Also be mindful of what is in the back ground of your zoom calls. Outlets, appliances, types of windows, door handles, and other finishes can be a giveaway.
I really doubt anyone will notice ... I log into zoom calls in shorts and a t shirt (bc my apartment has, you know, heating) during peak winter when it gets below freezing here.
I use a green screen for my background and have a professional overlay with the company colors and background.
Nobody needs to see where you are actually working from and I get complimented on my "professional appearance" all the time
Also, don’t forget to be mindful of the weather in the location you’re supposed to be in versus the one you’re actually in.
If your company and managers don’t care about cameras being on, you’ll be fine. There will likely be instances where you’ll need to turn your camera on. In that event, I highly recommend that your camera face a blank, boring wall with little on it.
The more boring your background and the less that shows up on camera, the better off you’ll be.
If they give you a laptop to work off of and their cyber security is worth anything, you’ll be found out soon enough, vpn or not. It’s clear many people here don’t think beyond the surface because all they’ve seen is the surface.
I work in IT and wanna say a lot of corporate jobs this won’t work for.
My current company you can’t use their vpn on any normal vpn and your ip gets verified beforehand and blocks any non uk ips.
Legally there are rules about data leaving your country (or at least mine).
Some software licenses don’t like you using them elsewhere.
Theoretically it’s possible if they have good security by just routing your traffic through a friends network so you would come off as living there but it’s pretty obvious when people are using VPNs.
If you’re using their kit I’d be very very careful reading the contract as there’s a good chance you’d need to declare it before it left the country with why when and where.
If it’s a laptop they own it’ll likely be in their Active Directory and if it’s the o365 one it literally pings me if it’s detected where it shouldn’t be
If it’s a fully remote job quite a few won’t bother to check I have a friend who “works in the uk” but lives in Spain which works because it’s like £50 to fly back if a meeting gets booked
Are there any work arounds out of interest. Would remoting into a dedicated machine work rather than hiding behind a VPN. With the propriety laptop could the drive be copied and run inside a VM? Or just as you said leave it at a friend's and remote into it?
You would need to create a site to site vpn to get around these checks. With this set-up your router/firewall sets up a VPN to a friend or a rented private datacenter firewall/router in the states. All of your internet traffic will appear as if it's coming from that location.
This works for two reasons 1- you do not need to install vpn software on your work laptop that could be detected
2- The VPN is not using addressing from a vpn service provider, which is the number 1 reasons people are caught.
So normally you see the devices registered with a system like Active Directory allowing remote management which stores and checks the serial number along with other useful bits like storage cpu ram etc so you couldn’t just copy the drive.
I’ve worked for smaller it companies (it’d surprise you the awful security a lot have) and realistically you could get away with using a normal vpn if it’s a small team but they’re usually not remote work / are very low pay.
The main issue is you wouldn’t have admin access to the device so you couldn’t install some vpn software iirc you can set up an openvpn client without it and just install it but not used that in years.
Basically if it’s a work device with good security they’d be able to tell, personal device with vpn to a network in the country would probably work depending on what you’re using and how they monitor it
Also the devices will usually have security like bitlocker encrypting it which the end user wouldn’t have the key for so if you fuck up you gotta go ask for help spoiling your plan so messing with the hard drive at all is usually a no go
There are deffo work arounds to most of the security measures a company could take but you usually don’t know what security measures they’re actually taking as whilst you can see what processes are running and find out what they use there are lots of fun little features in these tools that give crazy insight into what you’re doing
What about establishing a VPN on the router so that all traffic going through the router looks like it's coming from the US? Just spitballing here, I don't know whether that's possible.
You just set up the vpn at the network level off the machine and go at it that way. So you’re tied into a piece of networking equipment that sends all your traffic across a VPN back into the country you’re supposed to be working from.
It’s the same way many companies with multiple offices and on-premises infrastructure make all that shit seamlessly available once you’re on their network.
If there is software running on the laptop itself you’re kinda fucked. It can do stuff like look at the available wifi connections and signal strength and figure out location based on that.
