Get a router with a built in VPN. Connect the router to the internet in France and have it VPN into your home country/state then you can run your work tunnel through that and they can’t tell. It will slow things down some, but it will work.
I did this from Mexico and the bonus was that I ran my streaming through the router and could get my normal home TV channels and stuff. I recommend this for everyone working outside of their home country even if you aren’t hiding.
I used to work for a IT Security company, and I would often work 30+ days remotely from a different country, connecting to the company VPN nearly every day. Not once did anyone say anything to me. Maybe I was lucky?
If you’re really worried about it, do as others suggested: set up a VPN at home, and connect to your company’s VPN through that VPN. Really though, if I were you I would just go to France and work as though nothing had changed. I obviously cannot be certain, but if I were to put money on it, I’d bet that no one ever notices or says anything. And if they do just tell them “Oh, I didn’t realize that was the policy. I’m returning from my trip next week (or whenever)”.
It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.
I wonder why they demand such things. Happy workers are productive workers
Get a inet mango vpn router or similar. It tunnels the whole network through a VPN, so it’s harder to detect and uncommon enough to not look for it.
Connect to VPN using servers based in home country. Then use the company VPN to connect to corporate network.
> I’m not allowed to work from abroad for more than 10 days/ year for ‘tax’ reasons. Is that a real reason companies want to restrain work locations?
Indeed, this is similar as the situation between states in the US.
in most countries, when one work from within the country one needs to abide by its tax rules. Both employer and employee often need to pay taxes and contributions for social security/healthcare/pension/… In addition both employer and employee need to comply with local legislation on employment regulations.
There’s also a bunch of other ways that a site will try to detect the origin of a connection. For example through WebRTC or the ES6 timezone lookup response.
They know what room of house you’re in.
Yes absolutely. In fact that is the main reason how they find out.
My company had similar rules and I got a talking to from my manager last year for basically spending the entire summer in Europe, he said the HR got an alert from IT based on my VPN logins and then HR told my manager to give me a warning.
So now if I do go abroad, it’s either take PTO or make sure to arrange work projects such that it doesn’t require vpn (so any zoom meetings planning weeks etc while abroad, then the weeks of actual coding etc which require vpn while at home).
Yes, they can. They can tell how you’re connected too, wifi or ethernet.
3 months is generous. Usually I’ve only heard 1 month per year approved working abroad officially.
If you have wifi turned off on the company device and connect via travel router with VPN, would this prevent this method of geolocation?
They can track you even without the company VPN. They may have other endpoint management software installed that can see what wifi networks you are near and do geolocation on the wifi BSIDs. There are other ways too. Don’t rely on your own VPN service to obfuscate your location.
In theory, yes, that’s possible.
In practice, IT Depts have much better things to do than geo-track random employees.
Companies running geo location on near by wifi, isn’t that invasive? I don’t think all companies would do that
Do you know if my 1099 contractor status impacts this?
How would people completely get away with it then? I hear of people getting away for years and their company never found out. I’m trying to find a solid step by step way
Leave PC running at home with company VPN installed
Install chrome remote desktop
Connect to home PC from France over chrome remote desktop
Profit?
Thank you grand wizard, sending you a dm
I’d love more info on your setup
You seem very knowledgable, so perhaps you can help me understand why is this better than just leaving your work computer at home and using Remote Desktop to access it?