IT employee shares warning to those who use work computer for other things, claims he gets ‘alerts’

An IT employee has issued a warning for those who use their work computers for personal reasons, claiming employers can see which ‘websites’ you’re ‘browsing.’ 

Once the pandemic hit, remote work became a reality for many employees and employers alike; and working from home gives employees an opportunity to test the boundary between downtime and work time. 

However, now, an information technology professional who regularly posts videos to his TikTok channel discussing internet security has issued a warning to employees who use their work computers for things that don’t pertain to their job. 

The IT employee, who seems to be based in the US and goes by the username @scarlettsunders on the video streaming app, explained why it’s vital to keep your work computer separate from your personal life in a viral video. 

The IT employee, who goes by @scarlettsunders on TikTok, explained to why its vital to keep your work computer separate from your personal life in a viral video

‘Let me explain to you why shouldn’t do more than work on your work laptop provided by your company,’ he said in the video, which racked up over 129,000 views.

‘I work for a tech company called a managed service provider. What that is is that we’re an IT company hired by your company to manage all of your IT.’ 

The IT employee detailed how he spends his days installing remote management monitoring tools, which allows IT members to keep tabs on each and every computer issued. 

He then warned that they can access these computers through this tool without any of its users even knowing.  

‘We have backend access to your computer through command prompt as well, so we can navigate without using a UI [user interface],’ he continued.

He warned that he can remotely access computers provided by your company through a monitoring tool installed tool without any of its users even knowing

This means that they can ‘hop into’ and dig around your work computer at any given time and see what websites you’ve browsed and exactly what you’ve been doing

‘These things can be very in depth and alert us on different things going on. Not to mention, if you’re using a VPN to work, we log a lot of that traffic.’ 

This means that they can ‘hop into’ and dig around your work computer at any given time and see what websites you’ve browsed and exactly what you’ve been doing just through their monitoring tool. 

‘Keep your work stuff to your work computer and your personal stuff to your personal computer,’ he stressed. ‘If you cross that over a lot of bad stuff could potentially happen.’ 

According to Apollo Technical, a leading IT and engineering agency, over 4.7 million people work remotely at least half of the time. 

Many remote employees chimed in to share their thoughts on the IT employee’s warning and to most, it came as no surprise.

Many remote employees chimed in to share their thoughts on IT employee who doubles as a TikToker’s warning and to most, it came as no surprise

One user said: ‘I won’t even connect my phone to work WiFi, my stuff stays mine.’ 

Another added: ‘Just don’t ever do anything other than work on your work laptop!’ 

‘It’s sad that this even needs to be explained. I always keep my stuff separate,’ wrote someone else. 

One user even compared the monitoring to other countries and said:  ‘So, um, in Europe there’s this thing called privacy laws and employees can get in a lot of trouble monitoring what I do on the laptop.’