ULPT: To appear online in Teams when you’re away, start a meeting with yourself and set your status to “Available.”

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bahamapapa817@reddit

A few problems with this. If your company does screen capture they will see all of this.

Also it’s a red flag to ethics and HR departments if you ALWAYS show available or green. I used to work in ethics and we know everyone even the CEO fucks off at work.

When we did investigations we always gave people a few hours of inactivity a week for a buffer. No one works ALL the time.

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Exciting-Benefits@reddit

I'm a data engineer : don't do that if you also have one in your company.

Everything is logged.

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the_honest_liar@reddit

If one were to open notepad and put something heavy on the space bar, would that log anywhere?

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paul345@reddit

Everything like this and so much more is trivial to track.

Inspecting the following datapoints alone would instantly spot the difference between genuine work and fake work - foreground app - keyboard sequences - mouse movement. - periods of time unmuted in a meeting.

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qwertycandy@reddit

You wouldn't get that from logs, likely not even an EDR. The one risky option would be the Teams meetings, as Teams has detailed data and monitors how long you communicate with whom.

And specifically for keyboard sequences, you would need a keylogger. Which would likely be illegal, as you are also going to input passwords at some point.

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paul345@reddit

Fair correction on keyboard sequences.

End user experience instrumentation tooling used in enterprise orgs does make detecting real work vs fake work very straightforward.

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SuperSayian4Nappa@reddit

Your lack of activity everywhere else probably will

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InclinationCompass@reddit

But why would a data engineer micromanage a stranger who’s working in another department?

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Exciting-Benefits@reddit

Who do you think consolidates data from different sources and creates the corresponding reports?

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InclinationCompass@reddit

Is there no automated dashboard with metrics that managers can view? Or do you need to pull raw data?

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Exciting-Benefits@reddit

Yes and no, every company is different

Sure for teams you can use the admin center.

But when you have logs from firewalls, teams, callcenter, outlook, jira, confluence, dbms, citrix, ...

For some you have a report with a golden record of everything, ....

For others it's just stored in a staging area and if a manager has some doubt we will dig manually.

I will say that companies that sell shit like clothes, perfume and shampoo are kinda lenient but banks and big pharma are the opposite

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InclinationCompass@reddit

I work in healthcare administration at a large company (over 10k employees). I sometimes join meetings for people to leave me alone. No issues yet and have never been questioned about it. But we have other metrics that measure our productivity. As long as my work is getting done, I’d presume I won’t raise any suspicions to my manager.

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Exciting-Benefits@reddit

If you just want to be left alone, you can switch to “Do Not Disturb” or even go offline, better than calling yourself.

The people who end up being monitored most closely are usually those in lower-skilled roles. Here’s an example:

A sales team of ten reps.
Everyone spends roughly the same amount of time on calls.
Two of them generate about 25 % fewer sales.
The manager asks the Business Intelligence team to investigate.
We discover that those two spend every friday calling each other, in remote, to look busy

So while most companies don’t monitor every action in real time, almost everything is logged somewhere. If something looks off, there’s a record to dig into 99 % of the time.

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InclinationCompass@reddit

I use “do not disturb” sometimes but I often prefer my stakeholders think I’m in a meeting rather than deliberately signing signaling them to not bother me. And offline makes it look like I’m not working, so I never use that.

But yea, I’m not surprised almost everything traceable is logged. I’m sure every single worker has done something wrong-ish if every thing was actually monitored at a micro-management level.

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Krazybiscuit@reddit

What’s the solution asking for a friend

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Exciting-Benefits@reddit

Don't put yourself in a situation where we need to check the logs because of disparities

tdlr : don't abuse

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Krazybiscuit@reddit

But that’s the whole point of us being on this subreddit 😭

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Trushdale@reddit

ulpt: do this one thing that is definitely logged, can and will also be used against you. also make it easy for them.

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CanadianSpectre@reddit

Yeah, I managed a teams implementation. Everything is logged. You will get questioned why you were in meetings so long. It's graphed and reported, etc.

