Question about Tethering

Winfield

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I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this topic - please let me know if I need to move it.

I have a Droid Incredible and from what I understand I can use it for tethering to my laptop. My question is, if I use this at work, will I be able to go online without my company seeing the websites that I'm visiting through their web filtering software (newly implemented, but from what I understand, they're trying to monitor our every move)?

I'd like to be able to visit forums, check my personal email, etc., once in a while, without our IT department knowing my every move.

Any advice for me?

Thanks in advance.
 

iPirate

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If you tether your laptop to your phone and use your phone for the internet, unless they can see what your phone usage is(are they Verizon?) then you should be ok
 
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Winfield

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thanks iPirate! Do I have to download something onto my laptop to be able to tether, or is there a way to tether without a download?
 

WLJohnson05

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thanks iPirate! Do I have to download something onto my laptop to be able to tether, or is there a way to tether without a download?

depends on what you use.

pdanet will require you to download software.
wifi tether wont, but you need root to do this or have the tethering turned on by verizon with an extra fee everything month for it. i think the incredibles are supposed to be getting an update soon for their hotspot thing too which is gonna be controlled by verizon as usual.
 
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Winfield

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thanks WLJohnson05!

So my employer should not be able to know that I'm tethering and should not be able to see the websites that I visit online, including instant messaging?
 

WLJohnson05

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thanks WLJohnson05!

So my employer should not be able to know that I'm tethering and should not be able to see the websites that I visit online, including instant messaging?

nope, not unless your computer is still somehow connected to the network.

when the phone is running the the tether you are using that network which has no connection to your work network. unless like it was said earlier but i dont think you caught it....if your company is verizon then yea they can still watch you haha.
 

mrgoochio

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thanks WLJohnson05!

So my employer should not be able to know that I'm tethering and should not be able to see the websites that I visit online, including instant messaging?

depends on the type of monitoring software they have installed on your laptop

are you connected to any vpn type of software?
 
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Winfield

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thanks WLJohnson05!

So my employer should not be able to know that I'm tethering and should not be able to see the websites that I visit online, including instant messaging?

depends on the type of monitoring software they have installed on your laptop

are you connected to any vpn type of software?

I believe that we do have VPN, but I'll take a look tomorrow - didn't bring my laptop home tonight. Can I disconnect from VPN and then tether?
 

mrgoochio

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thanks WLJohnson05!

So my employer should not be able to know that I'm tethering and should not be able to see the websites that I visit online, including instant messaging?

depends on the type of monitoring software they have installed on your laptop

are you connected to any vpn type of software?

I believe that we do have VPN, but I'll take a look tomorrow - didn't bring my laptop home tonight. Can I disconnect from VPN and then tether?

should be able to disconnect and tether with no issue. really cant say since we don't know the software configuration of your machine.
 
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Winfield

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Here is what I've found on my computer so far: RealVNC, and I went in to my Windows firewall to check it out and saw that my firewall is off and under exceptions there are two new things that are checked. One is "remote assistance" and one is "bonjour." The remote assistance thing does not sound good...
 

Matrices

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depends on the type of monitoring software they have installed on your laptop

are you connected to any vpn type of software?

He's exactly correct in asking that - for example, we currently use WebSense in our Office, and are moving to either Cisco IronPort or iBoss. All three of those content filters (and many others) provide applications that run in the background on remote machines to reroute your traffic (even if you are off of the company network) back to the company office, and force you through filtering and logging. This is in addition to standard in-line (in front of your corporate Firewall) content filtering. If this is your personal laptop (unlikely - in a business setting), I wouldn't worry. If it is a company laptop, you never know what us sneaky IS folk have pushed out to your machines via Group Policy / Bomgar / Dameware / SMS / VNC etc... I would check what services you have running, what applications are run at startup, and what apps are running during normal usage (Task Manager is a good start).

In theory though, provided there is no local monitoring software on your machine, and as someone else has pointed out - you aren't connected to your corporate network (via wireless or physical cable), they won't be able to monitor your traffic if you run tethered.
 
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Winfield

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depends on the type of monitoring software they have installed on your laptop

are you connected to any vpn type of software?

He's exactly correct in asking that - for example, we currently use WebSense in our Office, and are moving to either Cisco IronPort or iBoss. All three of those content filters (and many others) provide applications that run in the background on remote machines to reroute your traffic (even if you are off of the company network) back to the company office, and force you through filtering and logging. This is in addition to standard in-line (in front of your corporate Firewall) content filtering. If this is your personal laptop (unlikely - in a business setting), I wouldn't worry. If it is a company laptop, you never know what us sneaky IS folk have pushed out to your machines via Group Policy / Bomgar / Dameware / SMS / VNC etc... I would check what services you have running, what applications are run at startup, and what apps are running during normal usage (Task Manager is a good start).

In theory though, provided there is no local monitoring software on your machine, and as someone else has pointed out - you aren't connected to your corporate network (via wireless or physical cable), they won't be able to monitor your traffic if you run tethered.

Thank you Matrices. After I saw your message I looked into my files and found VNP under Nortel. And I looked at my task bar and found that VNC is running under "Server (Service-Mode)." I apologize if I'm not explaining this very well - I'm trying to figure out the IT/IS lingo! :icon_eek: I have a lot to learn.

I also rebooted my laptop and the only things that I noticed loading at startup, other than the VNC was McAffee Virus Scan.

Is there anything else that I need to look for?

Thank you for all of your help!
 
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