Is your boss tracking your computer activities?

Admit it -- you've used your computer at work to view non-work-related Web sites. Heck, if you are reading this article at work, you might already be guilty as charged. More than 70 percent of the adult online population has accessed the Internet at work for personal use at least once, according to a September 2000 eMarketer study. Employees are sending personal e-mails, playing games, viewing pornography, shopping, checking stock prices and gambling online during working hours.
Don't think these cyberslacking activities are going unnoticed. With a simple software application, your boss can be tapping into your computer and see what you're doing in real-time. Whether you are guilty of wasting company time or not, your computer might be under surveillance. You can be monitored without your knowledge -- employers are not required to notify you that you're being observed.
The growing number of employers who are monitoring their employees' activities is a result of the low cost of the monitoring technology, a growing percentage of employees using their computers for personal use and an increase in employees leaking sensitive company information. Employers are also watching their workers to avoid sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits that stem from inappropriate and offensive e-mails circulating within a company.
Instead of monitoring those employees who exhibit suspicious behavior, many em­ployers are instituting "continuous, systematic surveillance" in the workplace, according to a Privacy Foundation study written by Andrew Schulman. Reports of companies firing workers for misusing workplace computers are becoming more common as an increasing number of employers implement electronic monitoring software.
Computers leave behind a trail of bread crumbs that can provide employers with all the information they could possibly need about an employee's computer-related activities. For employers, computers are the ultimate spy. There's little that can stop an employer from using these surveillance techniques.
There are basically five methods that employers can use to track employee activities:
* Packet sniffers
* Log files
* Desktop monitoring programs
* Phones
* Closed-circuit cameras
Computer-monitoring programs carry such names as Shadow, SpyAgent, Web Sleuth and Silent Watch. The prices of these programs range from as little as $30 to thousands of dollars. The number of employers who believe that they need these programs and the relatively low cost has resulted in an emerging multi-million dollar industry called employee Internet management.

Anti-Forensics
Anti-forensics can be a computer investigator's worst nightmare. There are dozens of ways people can hide information. Some programs can fool computers by changing the information in files' headers. A file header is normally invisible to humans, but it's extremely important -- it tells the computer what kind of file the header is attached to. If you were to rename an mp3 file so that it had a .gif extension, the computer would still know the file was really an mp3 because of the information in the header. Some programs let you change the information in the header so that the computer thinks it's a different kind of file. Detectives looking for a specific file format could skip over important evidence because it looked like it wasn't relevant. Other programs can divide files up into small sections and hide each section at the end of other files. Files often have unused space called slack space. With the right program, you can hide files by taking advantage of this slack space. It's very challenging to retrieve and reassemble the hidden information.
It's also possible to hide one file inside another. Executable files -- files that computers recognize as programs -- are particularly problematic. Programs called packers can insert executable files into other kinds of files, while tools called binders can bind multiple executable files together.
Encryption is another way to hide data. When you encrypt data, you use a complex set of rules called an algorithm to make the data unreadable. For example, the algorithm might change a text file into a seemingly meaningless collection of numbers and symbols. A person wanting to read the data would need the encryption's key, which reverses the encryption process so that the numbers and symbols would become text. Without the key, detectives have to use computer programs designed to crack the encryption algorithm. The more sophisticated the algorithm, the longer it will take to decrypt it without a key.
Other anti-forensic tools can change the metadata attached to files. Metadata includes information like when a file was created or last altered. Normally you can't change this information, but there are programs that can let a person alter the metadata attached to files. Imagine examining a file's metadata and discovering that it says the file won't exist for another three years and was last accessed a century ago. If the metadata is compromised, it makes it more difficult to present the evidence as reliable.
Some computer applications will erase data if an unauthorized user tries to access the system. Some programmers have examined how computer forensics programs work and have tried to create applications that either block or attack the programs themselves.