Recently my home computer took a dive, so lately I have been bringing my laptop home from the office and connecting it to my home ISP. I do not use any kind of networking, I simply pull the broadband cable from my home computer and put in into my laptop to connect to the internet. My question is this, can my employer see what I am looking at on thier laptop while I am connected at home? Obviously if they physically looked on the laptop, they can see where I have been (deleted files). But can they monitor it while I am surfing? I do not have to connect through any company sites or servers while at home, it connects just like my home PC would. I have not been dumb enough to go to porn sites on the laptop, but I have been to many places that are blocked by the company firewall while in the office. Obviously nothing is blocked while connected at home.

Thanks for any advice.

The company I work for is relatively small and just recently started monitoring/blocking websites while in the office. Most employees do not have laptops, just managers. So the prospect of someone taking thier equipment home is small. I am not too worried about getting in trouble. But one of the I.T. guys has it out for me. How can I find out if there is a VPN program on my laptop? I have access to everything in the laptop ie hidden files and programs.

You are both absolutely right. It is not MY equipment and my empolyer has every right to expect me to use THIER equipment responsibly. The bondaries of this policy are not very clear for the use of laptops. To give an example, youtube is blocked while connected at the office. I often visit youtube while at home. Do I think that I will loose my job for this, probably not. However, as the company grows, so does it policies and the level they are enforced. I have learned not to ask questions of this nature as it raises attention to that person. I am not looking for you to make me feel better using the company's laptop to watch movies on movie6.net while I am at home or on a business trip. I am simply trying to determine if I am being paranoid about it, or if I should just shut the computer down when work is done.

I appreciate the advice from both of you and I will contact my I.T. department to get a clearer picture of our policies.

Thanks again for the help.[/i]