With some people working from home, it is common to wonder how much of their personal browsing is visible to their employer. Others might be worried that they could be rejected for a job due to their browsing history. Finally, some employees are worried that they might be caught and disciplined for slacking off on company time.
Your employer will be able to see your internet history at home if you are using a work computer or work cell phone at home for both work and personal purposes. This machine should be kept separate and used only for work. Your browsing history may also be visible if you are logging in for work on a company VPN.
There are multiple ways that your personal browsing history might legally be visible to your employer. The reason that employers are legally allowed to monitor your activities is that you are expected to be doing work during working hours. They are allowed to make sure that you are doing what they are paying you to do. Read on to learn more about when and how your employer may be able to see your internet history.
Your Employer Can Monitor Your Company Computer
Your employer is legally allowed to monitor all activity that occurs on a company-provided computer. This includes uploads and downloads, websites you visit, emails and instant messages that you send, videos you watch, and idle time spent at your workstation. If your keys stop tapping, they have the right to know why.
Some states require employee consent before monitoring activities can be allowed. Employers can simply use this consent as a requirement for employment, but at least you will know that you are being monitored. Regardless, employers have the right to monitor your computer activity whether they notify you or not, depending on the state.
There is a precedent that companies must provide a valid business reason for monitoring computer workstations. Due to concerns about employees downloading malware, ransomware, or divulging company information to hostile competitors, this requirement is easily met.
- Your employer may have monitoring software that can see what is on the screen at any given time. This can be viewed live or triggered to take screenshots of your work at certain intervals.
- Your company has the right to monitor keystrokes taken on their device.
- Your company has the right to view files that you have stored anywhere on the device or in a company-provided cloud service.
- Your employer has the right to view any activity that occurs on the company network from a work computer or private devices that are connected to it.
- Your employer likely has rules against using a VPN to avoid monitoring. You might get away with using a VPN, but when they find out they will know that you are using it because you are not doing what you are supposed to anyway.
- Your company can monitor your browsing history, but this visibility stops at specific web addresses. They still cannot gain access to your passwords to get into secure accounts or behind paywalls.
- If your company can view your screen, then they do not need to have access to password-protected platforms if you are using them while on company time, or on a company machine. You are essentially making that information clearly visible to them.
Remember that it is legal for your company to monitor all activity on a company-provided machine even if it is not on the company premises. This means that if you are working from home, your company can legally have tracking software on the machine so that they know what you are doing and when.
Additionally, your company has a legal right to monitor your internet usage during working hours to make sure that they are paying you to work and not to play. Does this monitoring necessarily stop when you are off of the clock? Not necessarily.
Your Employer Can Monitor Your Company Cell Phone
If your employer has given you a mobile device to use for work, then they have the right to see what is on the phone including photos and videos, emails sent and received, instant messaging, social media activity, calls made and received, uploads, downloads, and location history.
- If your employer allows you to use your personal cell phone for work, you should find out from HR if the company has monitoring policies before you agree to use your personal device for work.
- Your employer may allow you to use a work phone for personal use, which is a very attractive option for many because it saves a lot of money on the monthly budget. However, be aware that this may cause you to lose some of your privacy rights. Find out before you accept this generosity if you are worried about privacy.
- Your employer can also see the history on your company-provided cell phone even if you are using your personal Wi-Fi connection on it.
Most companies do not care what you do with your company cell phone as long as they can reliably use the phone to keep in touch with you. However, the only way to be sure that you are not being monitored by your company is to use your personal devices on your personal internet network.
Your Company Can Monitor Your Emails and IMs
Your company does not only have the right to monitor company emails and instant messages that are work-related and sent through the company email servers. Their reach includes private emails that are sent on the machine provided by the company as well as instant messages that are sent and received from a company machine.
- Some states require third-party authorization to look at employee emails.
- Some states require notification to employees that emails are being monitored.
- Some states require that employers make email monitoring policies clear and available to employees.
- Most states do not require any notification to employees that all emails are being monitored or can be monitored by the company.
- This means that if you are using a company computer at home, even on your own Wi-Fi connection and sending emails with your private email address, this information may be visible to your employer.
- It is illegal for an employer to demand access to a password-protected account that you are accessing on your own device. However, if you are using a bring-your-own-device policy with your company, they can monitor your activity through their device management software.
Keep in mind that if you are using your own machine but connecting to the internet through a company VPN, this information may also be visible to your employer though not intended to be actively monitored. Further, it is legal for them to view all activity that occurs through a company network.