TLDR; Your team's status does not change the logs of your activity.

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Tronracer@reddit

Are mouse jigglers logged?

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OkArmy8295@reddit

Depends on the EDR and settibgs, USB sticks can be blocked and logged

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CanadianSpectre@reddit

Not that I know of.

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bigdave41@reddit

If your employer is actively looking into you, almost nothing will fool them. The point is to pass a surface-level inspection so that people don't look into you more closely.

Of course, this also requires actually getting your work done, otherwise it's pointless anyway. No competent boss is going to say "he's got fuck all done this month, but he always seems busy" and leave you alone.

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InclinationCompass@reddit

I would have 6 hours of calls at my last job. Sometimes I stay in the call after it’s ended and step away. So it might work for some people.

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WalkinSteveHawkin@reddit

All these data engineers and IT guys with the facts about how Teams logs everything. That’s why I still use the old school analog method - tape a ruler to the mouse and tape that to an oscillating desk fan.

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inthemix8080@reddit

I believe opening notepad and placing a weight on the space bar works as well.

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Dyrty@reddit

You can chat yourself in Teams and do the same thing. Then CTRL+A and delete after

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TamedTheSummit@reddit

Download a free app like “Caffeine” you can set how long you will show active. Just don’t make the mistake of leaving it on too long!

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Charlie-boy1@reddit

Just open up Microsoft word, jam a credit card in between two letter keys, and your green light will always be green.

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Similar-Bumblebee679@reddit

Set a stapler on the spacebar or put a paperclip behind the shift key.

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paul345@reddit

You’re not the first to think of that

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9q09zrd5l5o.amp

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modernsparkle@reddit

Okay, glad nobody’s commented yet abt how that’s logged! Haha

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Similar-Bumblebee679@reddit

It worked for me for years working for a highly micromanaged organization.

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Ono-Michi@reddit

Just get a mouse mover and plug it into the wall or surge protector. Set a USB mouse on it that's plugged into your computer.

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Trushdale@reddit

that can also be detected

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pepe_silvia_12@reddit

The mouse activity? Only if they have a reason to check though I’d imagine.

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MrSlipsHisFist@reddit

Get keep-presence from github instead it's what I do

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av0w@reddit

That will get flagged on a proper corporate set up and you won't know.

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MeganTheLucky@reddit

I know many people that have used ‘Mouse jigglers’ for years and haven’t had any kick back. Are they less likely to be detected by corporate? Obviously the computer will recognise input from another ‘device’ but their true function isn’t identified by most systems.

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bugbugladybug@reddit

Some guy bought every single mouse jiggler available, and modeled their movement, built a software to detect it, and is now selling it to orgs.

IT can see when you're in teams calls by yourself.
We can see when you try to do the PowerPoint thing.
IT can see your mouse jigglers.
IT can see how long you spend on each web page, the sites you visit, the software you have and your PC activity. If your stats go out of bounds, they will start to record your screen and pass it on for review where someone will review your work to see if any dodgy "life hacks" are being employed to avoid doing work.

Eventually, it'll hit your line manager and you'll face the consequences.

We had a guy get the boot after he spent most of his days fucking about on Google maps and doing his online banking for his second job.

He was picked up by the corporate productivity ruleset and it became very clear he was doing fuck all.

Thing is, it depends on how clued up your IT dept is. In regulated industries it's normally better, but I've also seen small orgs that absolutely have their shit together.

Unless you know that they're not monitoring, just don't bother trying to fuck about. As soon as you try to hide it, it becomes obvious you're acting maliciously.

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Anarchy_Turtle@reddit

Just write one in VBA.

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GrimeySheepDog@reddit

Or just crack open PowerShell and have it press scroll lock at random time intervals indefinitely (well until stopped). Computer never sleeps

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25toten@reddit

You can simply use an auto clicker or autohotkey to press left mouse on the teams winodw once every 5minutes. This keeps your status from going to away.

Did this for years at prior jobs.

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