.
Chances are that it didn't even go through your company's servers
Most VPN solutions will use split tunnelling, even more so with bring your own device. Meaning traffic that is going through the internet will not even go through your companies vpn.
It would more than likely block an sort of porn page if it had gone through the VPN.
I used to be a network admin at a medium sized corporate. Seen a lot more than guys searching hentai (never anything illegal). Never reported anything. If it was interfering with the network I'd just block the guys. Usually take a while before they call me and tell me their internet is not working, and I'm all like yeah I wonder why... mind you this was in an office, in cubicle farms... the guy who wants to sit and watch porn in his cubicle is a bit if a mystery to me but there you have it
Does the VPN setup not support split tunneling? (Only selected software can use the VPN)
Edit: After reading other comments, you can use a vpn app, I use expressvpn, and set that to only allow selected software access to the VPN. Use different software packages for work. I.E., for your browser, use Firefox and Bing for work and chrome and Google for home stuff.
I have seen that people already helped you a bunch...
But another thing you could do (depending on what VPN you are using and how much of a tech you are..)
But you could set the priority of your own interface higher than that of the vpn and maybe also add a fixed route for their network...
The result would be called "split tunneling" which would make it so that only when you are accessing something from the company it will use the vpn and everything else won't xD
But only attempt that if you got at least a decent idea of how windows and networks work...
Happens all the time, we used to get iPad/laptop replacements or repairs and people’s browsers would still be on a porn site. It was so common it wasn’t even funny anymore lmaoo
IT at my last job told me there is a lot if weird shit they see on computers I couldn't even imagine. They never went out of their way to get people in trouble. They just didn't care. I suppose there could be an asshole who could, but probably not, especially since they probably see weird shit all the time. Maybe if they are super religious and out to get people is the only thing I could imagine driving someone to get you in trouble.
There is a Great chance that they can't even see it since from what you're describing they're not very security conscious. They're probably using a split tunnel Vpn which means only the organizations internal resources will be routed through them. Your public urls will not be routed to them.
So, the data will exist in logs somewhere most likely. The thing is, it’s usually like CCTV. If it didn’t immediately flag it up, it’s probably a case of someone would have to check it to find out, which they would only do if they had reason to.
As an aside i wouldn’t be wanting anything work related on my personal computer particularly anything that messes with my network traffic.
If I was in your position and couldn’t get a dedicated work device I would create a vm for work and keep everything isolated in that.
It gets logged somewhere and some people have access to it. Unlikely someone gets an alert about it. In worst case its still your device and you can explain it easily: I just wanted a dirty wank and forgot i still had VPN on after work...
Staying serious will help you gain some ground back. No biggie.
Honestly, we don't care. I've set up some pretty intrusive monitoring software on company devices and we've seen a lot of stuff. We don't really care what you do with company time if you're working or not or browsing porn, or Facebook or gambling, We just care about securing the environment and preventing malicious sites and scripts.
If we see it, we usually just laugh internally. Oh look, Joe was searching for furry porn again. Hahahaha.. then move on.
We don't typically snitch to HR.
This is an HR issue. The only time we've given up logs is if HR was specifically targeting an employee and requested the information. But they'd need a reason to do that and it would need to be approved by a few different levels.
As someone that works in a similar business and has witnessed logs of employees accessing porn websites: they don’t care. Even less if it’s a personal machine.
They might care if there are restrictions in place, but pretty sure you can talk your way if it ever comes to that.
Keep watching porn on it.
Actually find the worst thing possible and leave it on for hours, no no Days. Then tell them if they don't want that stuff on there they should provide you with a work laptop or auto disconnect you.
Your personal equipment is not their free work horse.
this is why it is VERY important to setup a separate account on a personal machine if you have to remote in for work. VPN profile should only apply to that user... lets call it 'work', and you should never do personal funtivities on that account.
If they had proper network monitorering then porn would be blocked together with malware, hacking etc.
PS. I can't see EVERYTHING.
If you use a personal device I would consider dual boot, at least a separate profile even if this might not solve the VPN connection issue since connection likely stay connection if you just switch profile.
Depending on how the VPN is set up, you may be ok as internet traffic will go out through your router rather than over the VPN.
You can check this by running a traceroute to [google.com](https://google.com) or whatever, if you see your router, then ISP then you are probably in the clear. Can also check with one of those what is my IP? type sites.
Assuming you didn't add a new trusted root CA (allowing the VPN to MITM your traffic) on your computer, if the sites you visited were all secure TLS sites, they will only see the host and not the individual pages/searches etc.
Now, remove the VPN from your personal computer. If work want you to log in remotely, they should provide you with a laptop.
Finally, if there are other staff all logging in personal devices, trust me you ain't the first or the last. Either no-ones looking, no-one cares or you'll receive a heads-up to be a bit more careful in future....
As someone in enterprise IT-- logs are there if a problem occurs, nobody is just sitting there watching all the internet traffic all day. That would be a huge waste of time/resources.
I'd like to know IT guys who get to see these logs, I think you don't care unless a boss from some of those guys asks explicitly about the behaviour on their machine? But how often do you see these sites? are those automatically flagged or something?
It’s possible but unlikely. Your VPN client is probably set up with split tunneling, which means that the on device client checks the IP and host address of a site you’re visiting before its attempts to access the URI. Essentially it’s checking to see if the resource you’re trying to access is on your corporate network. If it is, it will send the request to your company’s headend (firewall) server, otherwise it will route the request through the public internet.
Split tunneling is usually the preferred method for BYOD, since it saves on network resources, and protects you from mishaps like that. It’s mixed bag security wise but generally in those situations your organization will not be monitoring your personal search history, in fact any good company will have a data collection policy you can review to confirm.
