How to Block Company Computer Spying

Spying on employees by companies is a common practice, and while many people think that it is illegal, it is not, so long as your company notifies you in advance that they are performing monitoring (see References). While there are ways to get around computer monitoring, be aware that doing so may violate your employee agreement and endanger your job.

Things You'll Need

• Home computer on a broadband connection

Instructions

1. On your home computer, download Active Perl and install it with the automatic installer, using all default settings, except for the user directory, which you should change to be "C:\user."

2. Download Apache server from apache.org (see Resources). This is a free, open-source software kit that will let you install a small web server on your home machine. Install it using the automatic installation program, and set it to operate over port 80 (HTTP port).

3. Locate a file called httpd.conf inside the Apache configuration folder. Open this file, and find the line "#AddHandler cgi-script .cgi", and delete the "#" from the front of the line. Next, find the line marked "you set DocumentRoot to" and change the option directive to: "Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks symLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI Multiviews."

4. Download the CGIProxy tool (see Resources), and rename the file to "nph-proxy.cgi."

5. Insert this file into the root folder (htdocs) of your Apache installation and then open the text file and change the first line to read "#!C:\user\perl\bin\perl.exe."

6. Double click on the Apache exe file to start it and open up your web browser and type the following url into the address bar: http://localhost/nph-proxy.cgi. If you see a website that offers you the option to browse websites through a CGI proxy, your local setup is complete.

7. To access this proxy from your work computer and thus block your company from spying on your web browsing activities, find the IP address of your home computer by visiting whatismyip.com (see References) on it, then go to your work computer and type that IP address into the address bar of your browser.

Tips & Warnings

• While these methods will keep a company from spying on your Web browsing, you will be unable to keep them from spying on what you type, since keylogging software can be installed that you can't detect or block.

References

• Accessing Blocked Websites
• What is My IP
• Legality of Workplace Monitoring

Resources

• ActivePerl
• Apache
• CGI-Proxy