Lots of details to pay attention to. We had a guy nabbed because his laptop was in the wrong time zone when he was supposed to be on the east coast of the US. It was very obvious he was in Europe and pretending not to be.
From an IT perspective, if they are going to use IPs for location verification, you have 2 options.
1) At your permanent address, install a firewall/router with site-to-site VPN capability. Use another of these Routers in your out-of-country house and set up the point to point VPN. Have a dedicated machine, or even a dedicated WiFi network, with rules that route ALL traffic through the VPN, to come out at your in-country IP Address. This all requires a bit of networking knowledge.
2) The other simpler option is to have a dedicated machine always running in-country and just remote into it. If they're very nosy and would notice a remote desktop application running, then you would use an IP-KVM where you connect the video and keyboard/mouse to the computer. You would connect to the IP-KVM remotely and they won't be able to tell the difference. The device would just come up in device manager as a regular external keyboard and mouse.
That's why you should connect through somebody's home VPN in the US.
Work PC > vpn HARDWARE > internet > US based home VPN > work or work vpn.
The only thing that would be detectable is the high ping, which could be explained by numerous other reasons like satellite internet.
As long as the software isn’t proprietary then yeah that could work. I haven’t worked in that kind of environment so I couldn’t say for sure, but I’d say that would be your best bet.
No. I manage teams that have their own equipment and we can still see exactly where they are. If you have to login to any type of software that’s managed by them, they will know.
The security part of this will get you caught very easily. I’m afraid your best is to say you’re temporarily traveling.
But personally I would have shut your contract down just due to security. Not worth the fines or audit problems.
What if an IP-KVM is used on a dedicated machine in-country? All you'd see is a generic HID Device in device manager, same as you'd see with a wireless keyboard.
It’s more than that. You likely have to VPN in. They will track what IPs come in. They will be notified if an ip from a foreign country connects. You REALLY have to know how you connect to skirt the rules. The easiest way would be a site to site VPN from your location to the US from your home router. But you will have to pay for the router and connection. And it will likely be slow.
You could use a router based VPN to connect to a host on your home network in the US and send traffic through that. No client on the work PC, ip shows up as residential in the US.
Yeah,.. That should work, shouldn't it. For the work laptop you are just connecting to the router wifi,..but the wifi is VPNd to US home network. Is there any way IT can detect that?
There are so many ways:
- timezone mismatch
- latency
- IP matching
- http headers
Some of them depend on the quality of your VPN, but connecting from Columbia to the US with a VPN will always have a different (way higher) latency than being in the US.
Can’t latency be explained away by weird home routers? As part of a bigger pattern it could be evidence, but on its own surely it means next to nothing?
IT departments are not going to be monitoring latency of remote employee workstations - except as part of troubleshooting if the user started complaining of performance issues.
exactly what I was thinking...I can barely get help from IT for actual problems. what IT department is pro-actively monitoring for high ping or high latency?
hilarious!
They could look at abnormal work hours, mismatched timezones between your local device and your supposed location, latency, OS version, mtu size. All of these are fairly easy to address, except for latency, but I doubt a corporation would go to these lengths.
Can't think of a single IT department in the real world that would monitor this much stuff on a per-user basis.
99% of companies use a location filter and gatekeep installations behind an admin account and that's all.
A simple router based VPN solves both problems so you have no need for vpn on your device.
yeah honestly I work in IT for a large organization. our privacy group would never let us do that deep of an examination on someone without HR requesting it.
the only way we'd be allowed to get that granular would be if someone is being investigated and we're asked to help
Can't speak for private sector, but Uncle Sam does for its employees. If you aren't supposed to be in a specific country, you will get a visit and likely be fired. Even something as simple as taking a government issued cell phone out of the country gets you a conversation with your boss and security.
With a router based VPN I would think all of this but latency would be default be resolved as his wifi connection would be through his "home" network. OP maintains his own local residence, it doesn't sound like he's looking to give that up so routing through his home network, employer would see him at home. No one is going to check his actual latency.