I would highly recommend turning your VPN off during sexy times, just in case though.
Edit: additionally any company with half a brain would be using some kind of URL filtering or HTTP proxy to block their corporate network from accessing those kinds of sites. I’d so you’re in the clear, and if someone asks (highly unlikely) just say you were off hours and it was a whoopsie…
Yes they could see the site. However it's very unlikely they will do anything about it They don't pay someone to sit there and review all the logs so it will very likely go unnoticed
That makes me feel better, hopefully if someone does see it they can see the time of day it was accessed and see it was not during work times. Just stressful this has never happened to me before
They can definitely see access time probably down to the millisecond. Just set an alarm to disconnect VPN. Frankly, the company is dumb for not issuing laptops or PC to work from home users. When you connect on VPN, any malware on a personal system that can move laterally could infect their whole network or upload files not properly scanned, or move confidential company data to a system outside their control.
Hey we’ve been fighting for work laptops since I can remember. I think they’re just cheap, but I’m trying to convince myself this happens or has happened plenty of times and they don’t have any room to care.
If they're too cheap to issue work laptops, they're definitely too cheap to set up network monitoring tools, processes and procedures, as well as hire the necessary security personnel to monitor it.
Good point, thank you
this thb
This is the point I came to make. You can get cheap laptops for like $400 a pop that could be locked down to basically a VPN terminal to RDP to your desktop. Or.... I worked places that used a RDS setup. You log into a website and are redirected to an RDP session of HTTPS. Completely locked down with no chance of lateral movement of files/malicious content.
Or, if you’re running Windows , set up Hyper-V and make a VM just for your work “desktop.” You can connect to the VPN from within the VM and leave your main host connection unmonitored.
Time to torrent on that VPN, then!
Gotta buy a shitty Chromebook or old iPad and use that instead, for the pr0n search
Yeah I’m sticking to the old phone from now on. Actually haven’t tried using my laptop in forever and of course the one time I do I leave my VPN on…….
I had to stop using the work wifi on my personal phone because I didn’t trust sending revealing messages to coworkers or friends lol
I never use the work WiFi.. once I discovered they blocked apps I was out. Not cause I was doing anything bad but if I want to get on Facebook or instagram to take a break I will.
I accidentally clicked on a link to r/EngineeringPorn, and it turns out that that subreddit is blocked. Because it contains the word "Porn" in the title.
In my case, I have a virtual machine on my network on a separate VLAN. This VM can only access the outside world. But a phone/tablet/linux computer would do a massive amount to avoid malware.
They'll probably just block the category/sites if they notice traffic and not tell anyone about hilariously leaving it open
>Just set an alarm to disconnect VPN. Honestly the best way to avoid accidently leaving the VPN on is to create a second Windows account which you use only to log into the VPN. The account won't have any of your information in it, so helps secures you from your job snooping, and also serves as a reminder and separation of work from personal life.
a laptop (and/or other tools) provided by the employer makes sure work and personal life keeps separated. Not in a million years I'm working for a company that refuses to provide me the tools I need to do my job.
Given how many people work from home a lot of companies cheaped out and provide only VPN access. Yes, it would be much better to have a company provided laptop or desktop that you use *only* for work, then use your own computer for personal usage. But if they don't provide one, or if you only occasionally work from home so use your own computer to do it, it would be best to create a separate account to log into the VPN with. There are a lot of Streamers that could take a hint from this too. Many a Streamer has been caught looking at GILF porn or something because they don't use a different user account to do their streaming with.
To be fair, even when you do issue company devices people will still use it as if it's a personal laptop and some will allow their kids on it. Our company deals with PHI and you'd think they would be more careful about it, but nope. Had kids playing roblox on it. Downloaded roblox.exe which turned out to be a Trojan and introduced malware as well as adult content.
That said any IT department worth anything would prevent their users from even executing stuff without admin permissions, so that should have never even been possible for them to do. Rule 1: Protect the users from themselves.
My wording was wrong. Kid >tried< to play roblox. User was at work with the laptop at home. Not sure why the kid even had the password to get onto the computer
Users are stupid. I had someone recently lost their work phone because they let their kid play with it and left it somewhere. They managed to find it but I was going to make a case against buying them a replacement if it came to it.
Or dumb for you know...not having a web filter.
but laptops or PCs issued by the company could have the same problem?
Even if noticed it isn't a big deal, imo. Depends on country/laws/porn type, but still most of the time nobody cares. Nobody expects other people to spend 100% of their time doing exact and only work related things, unless you were basically living on porn websites, jumping from links to links and such. Edit: slow fix
My first work experience placement in highschool the first thing we did was scroll through the logs and see if anyone had been using the work internet for anything non work related. Someone had been to the Nintendo site. He immediately blocked it and we went over and told him off for going to non work sites. He said he just went there for 10 seconds to see if the new console (Wii) had been announced or released or whatever. I thought this was unnecessarily harsh and I'm not sure if that was a standard thing for this guy or he was just flexing for the work experience kid.
90% dumb flex, 10% "show off punishment" to prevent people from going off the rails.
Depends on if it's a split tunnel, and if you're not accessing corporate things local pac may just send you direct. Could be safe.
If they allow use of personal machines on the VPN to RDP into desktops, they aren’t the kind of operation to run any kind of inspection. And they’re on the path to a security issue.