Your Company Has Mixed Rights with Social Media
Your company can monitor your social media accounts where you are posting content that is marked public. They cannot demand to view private content, nor can they demand your password to be able to view private content.
- All content that you publish for public consumption is liable to scrutiny by your employer. They can demand that you delete content that harms the company in some way. These demands have a legal precedent for being upheld when the comments or information is deemed libel or violating the information-sharing policy.
- Employers can and usually do restrict social media activity during working hours.
- Employers can not overly-interfere with public social media content posted by employees, but you need to be thoughtful with what you post.
By now, most people know that prospective employers use social media feeds to find out about prospective employees as part of the hiring process. While they cannot have access to your private posts, anything you post publicly can be used to help prospective employers decide whether or not you get a job offer.
Your Company Can Watch You through Your Camera
If you are using a company computer, there is a possibility that there is monitoring software installed on the machine that allows the employer to view you working through your installed camera. This is a legal right even if you are working from home.
The legal implications get murkier when you are working from home on your own machine on the company’s VPN. Technically they may have the right to monitor you when you are on company time.
This type of monitoring is easy enough to overcome.
- Place a little sticky note or dot over the camera. If your employer does not mention it, then you probably are not being monitored by the camera.
- Modern laptops often have a little privacy tab that can be slid over the camera to prevent camera spying.
These tricks are also convenient when you want to call into a virtual meeting and make sure that you do not appear on screen by accident.
Does the Fourth Amendment Apply?
The USA constitution provides protection in the Fourth Amendment from unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Unfortunately, this does not offer any protection for workers who are worried about invasive monitoring by employers.
- The Fourth Amendment protects against unlawful search and seizure, but when it comes to digital assets, and information that is available through ISP (Internet Service Provider) data, the rules get murky.
- An ISP does not need to enter your house to retrieve your data. In fact, you are sending your data outside of your house in order to interact on the web. This means that your data can be handed over to law enforcement based on a subpoena or court order. They do not need a search warrant to obtain data.
- Your ISP may be storing all of your browsing histories for longer than you would believe. Private browsing does not hide your history from your ISP. It simply does not log it on your personal device.
- When you use the internet, your ISP assigns you an IP address, begins your browsing session with a timestamp, and then logs your activity. This information is easily decipherable and not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Do all of these caveats to Fourth Amendment protections mean anything for an employee that is worried about their employer being able to see their activities online? Sure it does.
If your company sees or suspects that you are accessing illegal websites, engaging in illegal activity, or uploading or downloading illegal content, they will notify law enforcement. All of your online activity can then be turned over to law enforcement by your ISP, including a significant time period of prior history before you even know that your privacy has been compromised.
What Can I Do to Protect My Online Privacy at Home?
1. Separate Your Work and Home Computers
Employers can confuse activity on your home network coming from different computers and phones. Having said that, it should be clear with a little more probing that the browsing in question is not occurring on your work machine. Further, when more than one person lives in the house and uses the Wi-Fi connection, the amount of data is massive. It is unreasonable to think that an employer will not understand this.
2. Setup a “Guest Network” at Home to Connect Work Devices
If you are still very concerned that your employer might see something that you don’t want them to see, then set up a guest network on your Wi-Fi router. You can connect your work computer through the guest network and stop worrying about cross-traffic being counted against you on your network.
- Log in to your Wi-Fi network as the administrator.
- Turn on the option to host a guest Wi-Fi network.
- Choose a different SSID. If your router allows you to choose the name, then you can choose a name that is completely different so that there is no connecting word such as “guest” between your guest network and your home network.
- Do not broadcast your home network SSID.
- Do broadcast your new guest network SSID.
- Log in to your new guest network on your work computer, and forget the old network SSID.
- Now anyone who wants to log in to your home network must type in the SSID exactly and know the password. It is otherwise undiscoverable.
- Your new guest network is the only one that your work computer will be able to see, separating out your information.
There is malicious software that can defeat this sort of a private network setup, but if your employer is using it, then they are likely engaging in illegal activity against you. Employers are allowed to monitor employee activity during working hours. This right does not include invasive malware and 24/7 monitoring.
3. Use Your Mobile Device as a Hotspot
Many people pay for unlimited mobile data. If you are, then you have another possible solution in your pocket. Your mobile phone can act as a hotspot, sending and receiving information via mobile data that never touches your Wi-Fi network. Do not allow yourself to get absorbed on your mobile device, because employers will still notice your lack of activity. However, it is a nice way to pop in and check messages or send quick IMs.
- Turn on the mobile data on your phone.
- Disconnect from your home Wi-Fi router.