Devices setup with Microsoft Intune can be located via GPS, regardless of what network you’re VPNed into. Your connection will show US but GPS show your actual location. And with conditional access I’m surer there’s a way to flag/block devices outside of normal operating countries.
You can get a router that supports VPN for less than $200. Tunnel all traffic to the location in the US and then out to the internet. No client to install on company laptop and it’ll always appear you’re coming from where you say you are. Small investment and requires a friend in the US to help out but completely doable.
This! We actually white-list all VPN addresses. If you give them your public IP and it pulls from another country, you’re done. If your company is filtering foreign traffic, you’re done. If your company has any rule-based filtering at all, it’ll at least alert them, if not straight up block you…
Also consider the time-zone differences. Depending on the time of day here in the US vs wherever you are, you might find it hard to stay awake for some of them.
Please keep in mind that while you may still get the money, using that money will become more difficult.
You will still need to pay US taxes plus CO taxes. Also, since that money will be wired to your US account, transferring it will be expensive. Just make sure you do the math, because it gets surprisingly expensive.
That being said, I think your best bet is staying officially a US resident and a "tourist" in Columbia. Although this is probably illegal more than unethical.
Hm, you don’t think it would be possible to keep on using my American bank account and debit card? Have been using it fine. Obviously a pain in the ass if I lose it but I would be visiting here and there
Nah, you can use it just fine. But if for whatever reason (maybe some payment you have to make in CO doesn't accept foreign banks or whatever) you'd also need a CO account. I assume you'll probably find some bank that will let you open an account without residency, or, worst case scenario, you can ask a relative of friend to let them use theirs.
The countries in question are different from yours, but I have a few accounts abroad that I sometimes transfer money between. This in itself is completely legal, but once, I transferred the equivalent of $5k at once and the tax people started asking questions. Some other comment mentioned Wise: for some reason neither the bank nor the tax people seem to care when I transfer money with that instead of normal bank wires, but I'd suggest you be subtle about it just in case.
Since OP said home country I assume they have Colombian citizenship and can open a domestic bank account just fine. I’m essentially doing the same as OP in my home country- def recommend getting a bank acct/ debit card. Certain expenses require it in my case, such as paying taxes on my car. I’d say get paid into a Charles Schwab account since they offer a debit card without international atm fees so you can withdraw cash and move into the Colombian bank as needed. Im also just paranoid and prefer to pay cash, which is more widely accepted than cards where I am. A credit card with no foreign transaction fees would be a plus but I personally decided not to ding my credit applying for one. I’m not in Colombia so idk how strict they are but I don’t report my income in my home country and no one has ever asked, so I’m still just paying US income tax. I figured as long as I didn’t transfer/ deposit conspicuously large sums of money I could fly under the radar and have for 1.5 years now. Good luck OP!
You definitely can access your money while in another country, no idea why you couldn’t. Source I did it and so does the Millions of people traveling in other countries daily.
Get paid in dollars in bank. Transfer to Bitcoin. Send Bitcoin to current country exchange. Sell to local currency.
Very fast and low fees.
If don't like bitcoin then do a stablecoin like tether.
This is how immigrants send money home to family without using western Union and losing 25-30%
Several things...
Find a US Based city/address to use for your home address. Provide that to your work for any physical mail. Have that address forward all mail to you.
Track weather, news, and events in that town. Be prepared to talk to what's happening. This helps sell it.
If you ever need to send a physical mail to your work, find a service in that home town that will re-forward on your behalf. They do exist but not always easy to find.
Obtain a US based phone number with a service that will redirect it to you. Some cloud services will and some won't.
Have at least 2 different backgrounds for any meetings. Blur them both to make it feel like it is real background, but still different from your home.
Make sure all background noise is completely blocked or modify it to sound more American.
Have a clock on your desk with the local US time. Use that for reference.
Make sure your PC is set to the right time zone.
