Corporate Spyware Application

[Lucio]

My boss is concerned that certain employees are slacking off, and wants to try and gather evidence to support his suspicions. Now ignoring the fact that it's incredibly sticky legal ground to do this, he's found this piece of software

http://www.softactivity.com/default.asp


I'm personally worried that there's no way to verify where it's also sending the data to, and that we're just going to end up joining a botnet or sending off all our customer's credit card details, is there any way to be "safe" with this kind of software??

[smargh]

Of course. Write it yourself.

Otherwise, no.

[Agent]

Install TightVNC - make sure they don't have the permissions to kill the process.

Connect in viewing mode - sorted.

Keep in mind that this will only allow you to see their screen. No keypresses / other data. Should be enough to see if they are taking the pee though?

[badass]

http://www.spysure.com/
Dinno if its safe or not -a collegue installed it on our security guards PC's after we got rid of a few for downloading porn.

[digit]

I think to be honest if the usage of this software resulted in the dismissal of an employee, should that then go to an unfair dismissal court case the company would get nailed for monitoring without getting permission to do so first. Similar thing I think could potentially happens if employee emails are intercepted before reaching the employee or without a clause in the contract for monitoring activities. Really dodgy ground to be walking...

[Lucio]

I think to be honest if the usage of this software resulted in the dismissal of an employee, should that then go to an unfair dismissal court case the company would get nailed for monitoring without getting permission to do so first. Similar thing I think could potentially happens if employee emails are intercepted before reaching the employee or without a clause in the contract for monitoring activities. Really dodgy ground to be walking...

As I said ignoring the sticky legal situation. I've advised him that AFAIK it's inadmissable evidence and quite frankly I'm not that happy with any form of spying with this kind of detail. That said, he's the owner of the company and I want to keep my job, so I still have to research this and check to see whether this would seriously compromise our security and that of our customer's credit card details...

[tefster]

I'm no lawyer and so don't take this as any type of legal advice, but googling around I found this
http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/itlawchapter4.pdf document by the BCS which talks about the
legality of monitoring without previously notifying staff and/or putting it in terms of employment.
Might be of interest to you.

[TAKTAK]

grrr, if only i'd spotted this thread earlier (was in college getting pee'd off with an annoying banner telling me i was being watched by ITDesk2 ) i hate it when they get new toys , least they weren't using the unobtrusive mode tho...

IIRC its called jungle bite or summin like that...

edit: mebbe it's not junglebyte....