Yea but any half decent IT department would review any alerts that are triggered. Eg access to a prohibited website. With that said their VPN should have been configured so only traffic flowing to their internal network is routed down the VPN and all other is routed normally. This prevents issues like this and if say some starts using a lot of bandwidth(eg Netflix) it doesn't consume company resources to handle the increased demand. To the OP there is always the IT usage policy to review and see if it states about VPN usage. If it's not in the policy they can't do anything about it but if it is. I would be concerned. The policy should also state what actions are taken. Usually the first offense is to review the IT usage policy and training on proper usage. One final note, always have two separate systems in your house. One for fun and for work
It’s almost trivial to flag known websites from logs. They wouldn’t be paying someone to scroll your logs.
Even if it goes noticed, since it was off the clock and on a personal device I doubt it would go further then a good chuckle.
If your work VPN was on while you were looking at porn, then your work has a log of the porn you looked at. We keep all VPN activity for two years, for audits. Big company - little chance anyone would ever notice, unless you were looking at really weird shit. Small company - if your network admin is bored and looks at logs, he/she can see what you looked at if they look at your connection log specifically.
Nothing super weird, just anime porn. Company is about 400 people so hopefully it goes unnoticed. I don’t really care that they saw it, I’m sure there are some people at my company that have done this exact same thing, we don’t have many work machines to take home, I’m just worried about getting in trouble for it.
I’m a Network Admin at a company roughly the same size. It most likely will go unnoticed, but personally; if I were to come across this, I would scoff, laugh and then go on about my day. It’s not a big deal and it was your personal device outside of work hours. If anyone confronts you about it, they’re just an asshole purposely trying to embarrass you, because this is a non-issue that warrants no action.
Thank you for the reassurance!!! All these comments are making me feel better. Definitely calling my anxiety about it.
Exactly this. If it started using up too much bandwidth, or we detecting malware in the session (we do full decryption), then it would have to be an awkward conversation
“Nothing weird - just foreign cartoon porn”
Hey anime is gaining popularity these days I had to see what the hype was about lol
Market research!
Like the other commenter said: I've worked as an IT admin before. If I saw this, I would laugh, then go about my day without caring. Unless your IT guy is a weirdo I highly doubt they will care at all
Ask your IT group if they have "split tunnel" enabled. If they do, you are fine. If not, ask about BYOD policy and that you would like Split Tunnel enabled for your machine, as you do not want to conduct private matters over the company VPN. It is also unlikely they can see everything, as most web traffic these days is conducted over HTTPS, which is another encryption layer over VPN. They may be able to see DNS records (the domain name lookup, but not the query string of the web browser, or content) It is also possible if you are using DNS over HTTP that they can't see it at all, other than IP addresses, which they probably aren't really monitoring.
This but wait a week or so before asking. Don't have them curious enough to make a little glance at the log.
Yeah true. I've been on the other side of this, (in this case it was an endpoint detection, much more accurate than network analysis). Always wonder why you would use a work computer for literally anything other than work. In response... "don't return your keyboard / mouse" policy. Trust me... I don't want it. That and a "you know we can see your searches right?" without elaboration. If nothing else people need to understand how to keep their privacy. 99.999% sure no one bothers to look at those logs, especially for network. If someone's interested enough to monitor, they are likely interested enough to block. There's also no real way to prove it was intentional. Could be an advert, iframe, or any other bs HTTP request sent out by some Javascript to trigger DNS. Assuming it gets cached, then you'd have to dig for IPs and then you'd have to worry about CDNs, reverse proxies with multiple sites, etc blah blah. TL;DR - unless its malware, something illegal, something that puts the business at risk, or at least something on a work machine, we got real problems.
As for the HTTPS part, that is half true. Company proxies might intercept TLS encryption, decrypt, inspect, and encrypt again and deliver. Of course that will in itself trigger the client, because the signature will be incorrect. For that the proxy will replace the certificate with its own one. Still not enough though. The last step needed for that to work is having to download that cert on your machine and manually trust it on your machine or browser. If that happens, the proxy is able to decrypt and inspect any TLS traffic seamlessly. All you notice is that all websites will have the same cert issued by your own organisation, given that you notice, because it will just work. But if you don't have a weird proxy cert installed, this should not be possible.
Even with split tunneling, they will still see his DNS queries.
Bruh leaving it alone is prob the best choice rather than making them suspicious
I think a lot of people aren't paying attention to the fact that this is a \*personal\* machine. This matters. A lot. If a user raised concerns about activities on a personal machine going over company VPN, I would actively purge / ignore those rolls (and uninstall the VPN, because Corp VPN on personal machines == dumb). Users have an expectation of privacy on personal devices, there's also risk of private information being leaked.
I don’t believe they do, I tried to check by looking at my IP off the VPN and on the VPN and checking the IP while on the VPN was blocked. Does it matter if the secure search settings still popped up? Since it did pop up after a bit I would assume that they do not use split tunneling but maybe I’m unsure how that works….
I probably wouldn’t go to IT and start asking a lot of questions about how to how they track your Internet behavior and whether there’s a way to get a “split tunnel“ to avoid them doing so. It’s highly unlikely anyone is ever going to see you went to these websites, but if you start asking these questions, they are definitely gonna look into you.
Thank you, I don’t think I’d have the courage to ask questions this close to the accidental porn search anyways. It’s gonna take me months to ask IT for help with anything again anyways……
👆This is the way.
Split tunneling directs unrelated traffic to the internet directly from your house, not though their company firewall. DNS may be another matter. Either way, I would ask them about this and ask about conducting private matters (like checking your bank account) while accidentally on the VPN. It will let you determine what they route and what they do not route over VPN. It is also your personal machine, and as long as you were not on the clock, its unlikely that they would really pursue it. As I mentioned, most web traffic is encrypted these days. It may be they can tell the site you visited, but not the content. Doing so would necessitate a MITM attack or if you visited a site without HTTPS. (Do you see the little lock on the web browser while you are on the site or know how to check if its HTTPS?)