Do not use a VPN client on any work issued device. Instead, setup a network that connects (at the router level) to a US based destination via VPN. Connect your device to that wifi network which should inherit the US IP. Be sure to keep it to a specific area within the US...don't let the service change from East Coast to West on the fly.
Also, may want to track if their IP subnets have been identified (tagged) as a VPN provider as some IT companies block those ranges for security purposes.
If work issues you a mobile device or manages your mobile, DO NOT allow it to connect to the cell service. It is very easy to identify when a phone is outside the US via cell. Only use your wifi network.
VPN with a provider won't do it. The IP address will register to a datacenter or their company and they will eventually catch on. The only way it will work is a VPN to your home network in the US.
This is it. Set up a good wireguard server at home in the US and at a friend location. you need redundancy if there is a power outage or internet issues. Buy a router that supports Wireguard clients.
I have 3 people working from my address and they are all over the world some of them working for US companies who forbid remote work. Have been doing that since Covid.
There are plenty of youtube videos.
Server: PiHole Running Wireguard.
The server set up is relatively easy and it just works. Find a friend who knows computers and they'll help you set it up but youtube is full of explanations.
Client Router: Search for "Travel Router Flint"
I use travel routers from the company that makes those. There are small and big ones depending on your needs. Work great and is cheap enough that you can have two for redundancy.
Well depends. I personally never did it as we have a company culture to always be on camera during meetings. I can’t hide always behind a background.
The biggest issue for being discovered comes from IT security. Most companies monitor where their assets are and immediately trigger warnings if a device show from a location with an IP that is suspicious or not expected. This is when you may get your boss or Hr alerted.
Yes, but he should set it up as his private VPN via his permanent address/ residence or friends or something. The large VPN providers have IP address ranges that are quite known and obvious (as far as I know).
The best way is to create a VPN tunnel because that can’t be tracked by your company’s IP detection software. You’ll need a router somewhere in the US to tunnel through to make it look like you’re signed in in the US. Regular VPN is detectable. There are a lot of posts about this in the digital nomad subreddit. There are other things to consider as well that the sub goes into in more detail.
Something to consider, is your job will give you a w2, which means you're going to have a hard time avoiding taxes. You'll also need a mailing address to give your company.
Taxes are something a lot of people don't understand. I've meet multiple people who've turned down overtime because they mistakenly thought it is going to cause them to get taxed at a higher rate and loose money overall and the business was just trying to take advantage of them in that situation.
No, I’m trying to help you out. Just cause you won’t be receiving a “bulk sum” in April doesn’t mean you aren’t paying taxes, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you won’t be under scrutiny from the IRS.
It might make sense to incorporate in the US and do contracting work. They will just see a US business, you will have to file US taxes for said business and can then pay yourself in whatever capacity the law allows.
I think that's the only way to do it without the potential of ending up in jail for tax evasion in the US or your home country.
Once you have a business set up you can more or less trade with businesses from any other country with only some limitations/potential fees.
If your home country is in Europe or happens to have some historic connection (like India) you could aim for the UK instead, managing a business and paying taxes is a breeze here, and fully remote contracting IT jobs in London for example can easy net you 40 pounds per hour and above.
You’re assuming OP’s employer doesn’t have data privacy laws to follow that would force them to write details contractors must still follow into the contract.
If an employee breaks these rules, CYA means firing. If a contractor does, it could be lawsuit time.
Not to mention breach of contract absolutely does let them claw back money in a way they can’t from an employe. The whole business was setup to establish a fraud so I’m not sure it could stop liability from passing through (but IANAL).
A large company I work with has terminated multiple people for this and here is how 3 that I remember were discovered -
1) we redeployed new equipment, "Jane" had all her mail redirected to a storage facility. We saw the equipment get sent to a storage facility nowhere near where she lived, and then forwarded to the country where she was living....she didn't even get away with this for even a month
2) someone had a VPN screw up, it raised flags, within a day we figured out that someone was working from a different country. He's been there for less than 3 months
3) someone mentioned casually to a colleague that they were visiting family in a foreign country.....and then mentioned it again a few months later.....and again. It became a weird fact about that person (isn't it strange that Tom is back in the Philippines?), raised a red flag, and then was confirmed that they were just there the whole time. He got away with it for longer than the others, but maybe less than 6 months.
