That's really needs to be pinned. As it's a warning to others.
All these questions related to "I want to work remote but have my company see my home IP address", these people need to be careful.
Companies no longer care about your public IP address rather if you're using a company laptop they periodically scan the Wi-Fi networks around you to make sure you're in the same location.
So please for the love of God stop asking about remote work and how to connect back to your home network. Companies are not stupid
If you're going to do remote work, you need to buy a few Mangos and set up the SSIDs and plug them in all the time. Or buy an AP that can handle 8 SSIDs
The unfortunate part is a lot of laptops don't come with GPS. So some smarta$$ at the MSP found out that maybe they could just scan the Wi-Fi network around the device to determine its location. If the SSIDs are the same every day then you're at home.
I won't be surprised this is a thing, i first found something like this in anti theft software i thought to recall was called prey?, i believe it had this feature too with checking wifis.
so on enterprise level such type of software can be easily run under a different user/admin account locked away from the employee and protected by SID.
You can solve this by working inside a Faraday Cage
On a more serious note, if I was trying to look for employees working away from the place where they were supposed to be working, I'd look for oddly poor ping times, the timezone setting on their laptop (and/or mobile device if it's managed by the company), etc. There seem like much better options than scanning for wifi networks to see if they change.
Sure, personal stories from family member who have experienced this.
Also people whom own MSP's (provide companies with support) have also implemented this method. (My Brother worked for an MSP, they hit up employees with this often)
Its the real deal.
My friend, I don't BS. Just a friendly warning to other.
The reason they want to know your location is to stop scammers that are not in the country and working illegally, some remote workers are stealing company secrets and who knows what else they are up to
just a couple of examples from a quick google search.
Some scammers setup computers called laptop farms I guess its harder catch them this way
Just ask HR if you can do "workation"? Doing that for approx. 2.5 years now and as long as i get my work done AND as long as I comply with local laws (labor law etc), my employer has no objection to it.
I work remotely and use Zerotier + Wireguard on my Beryl AX device and Zerotier and GPS spoofing on my (separate for work) personal device. Yes, companies are doing more to track and monitor. I work in IT systems/security. Using wifi mapping and triangulation is NOT a common method used by most companies, and there are some privacy concerns with its usage. Companies PRIMARILY use IP address first, and GPS second (if available, most standard issue corporate machines do NOT have GPSs in them, however they might record your cell phone GPS potentially when you 2fa in. Some machines DO have GPS in them, so double-check and confirm). Yes, obviously if you don't want to risk your job, don't lie to your employer. But as someone who has been successfully working out of the country for 2 years straight, it is still possible. Unless you work for a VERY tech forward company (or the military industrial complex), most corporations will be using standard security tools that primarily work around IP address first, and GPS second (if they collect that info at all and don't consider a privacy violation). Some MDM tools might correlate your GPS info with the wifi around you. Companies are generally NOT buying 3rd party tools which will correlate your surrounding wifi networks with known GPS locations. I currently work as a systems engineer for a multi-billion dollar insurance company. Yes, you have to be careful, yes you need to be savvy. But its very doable if your company isn't force-gps tracking your corporate laptop. A hardwire connection to a travel router + disabling wifi should take care of most tracking concerns for most people. VPN + GPS spoofing will be fairly foolproof (assuming corporate MDM policy doesn't block the use of developer mode on your phone to allow GPS spoofing, most don't since you are generally allowed to do what you want to a degree on a personal device). Again, I wouldn't recommend this to most people since its generally NOT worth lying to your employer and violating company policy. That being said, I think its a little bit of fear mongering to suggest that employers will triangulate your position based on wifi or bluetooth triangulation at this point in time. They are (generally speaking) using standard corporate security tools which rely in IP tracking (common and standard practice) and GPS data. At least, not in the private sector generally. Working on nuclear secrets for government agencies might be a different matter.
It's all a matter of the tools your company uses — not really about how “secure” they are.
Some tools might utilize it by default, and it might be more since everyone is doing “AI” now. So in short-term, hiding from your employee might work ... The long term is risky. And if they use MDM like Intune and Entra stuff (Microsoft) ... they do a lot to push into this direction.
Thanks a lot for your very interesting post.
When you talk about GPS spoofing on your phone, I assume it’s a company issued phone?
I always have my laptop on flight mode and using Ethernet cable for connection. However I am using my personal iPhone for 2FA connection to the company VPN. I’m wondering if that could leak some information?
Companies are not stupid