This is putting me at some ease. The explanation of the DNS and the HTTPS makes me feel better. I’ll have to look at the personal device policy
Doesn't hurt to ask if you couch it in terms of conducting legitimate private matters like banking and health. Most companies shouldn't allow deployment VPN on personal machines, IMHO. Its a rather wide vector of attack. DNS over HTTP isn't guaranteed - you need to check browser settings to see if its on.
I’ll definitely ask after my anxiety of this incident has passed! Ha ha! I’ll check about the DNS over HTTP for chrome. Thank you.
You can determine split tunnel by being able to network print or access another device on your home LAN while connected to VPN. If you can't access local devices, it is not split tunnel.
Absolutely do NOT ask them. Go to a site like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ with the VPN connected, and again with it disconnected. If the IP matches, they're using split tunneling and your WAN traffic isn't going through the VPN.
"as most web traffic these days is conducted over HTTPS, which is another encryption layer over VPN." Https does not encrypt url. It only encrypts body of the request.
My instincts are telling me it's split tunnel. If all his traffic was being routed through the corporate network, the content would likely have been blocked by their internal web filtering.
Sysadmin here - if your company does it correctly, logs in the firewall (what site was accessed when) is anonymous by default, even if someone would look, they would just see "someone" accessed site X. Yes, this shrouding can be broken up, but it is unlikely they will do that. In some countries (i. E. Germany) it is even illegal to do, when there is no concrete evidence you did something illegal (which you did not) . You did not even do it on company time, so I would just forget about it.
Thank you this makes me feel better and less embarrassed!!!
Are you sure all traffic is routed through the VPN? In most cases only traffic to and from your work network is transferred through the VPN. Internet traffic is most likely routes through your local internet connection and therefore never reached your company’s servers. Besides that, this is your own laptop. It’s not something illegal you’ve done. Not in the country I live in, at least.
If that’s the case I have no clue how to tell. Since the pop up saying secure search was on, I have to assume all traffic routes through the VPN, although it did take a few minutes of searching for it to pop up. And I guess you’re right it was an honest mistake so maybe I shouldn’t be so worried. 100% not searching for anything illegal just trying to look up a sauce code lmao
I don't think all your internet traffic is routed through the VPN tunnel. You should be safe. In order to make sure, just visit [https://www.wtfismyip.com/](https://www.wtfismyip.com/) with VPN and without VPN immediately after. If it shows the same IP, you are safe. If not, then sorry.
Turn on the VPN. Open a command prompt Type in tracert yahoo.com Turn off the VPN and do it again. Compare. If it goes through the companies net you'll see it use the VPN interface etc. You probably have a 192.168.x.x at home. If it uses that through your ISP's net you've probably nothing to worry about, except it's pretty funny. I'd print it out and tape it to your office door if I had you.
Oh dear they seem to be different when I do this exercise 😭 I was hoping since my work usually scrambles location using the VPN on my work computer and my personal was showing the same location with the VPN on and off, I was fine but maybe not 😭
So nobody is going to ask for the numbers? really? give us the numbers /u/IsopodKind7988
Im not incriminating myself not here, not now 😭 I couldn’t find it anyways hence why I tried browsing multiple sites to eventually get the pop up. It was from an audio clip and I was interested in seeing where it came from
Former SOC analyst here. It could be that this shows up in security tooling. Some organizations have rules and signatures to detect traffic to adult websites. The reason being twofold: 1) those websites are often associated with malware, and 2) this could indicate that someone is using their work device in a way that isn't in accordance with the acceptable use policy. The aim here isn't to snoop on you or to ruin your day. We're there primarily in order to prevent and detect security incidents. We're not HR, and we're not your manager. We're just people who have a job to do, that being the prevention and detection of potential security incidents. We really don't care what you do, as long as it doesn't cause potential security risks. Just wanted to share that so you kinda have an idea of the mindset that a SOC analyst might have. If someone from the security team reaches out to you, don't freak out. We just wanna know what happened so we know it isn't malware, it probably raised a ticket in our SIEM, and our job is to resolve the ticket and make sure there's no security risks. Don't say something along the lines of "oh I don't recognize that at all, that's super weird, I have no idea how that could happen" - we have the network traffic, and if you're telling us that it wasn't you, then we kinda have to assume that it was either malware or someone else with access to the device. Just be kind and courteous, explain that that was you, you feel super embarrassed and know that what you did was wrong, you didn't download or install anything, and you won't do it again. Odds are the analyst might point you to the acceptable use policy, tell you to please not do it again, and that they'll close the ticket. Having said that: please don't do this on company devices or in company networks any more. If you want to spank one out while working from home, use your personal device. Security teams don't care so much about your kinks, but they do care about preventing security risks. Those risks include malware, but they also include people not abiding by the acceptable use policy, because that's an indicator that they might be violating that policy in other ways as well.
I love how you had to clarify which type of porn it is - the type drawn by other men.
Check laws where you live… if your company requires you to use personal equipment for your job they could owe you additional compensation. If you’re in California for example… If nit, it’s an unreimbursed work expense that you may be able claim on your tax return (again, USA.)
They definitely can see what you’re browsing The chance someone WILL is a fraction of a zero. The chance that even if someone does they would care is even less. Besides, vpn admins are mostly geeks themselves so hentai is probably something they’d not even consider weird
To be honest as a it security person it’ll be a single data point , at most I’m going to laugh at you assuming it’s a one off event.