- Use your phone for all of your browsing and social media during work hours, especially.
- You can also turn on the mobile hotspot setting on your phone. This will give you a password that you can use to connect other devices to your mobile data connection.
- Open your wireless connection settings on your computer.
- Disconnect and forget your home Wi-Fi connection.
- Find and connect to your mobile data hotspot using the password that is provided on the phone.
- Provided that you are fully disconnected from your home Wi-Fi connection, all of your browsing information will now be routed through your mobile carrier.
Please note that this is not a solution for those who are provided a mobile device and connection from their company. This device, especially if it has a company-installed device manager on it, is subject to monitoring, including all mobile data usage that you route through it from your computer.
Additionally, many phones automatically reconnect to the Wi-Fi between sessions to save mobile data. Be sure that your auto-reconnect button is unchecked, and periodically double-check that you are using mobile data and not your home Wi-Fi connection.
This solution also will not be much of a help for those whose employers have installed keystroke monitors on their devices. Some of these monitors will pop up after several minutes of activity and warn the employee about impending discipline. Other monitors will not notify the employee, just the employer that works on the computer has stopped.
4. Beware of Auto-Login and Platforms That Port Between Devices!
Certain cloud-based or web-based programs such as Facebook and Google Messages will pick up your activity on any device as soon as you log in to that account. Any interactive interface that requires a log-in should never be accessed on your work computer or over your company’s network.
- If you use Gmail or Google Messages, these messages will auto-populate on whatever device you use. Be sure to never log in to these services on your company computer. Your company will be able to view any messages sent or received on the machine. If you are logged out, it is illegal for them to access.
- Facebook and other social media sites track your usage across all networks and devices. These platforms will auto-populate your usage history and all messaging across devices, so be sure to log out on your work machine and never log back in.
- Do not forget other web-based platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and other login sites, whether or not they have a paywall. If you need to log in to engage in the content, then change your password and do not let your browser remember it for you.
- Also, keep in mind that now YouTube tracks your browsing history and turns it up in search results. The videos that you watch while being logged in are stored in your history and used to serve up related content. Also, you have to be logged in to interact with YouTube videos. Anonymous YouTube is gone, so be aware.
- Platforms such as Reddit and Twitter are also tracking now and using personal data to serve up advertising. This is very new on Reddit, but the salty and often offensive content on Reddit makes it a red flag platform for many companies. Further, Reddit will serve up content to your email based on your Reddit history.
If you have your computer set up to log you into social media sites, messaging apps, and email accounts automatically through your browser, this may be your demise. Turn off all automatic login and delete saved passwords that may be on your work device.
Change your passwords to all of your personal sites and do not allow your browser to save any passwords or automatically log you in. Yes, it is hard to remember all of your passwords, but that is the price you pay for privacy.
5. Use a Key Scrambler, Firewall, and a Private VPN
These are big words, but I promise to make them easy to understand and easy to use. Take a few moments to see my article for online security here: SecureHomeHero’s Ultimate Laymans Guide to Online and Computer Security
Job Offer Rejection Based on Browsing History
When you receive a job offer and accept it, you usually have to take a drug test. Many people get stumped there, but most people can pass one. However, when they find out that the company will do a background check before confirming the hire, they get worried that the company will find something that disqualifies them for employment. This can be especially worrisome for those who have searched for a long time to land a job.
The question here is not whether the company itself can see your browsing history, but how deeply the third-party background check company will go to dig up dirt on your past. Take a deep breath and relax, because background check companies will not be investigating your browsing history. However, some of their checks are invasive.
They will likely look at your social media history, however. This is where your intemperate or offensive social media posts may come back to bite you. Anything that you post online for public viewing will be viewed by prospective employers and can sway them against offering you a position with their company.
No background check company has the right to view your network or trigger a records release from your ISP to see where you have been online. The only way this could happen would be that something in your background check launches a federal investigation. This is highly unlikely, and not something that would catch you by surprise because you already know what you have done in your past.
Conclusion
All users need to understand that there is no such thing as online anonymity anymore. Everything that you do online is tracked by someone, somewhere, and it is accessible to anyone with the authority to demand the information. At the highest level, this is the US government, and those rights to digital seizure are protected by the Patriot Act. The question is whether you are doing something that triggers such a seizure.
Your employer has the legal right to monitor all of your workday activities at home, just as they would if you were in the office. However, employees find this constant monitoring is more exhausting and invasive than workplace monitoring. There are ways to engage in workday browsing and social media engagement, but be aware that your employer has the legal right to demand that you do only work during working hours.