strange company

Prior Of Taize

i live in student accomodation. its got an eircom line with hardware provided by company X. recently the whole system has been going haywire with random downtimes lasting up to 4 or 5 hours and various other problems.

there is some automatic tunnelling info in the ipconfig window in the command prompt which leads me to believe someone upstairs is doing something with the line/network (ie: VPN etc etc)

the company who supplied the hardware (switches etc etc) told the owner of the building that a virus on someone computer caused the internet to go down and for the hardware to function incorrectly. I work for an IT company very similar to this company and i have never heard of anything like this happening..

anyway to get down to the problem at hand. today (10am this morning) the company will be calling over to the building to look at the computers in use in the building. every resident was given a letter saying please leave your rooms and computer accessible so they can get on with it or whatever.

i am fully aware that a problem exists with the connection (tbh mainly that someone upstairs is seriously ****ing with it and i have often noticed dos attacks against my internal ip personally.

what i am wondering is do they have any right to look at my pc?...i have some company documents on my laptop (which is the only computer currently there as of 3 weeks ago) and i also have some other stuff which i "imported". i have a basic password on the windows login because i recently did a reimage and havent had a chance to set up proper security as i have been up the walls.

anyway what im wondering is do they have a right to look at my pc...if they bypass my current password is it wrong of them to do that and can i do anything about it and also why the f*ck would they inspect our pc's to see if suitable anti-software has been installed???

my guess is they have an ulterior motive...just wondering what you think.

Cabaal

I'd be damned if I'd be giving them access to my pc, of course if you agree and allow them access anything they find is perfectly legal as your affectively giving up your rights and allowing them to search.

Unless you grand them access, if they circumvent your windows password they are breaking the law.

I';d have to agree I've not seen a virus do what your discribing, its more likely that somebody has bittorrent installed and is leeching the hell out of the line, affectively making it un-usable....my guess is their looking for file sharing programs on people's system

If I was you I'd hang around, inform them XYZ anti-virus software is installed and show them its updated to latest def, inform them full system scan has been done but other then that they may not use your PC as its a company PC will private information on it. Same applies to system patches.

Prior Of Taize

i never agreed to anything tbh. when the owner told me the company said a virus was affecting ti i said that i thought that was absolute crap but that i would install an AV prog to keep him happy. i have not talked to him since (that was 2-3 weeks ago iirc).

my laptop is turned off and as i said it has an obvious password on it. my room is always open. the password is there

yeah im thinking the same about logging on around the password. i will check the event log when i go home. a guy i work with said that i should call the manager of this company regardless of whether they try to access my pc or not because it is highly unorthodox to do something like this

Khannie

Maaaaan....FUNK THAT!

No way I'd let some numpty with an unknown agenda anywhere NEAR my computer.

Prior Of Taize

well i will check out the story when i go home after work.

it should be interesting to ring the company from my work number (i work for a fairly big company) and explaining that sensitive company information along with personal information was accessed without my express permission in addition to them bypassing the password...should make for an interesting discussion with their manager.

ah well the event log will explain most of it when i go home.

the_syco

Prior Of Taize wrote:

ah well the event log will explain most of it when i go home.

If they have an ulterior motive, could they not just delete this? Or edit a few lines out?

Cabaal

Prior Of Taize wrote:

well i will check out the story when i go home after work.

it should be interesting to ring the company from my work number (i work for a fairly big company) and explaining that sensitive company information along with personal information was accessed without my express permission in addition to them bypassing the password.

So you did leave your room open and PC on?
They had to get access to your apartment/room some how, if the landlord let them in without your permission things get even worse tbh..