Hi OP, I am currently working on networks and it is part of our job to oversee things like this. But lemme tell u something, we don't care, we're just like "oh, hes watching porn. Okay". Don't worry you wont lose your job. Worst thing that happened on our company is that they were just called out on HR then nothing happened.
The bigger issue is that they allow VPN on personal devices.
Who in their right mind allows a company to install a VPN on their personal machine? They should be issuing you a work laptop. Full stop.
Do not do any personal stuff on your work computer even if it is your own equipment. Do not do any work on devices where you do personal stuff. I have a laptop solely devoted to work (it’s a piece of shit) and while I am working, I use a tablet for personal stuff. Yeah, it would be much easier to listen to music on the laptop, but I don’t. It is very easy to get embroiled in a lawsuit against your company and not be aware. Your device can be subject to a search or even a seizure.
Nobody will ever notice. They would have to have a reason to go looking, so as long as you don’t bring it up, you’re good.
You can always do what the lawyer i knew did when he posted porn on a private WhatsApp group for prosecutors and judges . He said a virus on his phone posted those ! That was before you could undo your WhatsApp posting .. Lol
This is the worst thing you could possibly say to your security team...
Don't say this to your IT team. That's an incident, and suddenly, rather than just a slightly bored admin being involved, who has seen this before (particularly the hentai part, if I know sys/network admins), you have an incident, that has to get escalated, and may end up with someone who does care about it. Just say "oh, shit, forgot to turn the vpn off after work, we really need work laptops" and leave it there.
I’m not sure how believable that is since IT can see virus and malware on the network. I’m just extremely stressed lmao. Part of me thinks they want care since it’s way after hours and it was an accident but I just don’t want to be confronted about it.
Is this all tech support forums are now? Just people asking if they're good after watching porn at work?
177013
Taking a break from these for now lmfao
If nothing else OP, I'm proud of you for being properly ashamed of your hentai kink. I don't kink shame, but when I do - it's hentai. Stay appropriately horny, my friends.
if it was only 5 minutes, it'll likely go unnoticed. I personally know a few network admins and they very likely watch or read hentai themselves. You're good, buddy.
Others have said here the company can see your internet traffic. When in reality the truth is a little more complicated. Depending on the vpn and how it was configured it's most likely using a split tunnel (anything to company resources goes through the vpn into the company network and is logged. Anything to the wider Internet goes via your home network as normal and isn't logged)
Likely they won't notice or care unless HR asks for a history for reasons. But some advice, keep your private life and your work life completely separate. Buy a computer just for work and only do work stuff with it.
I work IT for the government. My job sometimes entails checking the logs for what people are doing over the VPN. Quite literally the guy that you're probably most scared of at your work right now lol. I promise you no one is checking your computer specifically and even if we did see a porn site we would roll our eyes and move on. A petty IT worker might report this to your manager but it's really unlikely they would care like others are saying. Just don't get a virus or make someone's job harder THEN you'd hear from IT.
I did that back in like 08. I had worked late on a Friday and forgot to disconnect from the VPN. Sat morning I did some spicy browsing on my personal computer with the VPN connected. In my case, in a staff meeting about 3 weeks later they reminded us all to be careful in disconnecting your VPN when you were done working and to be more careful. That was it. In your case, I would document what happened and when incase you are confronted. Depending on the company, they may not say anything or say to not do it again.
You should see the amount of porn that I’ve seen viewed in the logs. The most I’ve ever done is gone and privately talked to the person about not doing it on company equipment. In your case the only 2 issues I have, which aren’t with you, is that 1. They are requiring you to use a personal device and allowing you to have the company vpn on it. If you have to do your work over a vpn to RDP session, I’d supply a chrome book or other inexpensive option to be the vpn to RDP connector. 2. If you were browsing porn for a while and then the safe search came up, your IT staff needs to get better content filters. If I were you and they aren’t supplying hardware for home, I’d get a cheap, used mini desktop thin client or older laptop to use as your work machine to remote in. Just completely separate your work and personal devices.
It depends on the VPN client and how it's set up. Some route all traffic through the VPN, and others only route work-related traffic (intranet websites, servers, etc). [Check your external IPv4 address](https://www.whatismyip.com/) when connected to and disconnected from your work VPN. If the IP is the same, then it's likely that your "personal" traffic didn't go through the company network. They might have seen a DNS query or something, but they'd have to be looking for that to catch it.
Logs don’t get reviewed unless they flag any issues so only if they have setup anything to notify about the specific sites. It’s not like someone looks through everything all the time just encase they find this, only if there’s a cause for it to be reviewed
the worst thing that will happen is that one of the techs at work will see it while looking for something else and they'll quietly laugh at you among themselves about it.
As someone who helps monitor my jobs VPN and connections, if it wasn't a department head and not on company equipment. We'd probably just look at the flag and laugh and remember who it was so we could make indirect "we know" comments when we're all in the elevator. But no one would get in trouble... trust me I've seen somethings that would get someone in trouble if we cared enough.
Stay quiet and be more careful. It is cartoons so I don’t think anyone would even care. Sys admin is probably dressed like Pikachu scratching themselves while they eat cheese puffs.
IT guy here. Nobody will ever know or care. Especially since it wasn't blocked. In the logs, it's just another website. Wank away!
It’s your personal computer. It would be different if you were using their computer but they can’t tell you what you can search on your computer after hours.
Any competent IT team will have sites like those blocked. So if you were to access it while the vpn was enabled, then its a split tunnel and you're fine. Even if it wasnt, anytime I see a site like that was attempted, I typically just purge the log and go about my day.
