Remote Desktop

I use remote desktop with Vista when I'm at work to log in to my computer at home. From my understanding, my work can tell there is a connection via port 3389 but cannot view the content. Does anyone have special insight into this? I'd like to be sure that my home pc content cannot be monitored. fyi, we're allowed to surf the net at my work...but I like to maintain some level of privacy when visiting personal websites...plus, when searching through personal files, I don't want anyone viewing them (obviously). Thanks!

 

Obviously I don't KNOW this because it depends on company policy, BUT, I'm fairly sure at the very least the IT department can see what websites you are visiting. On the issue of using your home computer from work, I think I would want to make sure there were no keyloggers or that the IT department did not have software installed on the company network that takes screenshots of employee computer screens.

My last company had both abilities because of past abuse.

 

I'm fairly sure there are no keyloggers. We use company laptops, however I've never heard of this type of software being used on our machines. We are about 20,000 employees strong, and have pretty liberal surfing rules since a lot of our work requires surfing the net for research.
How could work monitor the Internet connection from my home (assuming I remotely log in), if I am surfing from my own IP address? The only thing I would think is they could somehow intercept the connection from my work laptop to my home pc, but I believe even that has some mild encryption, no?

As for taking screenshots of what I'm viewing on my work laptop, this one really concerns me. I'm not familiar with the various technologies/software packages that provide this capability, so I'm a bit concerned this could happen..even though I've never heard of it. In five years, I've never even heard of anyone getting in trouble for abusing the Internet policies.

 

I must have read your post wrong, I'm sorry. I thought I had read that you were at work and remotely logging in to your home computer, not the other way around. Now they can find out what you are doing on their network of course when you log in to it from home just by viewing their logs, but, I don't believe it would be possible for them to view what you are doing outside their network, meaning once you log off and go back to your home network.

The snapshot software, I cannot be certain of this as I don't know all that much about it, but it MIGHT be possible to take snapshots of your screen if your work laptop has this software installed and you are logged into their network from home. I've not heard of a case like that, but it may be feasible. As I said, once logged off their network, I don't believe they can see a thing or know what you are doing at all.

The same goes for the keylogging software, it's quite likely they installed that kind of software on the network, but it is probably useless once logged out of the company network. Just opinion here as, like I said, I'm not very certain about how the snapshot software works and everything depends on company policy.

 

No, you had it right, I was talking about logging in from work, to my home machine. When I mentioned surfing from my home IP, I meant after I was already logged in from my work machine, to my home machine. Then, anything that I do from my home machine, logged in from work machine, should be on my home IP address. However, I think the remote desktop can still be sniffed out on port 3389. I'm just not sure if my contents can be viewed. Hmm.