Creepy Cam

I am another newbie. I have no problem with a tracking software for hourly jobs. If I was on the other side, I would like to have that option available to me as well. However, I may have not found the right area to read up on the software "capture" feature.

Coming from a military background, security was a big thing. Can anyone tell me how the tracking feature works or direct me to where I can read up on it?

 I maintain other personal & sensitive information on my computer's desktop & the external drives that are attached. Is it simply better to setup a separate desktop profile on your computer to run the software & work, or is the tracking software more than a simple "print screen" feature and active key capture technology (i.e are my internet passkeys & password files, personally identifable information at risk with the use of the software)?

Also, how does this information get stored until final billing. Is it uploaded to odesk at intervals or stored until you "submit" your timesheet, so to speak? The reason I ask is because of antivirus software options & my security settings I have currently set on my computer that may/may not have to be changed depending.

thanks in advance.

I have a total of 260 logged time on oDesk Team and I feel very comfortable with it. The only things that oDesk captures are your screen snapshots, once every 10-min interval, the number of keystroke and number of times you pressed the mouse on the same 10-min interval, that is all that get recorded on your diary and you can edit them until the next monday.

webcam is a totally optional tool, I haven't used it while logging time on oDesk Team.

Regards

Hi, I hope I can ease your concerns.  I also run a very strong anti virus software as well as a firewall.  I have been at oDesk for more than a year and have logged about 1500 hours. The 'screen shots' that are logged are directly related to the assignment you are working on - so for instance if you're working for client XYZ you log into oDesk team to "XYZ" Team Room and while you work on that project oDesk team logs your keystroke and mouse movement *count*.  Pictures of your working screen log every 10 minutes and they look like this:

as you can see it shows an open word document that I was working on at that time.

If I am answering emails, running a chat program or entering passwords (which only occurs very rarely) while I'm working the person looking at my work diary could see those ***** that go in for passwords but they couldn't 'decode' them.  Any concerns about this can be mitigated by suspending oDesk team while you're doing these processes.

Buyers have no access to your desktop - they can't see what software is loaded on your computer unless you happen to be using your software menu while you're logged into Team and it happens to capture the image while your there (Hope that makes sense).

The images are captured in your work diary (what you see above in the image) and the buyers can review them when they approve your time log (some do, some don't). I am unfortunately unsure as to what the retention time is but for instance using the same client listed above I can see screen shots from March of 2008 *though it wouldn't allow me to paste it here*.  So my sense it as long as your account is active the screen shots remain in your work diary.

In all the time I've had oDesk team running (Since September of 2007) I've never one time after getting over my initial squeamishness of having the image captured had a security concern.

Hope this makes sense! 

Doreen

Thanks for the info. As I work my way around the site & get a feel for the layout & "ins & outs" I'm sure some of the obvious questions/concerns to the veteran members will go away.

Also, I just want to be clear that I'm not squeamish about the monitoring process. Due to my security clearance while in the military, this isn't even close to that level of scrutiny. I just wanted to get a better technical understanding of how the monitoring software collected information about the job & my personal computer data or actions. I don't see myself logging into chats/etc while working...not right in my personal opinion.

 It obviously has executables & other files....just old habits/curiosity to ensure I knew exactly what it was before I installed & used it...

Do you have any problems with your firewalls or antivirus? It sort of sounds like the software is actively pinging the server with the captures while you are working & will need to leave/designate a port open for this while it is running.

Its good to hear no security or privacy concerns from some folks that have been on the system..I have been reading the forums & it seems to be a hot topic!

Thanks again for the great response!

When I initially installed the oDesk software my firewall asked if I wanted to accept the exe files and gave me the option of 'always accepting' or 'accept after prompt'. I selected 'after prompt' (even though it means I don't always get updates automatically).  I run the team software almost all day long and have never had a firewall/virus scan problem with it. I hope this answers your question

Doreen

To clarify, unless you are using oDesk Share, it isn't continuously pinging the server.

oDesk team continuously gathers keystroke and mouse-click counts locally (meaning it counts the number of clicks or keypresses, but not actual data entered and stores it locally).  Then, once randomly during every 10-minute slot in the hour (i.e. 12:00-12:09, 12:10-12:19, etc), it sends the data back to oDesk.

- Danalyn

Before you complain about rates, read all 4 parts of the oDesk Insider Blog's Make More Money series.

Could be a new record - signed up 10 hours ago and complaining about the system!! Didn't read the help information obviously or would have understood this was an optional feature! I've been here over a year and have never used a web cam on ANY job.  Doreen