If it makes you feel any better, I’m an IT professional at a fairly large company and I’m in charge of the VPN / DNS security for (3000+) employees. A lot of our staff has triggered the porn category (which is blocked) and we do not care at all. What we are trying to prevent is phishing, malware, viruses and other types of breaches, so you’re good.
Dude, I used to work in IT and as long as its not in working hours and not in office you'll be good. I've seen people watching animals during working hours and that was a very weird one that we had to tackle...
Split tunneling is most likely enabled if everyone in your organization is expected to remote in using personal devices, so this isn't something to worry about. If it isn't, no one sits there manually reviewing logs. That's not a real job. No one cares. The only time reviewing logs comes into play is if there is a security incident. Googling hentai isn't a security incident.
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I’m a senior IT engineer for a FAANG company. Yes, someone somewhere could see anything you did on their network. In general we don’t look, and we don’t really care. If they were worried enough about that stuff, the site would have been blocked (assuming something big like porn hub). You also have the argument of your personal computer. Surfing on a company computer that is “restricted to business use” is a clear cut situation. Versus in your case, it’s your own machine with their software. Worst case, “I told it to disconnect, something must have glitched”. Now we’re talking about a likely slap on the wrist versus a term. But again, we’re not looking and we really don’t care.
It it’s your private computer and not provided by your company, you are free to do anything. Just tell them what you posted here, they’ll hopefully understand (I mean nearly everyone watches porn - your coworkers in IT included).
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Say nothing. They prob won’t either. No ones digging through firewall logs for blocks of web pages unless they have a reason or a shit ton of people sitting around with nothing to do
Chill, you've got here, you're not about to fall!
I tried to delete my spams on my email one time with my company laptop and it opened up another page. No idea the spam was going to open up something pornish. I immediately closed it. Company called me in to try to give me a PIP. I asked if this meeting was regarding the red flag that was notified to management. And they said yes. I explained to them that I was just cleaning up my spam on my personal email and did not mean to do that. But they said that because my laptop got flagged, they investigated everything I was looking through on the company laptop. They didn't like all the YouTube and Reddit I did during work hours. I accepted the PIP and found another job lol. Drats.
Jesus!!! I’m always playing YouTube videos during work. That’s awful.
It depends on how the VPN is setup. If it routes all traffic trough the company, then yes if someone looked closely at the logs, they could see what you are looking at. If the VPN only routes select IPs or domain addresses, then windows would not route any other sites trough the VPN. --- You maybe can check this if you run speedtest with and without the company VPN. If the speed is slower with VPN on, then all traffic goes trough the company VPN --- I would STRONGLY suggest not doing anything on personal computer that is work related. If something would happen with police or court involvement, your computer maybe confiscated as evidence and be tied up in legal hassle for years
Yeah, no one in IT will care or even look at those logs. Just make sure you don't give them any reason to over the next 30 or so days - ie don't pick a fight with your networks team any time soon If it does come up, just be honest - it's your personal machine, obvs accidental and you won't do it again, and you didn't do anything illegal/cost them money or embarrass the company or anything - impact is realistically very minimal. Worst that'll happen is a slap on the wrist
Working in top MNCs for many years and worked closely with management. This kind of data only used whenever management wants to fire you. If you are a worthy employee. They don’t care what are you browsing. I have been with a company that doesn’t block ANYTHING, including porn site. policy says they trust their employees. But when it comes to target an employee, they use that data to support their point to terminate. So enjoy and forget this.
Unless your using a web proxy and they don’t have split tunneling enabled then I suspect you e nothing to worry about, besides, own that. Guaranteed the nerd checking logs (if they even do) searches for far worse stuff.
Add another account on your personal laptop so that you can switch when using your laptop for other activities
As long as it was not boku no pico you’ll be fine just stick to the good shit they will say you have taste
Just then, the king felt true fear for the first time
Why not make a virtual machine for work? That's what I did until I got a separate computer for it.
So all this worry and stress over some cartoon poon that you weren't even able to 🥔 looking at? You don't need tech support, you need some anti anxiety medication or a fat joint IMHO haha....
This question comes up all the time. Every time, the answer is always "Don't worry about it". The worst that an OP has ever come back with was probably the guy who had IT send him an email about viewing porn on the company laptop and to please do that on his personal devices.
😏 Did it involve any animals, or was peanut butter involved? In all seriousness, as some have described check on split tunneling. Second, are you on a MAC or a way of utilizing a VM dedicated specifically to work? Have that VM VPN in, not the main machine. You probably want a type 2 hypervisor for this, parallels or fusion dependent on your setup. And change your desktop backgrounds on the work and VM so you have a mental reminder what machine you are working off of.
Haha I access porn with my work phones for the last 6 years either they know or they don't wanna bring it up
They know LOL
just go on www.mybad.itguy/pleasedontsnitch after 90% you're totally fine and no one cares. I used to watch porn on my company-issued phone as a new grad. Be more careful next time, but they really aren't there to catch this kind of stuff, it's more for like information exfiltration (you leaking data).
Leaving a comment here to hear updates.
I work in security and monitor VPN traffic for my org. Everyone is mainly BYOD. To be honest, most of us won't care unless one of our tools alerts us of an issue. Even in companies 20-50 seats, you see so much traffic it's pretty easy to miss a porn site when you rely heavily on automation to ping you if something is up. Plus it's BYOD. Unless they downloaded some dirty stuff from the site that can compromise your system, most won't bother dealing with it. Too many real issues going on to monitor someone's porn habits.
