Can my employer see if I use a VPN such as Ultrasurf? I found it as a chrome extension and have gotten it to work my employer has a tech department that has set up a firewall so we cannot access YouTube/Netflix etc but I work nights and it does get slow im not allowed to use my phone during work hours. any help would be appreciated!
Yes they can see that you are using a VPN.
If this is a work machine they can probably still see your traffic as well since it’s fairly typical to install remote monitoring software.
If using a VPN is against the company policy or you are using a company-owned computer, this is not a good idea.
Most employers have a policy to terminate anyone trying to access blocked sites fyi
Your best bet, if you feel bypassing your company’s rules, is to use or set up a reverse proxy. The idea is to go to a website hosting a web proxy and on a page you can insert the link of the page you want to view. The newly loaded page will be retrieved through the reverse proxy and loaded into an iframe. It will allow you to view videos. But it makes navigation a pain.
Just go to a bogus page like “thiscompanysinterentrulessuckass.com” and hold down the F5 button for the entire day.