Should you use pc on Office windows domain for personal use?

I am using my company's laptop and when at home I use the same pc for my personal use as well like using Skype or watching movies etc.

So once I am on the domain, what are the things I shouldn't do to protect my PC? or what kind of monitoring can be done once I am on it?

Thanks.

Welcome to the forum. I am not clear what your asking. Once on the domain the admins have full control of the PC and can set restrictions view content they can do anything they want.

Thanks my question is would they be able to monitor my activity on my laptop?

badarsyed said:

Thanks my question is would they be able to monitor my activity on my laptop?

As it's a company laptop, under their domain they can monitor everything you do. They also can have installed a tracking program to know what you do out of their domain.

So the answer can be yes.

You really need to talk to the comany IT staff about this. The use of a company computer at home would be subject to company policies which we know nothing about.

Megahertz07 said:

As it's a company laptop, under their domain they can monitor everything you do. They also can have installed a tracking program to know what you do out of their domain.

So the answer can be yes.

Currently they are not installing any 3rd party tracking program. Would they be able to track without it?

Although they may not know what you are doing at home in real time, they will be able to see what you did at home once you are back on the network.

Also, if you are connected to the company network via VPN, they can see everything in real time.

Whenever you have a company computer, you should always assume that they will know about everything you do on that computer at any time.

Doing something unauthorized on your company laptop could result in, as they say, a "resume-generating event".

They can block you from doing things like changing setting installing software going to websites even when at home they don't need tracking software just using the event viewer setting they can see things you do

mrjimphelps said:

Although they may not know what you are doing at home in real time, they will be able to see what you did at home once you are back on the network.

Also, if you are connected to the company network via VPN, they can see everything in real time.

Whenever you have a company computer, you should always assume that they will know about everything you do on that computer at any time.

Doing something unauthorized on your company laptop could result in, as they say, a "resume-generating event".

I am not planning to do anything illegal or inappropriate. I am just concerned about my privacy.
Like I am watching my family photos or watching some movies.

Can they do it without physically accessing my laptop?

badarsyed said:

I am not planning to do anything illegal or inappropriate. I am just concerned about my privacy.
Like I am watching my family photos or watching some movies.

Can they do it without physically accessing my laptop?

As long as you are not violating company policy in what you are doing on the laptop, then it is not likely you will get into any trouble.

The problem with streaming movies (e.g. via YouTube) is that sometimes malware comes in with the movies. If that happened, you could very well get into trouble for that activity. On the other hand, if you went to the store and purchased a movie, and watched it on your laptop, it is very unlikely that there would be malware on the disk. Since no harm would result from your watching a movie on a DVD that you purchased, it is very unlikely that you would get into any trouble for that activity.

Unless your job involves working with sensitive information, I doubt that anyone would ever know or care what you did at home with your company laptop, unless your computer picks up some malware while you are at home. Once you are back at the office, the company's antivirus software would then find that you had malware, and at that point they would do an investigation into how you got it and what you were doing at the time.

If you visit websites that your company considers inappropriate, then once you are back on the company network, an alarm would be triggered and they would investigate what you were doing. Your company may in fact consider YouTube, Facebook, and other such sites to be inappropriate websites. Also, if you go on certain types of websites (for example, gambling websites), they could probably automatically detect that as soon as you reconnect to the company network.

My suggestion to you is that you ask your supervisor what is ok and what is not. Then stay within the guidelines that your supervisor gives you. In this way, if something goes wrong, you are covered, because your supervisor told you that what you were doing was ok.