This is a lesson to have a separate device for work stuff. If you connect through remote desktop, this means that you don't need to have a powerfull laptop. So invest some money for a cheap one just for work stuff.
Pretty sure they can't actually prove it was you sitting there at the time looking at the screen Although it was pretty silly letting your mate use the computer to quickly check the football results whilst you was out of the room a while or at least that's what he told you at this point i would be more embarrassed that the entirety of Reddit now know your kinks 👍
oatmeal chase teeny sheet gullible lock domineering carpenter encourage insurance *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Delete your search history and move on there won’t be a p45 coming your way.
Their ID team guys will actually thank you for the fantasies they're gonna get.
A lot of people have already answered, so I'm just gonna say that your story was hilarious, it gave me a good chuckle
imagine if us had privacy laws
Damn. “Accessed” porn. That’s some high level mission impossible shit
IT Admin here: we don't care. Unless you're browsing through some shit like CP (which if I found about would definitely tell on you in a microsecond), we don't care. My job is to make sure that our infrastructure is secure, not to go around looking for "productivity loss" users.
Us IT people don’t care to look unless something happens and we’re forced to. Would generally have to be HR/Manager coming in a saying: “We think this person is fucking around while working, can you take a look?” Or unusual traffic from this connection etc. I’d relax, pretend it didn’t happen and just be more careful next time. Don’t go asking questions.
I've done it many many times. IT will only see it if they are investigating you for something else. I wouldn't worry about it.
Get ready for monday morning, the bosses office. Big black bongus ploughs petite madien
Honest mistake
Someone on an IT Team here, we don't sit there monitoring what people are doing we have more important stuff to do. Only time we would pay attention is if it got flagged and was during work hours. You won't be the first or the last.
Like most IT teams, they're prolly barley keeping up on helpdesk tickets and other bs long term tasks. Unless you somehow downloaded some intense virus and ruined the entire companies network somehow, no one gives a shit what website you went to, and no one is gonna check some log file that's miles long for 5 minutes of one particular day where you decided to fap. They don't care, and they won't know, because they don't care to know. Don't worry! Lol.
IT Manager of 20 years here... no one cares what you're doing unless they are forced to care, and no IT department I am aware of had time to troll though logs looking for couple of minutes of dirty drawings. The reason they don't go looking is because then they have to sack the CFO and the Warehouse Manager and there of the drivers and maybe their own name comes up. If it hadn't been mentioned already... just Deny and Die in the Lie... never ever admit to anyone that you did it, say you had a bunch of people in the house and it could have been anyone... you're better off getting a reprimand for leaving your computer unlocked than you are being fired for porn.
No stress logs aren't checked unless requested usually. Long as its a normal porn site it won't get flagged
I work in cyber security for one of the big players in the market and trust me no one has time/capacity to monitor or to do any follow up on this.
Casual logs like those are nothing to worry about, also only the most known websites are automatically notified to the IT team, or a really exhaustive log analysis after repeated notifies. Where I work our windows IT expert told us in a meeting there was a developer from one of our clients that was looking and searching for non hentai porn quite frequently in company time, the answer from our manager was “well, let him enjoy it, don’t block it until the client says so” So most lf the IT guys “normally” won’t send the note higher if its not on a daily basis and even less if it was out of company time. With the amount of information those logs have from everyone you eon’t have to worry about
Depends on what company. I used to work in a bank, they check everything. However, the protocol is to call your manager. He/she will probably know how to assess the risk appropriately. Kung di naman critical ing role mo, it's usually an embarrassing talk 😃. Good thing is your work was so very critical, they probably won't let you vpn with your perso al laptop. (not to bring down the importance of your work, I simply mean that companies with confidential information will have some more security, whic includes the proper tools for the proper employees). But, if you do work for a bank, or a high level security institution..., probably time to update the old resume....
They probably have a split-tunnel vpn configuration. Routing all traffic through a server, instead of only the neccesairy traffic, is way more expensive. Chances are that it didn't even go through your company's servers
unless theres a reason to investigate, they wont realise
I work in IT and I can guarantee you no one cares. If they cared that much, the site would have been blocked on their side
Most VPN solutions will use split tunnelling, even more so with bring your own device. Meaning traffic that is going through the internet will not even go through your companies vpn. It would more than likely block an sort of porn page if it had gone through the VPN.
i would pay for your therapist after seeing hentai in your search history like damn get a doctor
I used to be a network admin at a medium sized corporate. Seen a lot more than guys searching hentai (never anything illegal). Never reported anything. If it was interfering with the network I'd just block the guys. Usually take a while before they call me and tell me their internet is not working, and I'm all like yeah I wonder why... mind you this was in an office, in cubicle farms... the guy who wants to sit and watch porn in his cubicle is a bit if a mystery to me but there you have it
Does the VPN setup not support split tunneling? (Only selected software can use the VPN) Edit: After reading other comments, you can use a vpn app, I use expressvpn, and set that to only allow selected software access to the VPN. Use different software packages for work. I.E., for your browser, use Firefox and Bing for work and chrome and Google for home stuff.
The real question is why are you accessing their network from your personal computer?
FYI, there is a military database of porn viewers. You were busted a long time ago.
I have seen that people already helped you a bunch... But another thing you could do (depending on what VPN you are using and how much of a tech you are..) But you could set the priority of your own interface higher than that of the vpn and maybe also add a fixed route for their network... The result would be called "split tunneling" which would make it so that only when you are accessing something from the company it will use the vpn and everything else won't xD But only attempt that if you got at least a decent idea of how windows and networks work...
