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I have seen this question asked before; I want to know if I can use a VPN to disguise my internet traffic so my employer can't see what websites I'm visiting while at work. However, unlike most people, I do all of my work on my personal computer, which has no sort of monitoring software or anything on it from the company. They give us a work laptop but permit us to use personal ones, so I use my alienware for most things at work.

My setup I wanted to use would involve setting up a VPN server at home using PPTP and then connecting to it from work. My understanding is that this will route all of my traffic through my internet at home, thus preventing them from seeing what I'm doing with the internet. I will still be using the work Ethernet which goes out through a router here, so I'm not sure if they'll be able to see anything or not.

Again, I have no monitoring software installed on this laptop. I know that my work uses monitoring software on our work laptops, but I wouldn't want to use a VPN on there, just my personal one. Basically, I want anything and everything I do on my personal laptop to be as untracable (or as hard to trace) as possible for the people at my work, because it's just that; personal. In fact, all of the work-related activities I do don't even sit on the host Linux operating system, but on a Windows virtual machine. I do all of my personal things from that host to keep things separate. I just like to keep my personal life isolated from work.

What do you guys think? Would this work?

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    Questions asking us to break the security of a specific system for you are off-topic unless they demonstrate an understanding of the concepts involved and clearly identify a specific problem. Breaching a company's acceptable use policy is not in scope. In fact we are the people who want to prevent you from breaching an AUP. – Lucas Kauffman May 20 '15 at 07:48
  • How do you know the company's AUP policy if you have not read it? It might say nothing about monitoring in the AUP. I will also note To Chad if there is a AUP policy in place were it states that all data is monitored then you could be breaking laws bypassing these security mechanisms. In most country's it is illegal to bypass a security mechanism in a network. Also if you don't accept the AUP. The AUP will state you are not authorized to use the network. That is another offense there as well. Seeing as so I can't prove your breaking a AUP or doing something illegal I have posted a answer below – Tim Jonas May 20 '15 at 08:02
  • @LucasKauffman My company's AUP doesn't seem to have any restriction here. I'm not trying to break any security. I can see why you would think that, and while it is possible that I could be putting part of our network at risk, I'm purely using this as a way to view web pages without my employer tracking them. I see little harm in this. Surely the employer knew the risk in allowing employees to bring in personal electronics when writing the AUP. Almost all of it purely relates to "illegal conduct" which I am not partaking in. –  May 20 '15 at 08:14
  • @TimWilliams Thank you for your help. The AUP only expressly states anything about monitoring by saying that employees should expect regular audits on work computers and that's really about it. I have accepted the AUP so I am authorized to use the network. I will use your answer in a responsible way and I appreciate your help. –  May 20 '15 at 08:16

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PPTP is not secure How can I tell if a PPTP tunnel is secure? If you want to browse the Internet without being monitored then use a program like OpenVPN. Please see the comment below your question as it is important.

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Tim Jonas
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  • Thank you, Tim. I obviously don't know very much about the way VPN tunnels work yet. Am I understanding this correctly? It seems as though I would set up a VPN server at home and then connect to it from the client on my laptop. –  May 20 '15 at 08:18
  • That is correct. Also I don't think OpenVPN routes all traffic through the server by default. You may need to configure this on OpenVPN Server. – Tim Jonas May 20 '15 at 08:27