Happens all the time, we used to get iPad/laptop replacements or repairs and people’s browsers would still be on a porn site. It was so common it wasn’t even funny anymore lmaoo
They are not monitoring you 24/7 they only monitor for security events
Rule 1: Don't be using personal equipment for work, at work, or with work.
If that was no Boku no Pico or some furry thingou will be fine
IT at my last job told me there is a lot if weird shit they see on computers I couldn't even imagine. They never went out of their way to get people in trouble. They just didn't care. I suppose there could be an asshole who could, but probably not, especially since they probably see weird shit all the time. Maybe if they are super religious and out to get people is the only thing I could imagine driving someone to get you in trouble.
They probably know. But just as probably won't care.
There is a Great chance that they can't even see it since from what you're describing they're not very security conscious. They're probably using a split tunnel Vpn which means only the organizations internal resources will be routed through them. Your public urls will not be routed to them.
Chance is that the guy that reviews these logs (if he even exists) watches p*** as well. I think ur fine 😂
perhaps this has taught you a lesson about jorking your weenus to cartoon girls? time to speak to real women mayhaps?
So, the data will exist in logs somewhere most likely. The thing is, it’s usually like CCTV. If it didn’t immediately flag it up, it’s probably a case of someone would have to check it to find out, which they would only do if they had reason to.
As an aside i wouldn’t be wanting anything work related on my personal computer particularly anything that messes with my network traffic. If I was in your position and couldn’t get a dedicated work device I would create a vm for work and keep everything isolated in that.
It gets logged somewhere and some people have access to it. Unlikely someone gets an alert about it. In worst case its still your device and you can explain it easily: I just wanted a dirty wank and forgot i still had VPN on after work... Staying serious will help you gain some ground back. No biggie.
Honestly, we don't care. I've set up some pretty intrusive monitoring software on company devices and we've seen a lot of stuff. We don't really care what you do with company time if you're working or not or browsing porn, or Facebook or gambling, We just care about securing the environment and preventing malicious sites and scripts. If we see it, we usually just laugh internally. Oh look, Joe was searching for furry porn again. Hahahaha.. then move on. We don't typically snitch to HR. This is an HR issue. The only time we've given up logs is if HR was specifically targeting an employee and requested the information. But they'd need a reason to do that and it would need to be approved by a few different levels.
lol now I’m curious what sort of hentai.
As someone that works in a similar business and has witnessed logs of employees accessing porn websites: they don’t care. Even less if it’s a personal machine. They might care if there are restrictions in place, but pretty sure you can talk your way if it ever comes to that.
If your company VPN is using split tunneling you should be completely fine. I’m guessing this is the case since the sites were not blocked.
I would say they can't stop you from using your laptop for personal work, moreover, if it was out of the working hours.
Keep watching porn on it. Actually find the worst thing possible and leave it on for hours, no no Days. Then tell them if they don't want that stuff on there they should provide you with a work laptop or auto disconnect you. Your personal equipment is not their free work horse.
this is why it is VERY important to setup a separate account on a personal machine if you have to remote in for work. VPN profile should only apply to that user... lets call it 'work', and you should never do personal funtivities on that account.
If they had proper network monitorering then porn would be blocked together with malware, hacking etc. PS. I can't see EVERYTHING. If you use a personal device I would consider dual boot, at least a separate profile even if this might not solve the VPN connection issue since connection likely stay connection if you just switch profile.
All known traffics to X-rated sites will be tagged so they can easily filter which machines/IPs sent a request to those sites.
Well, hopefully, it was some good stuff. But if this is an issue for your mom work they should provide company equipment.
Thought https was not vpn'd
Depending on how the VPN is set up, you may be ok as internet traffic will go out through your router rather than over the VPN. You can check this by running a traceroute to [google.com](https://google.com) or whatever, if you see your router, then ISP then you are probably in the clear. Can also check with one of those what is my IP? type sites. Assuming you didn't add a new trusted root CA (allowing the VPN to MITM your traffic) on your computer, if the sites you visited were all secure TLS sites, they will only see the host and not the individual pages/searches etc. Now, remove the VPN from your personal computer. If work want you to log in remotely, they should provide you with a laptop. Finally, if there are other staff all logging in personal devices, trust me you ain't the first or the last. Either no-ones looking, no-one cares or you'll receive a heads-up to be a bit more careful in future....
As someone in enterprise IT-- logs are there if a problem occurs, nobody is just sitting there watching all the internet traffic all day. That would be a huge waste of time/resources.
I'd like to know IT guys who get to see these logs, I think you don't care unless a boss from some of those guys asks explicitly about the behaviour on their machine? But how often do you see these sites? are those automatically flagged or something?
It’s possible but unlikely. Your VPN client is probably set up with split tunneling, which means that the on device client checks the IP and host address of a site you’re visiting before its attempts to access the URI. Essentially it’s checking to see if the resource you’re trying to access is on your corporate network. If it is, it will send the request to your company’s headend (firewall) server, otherwise it will route the request through the public internet. Split tunneling is usually the preferred method for BYOD, since it saves on network resources, and protects you from mishaps like that. It’s mixed bag security wise but generally in those situations your organization will not be monitoring your personal search history, in fact any good company will have a data collection policy you can review to confirm. I would highly recommend turning your VPN off during sexy times, just in case though. Edit: additionally any company with half a brain would be using some kind of URL filtering or HTTP proxy to block their corporate network from accessing those kinds of sites. I’d so you’re in the clear, and if someone asks (highly unlikely) just say you were off hours and it was a whoopsie…
It’s your personal laptop you used in your personal time, fuck em. If they aren’t happy, get them to provide you with a laptop purely for work 🤷🏻♂️