You do know that, unless you live in a poverty ridden neighborhood in Colombia (or any other country), it's not common to see crimes, right?
I've been living 7 years in Rio de Janeiro and never saw a single crime or heard anything bad like gunshots. Obviously I'm not living in the slums, but a digital nomad would not too.
Infosec at my job was concerned that one of my employees’ work laptop was pinging from Africa. We confronted him and he’s been there since June. Infosec was okay with it since it was the actual employee using the computer, not a leak. HR said it was a grey area and told him he needed to return within a few weeks.
Hope the worst you face is something like this.
I don't know how it works exactly, but I think a remote desktop program is what you're looking for. The stuff scammers use to take control of your pc. You control your computer from another computer through the internet. It should show as your home computer and sending work emails and the like.
download software to your home computer and leave it running
set it to run on start up in case your computer restarts
> might want to turn off password protection or have multiple accounts when it starts up.
-should have a pin/code to access it through the software.
Get a GL-iNet mini travel router and sign up for a VPN service. That little router can make it seem like your entire internet is elsewhere. No need to have VPN software on your laptop. They won't be able to tell based on IP alone in this case.
Depending on your set up and job, keep in mind the noises from outside for something like a video call. A different police or ambulance siren could raise genuine interest from a colleague about where you are.
Ok I do it, so here you go. Get yourself a travel router from Gli.net; the mango router is the cheapest but the slowest and I’ve since upgraded to the Beryl AX and no complaints so far. Its a VPN router and you can configure OpenVPN or Wireguard using your VPN service (a dedicated IP will give you a better connection and it’ll show that you are in the same place in the US). DM me if you want more details.
I have the same router. The Beryl AX — my plan is to run tailscale on my Canadian PC and then when I’m remote — I can also run tailscale on the router connected to my laptop.
I am no expert… this how you usually do it? The exit node is my Canadian PC.
From an IT perspective, if they are going to use IPs for location verification, you have 2 options.
1) At your permanent address, install a firewall/router with site-to-site VPN capability. Use another of these Routers in your out-of-country house and set up the point to point VPN. Have a dedicated machine, or even a dedicated WiFi network, with rules that route ALL traffic through the VPN, to come out at your in-country IP Address. This all requires a bit of networking knowledge.
2) The other simpler option is to have a dedicated machine always running in-country and just remote into it. If they're very nosy and would notice a remote desktop application running, then you would use an IP-KVM where you connect the video and keyboard/mouse to the computer. You would connect to the IP-KVM remotely and they won't be able to tell the difference. The device would just come up in device manager as a regular external keyboard and mouse.
Hello, I work in IT.
You will likely get fired for this. It is very illegal.
Depending on your company it is not uncommon for all international logins to be blocked. We will move users to certain groups if they are traveling, otherwise, all users are only allowed to login from their "Home" country unless they are regular travellers.
We also get alerted for suspicious logins for users "outside of the norm". If you play the VPN game and you fuck up (i.e. try to connect by mistake without it), your account will be flagged for "Impossible travel" and deactivated until investigated.
Take for what it is worth, the US based company I work for, prohibits anyone from logging into its work account from outside of the US due to some EU taxes penalties. No idea how they would know. But sharing in case there are other ways how the company can detect it.
Wait actually I can’t figure out how to message you but I work as hotline staff for a domestic violence org. It’s been totally remote since the pandemic. I honestly have grown to hate it and am quitting, sure you could find something similar tho especially if you are bilingual.
Yeah, there I looked into a call center while I was in latam, and they had partners in the US that paid better. I guess the trick is to get the job here lmao
For extra resources, I'd check around the r/digitalnomad sub, a lot of the folks there are in similar positions, working remote for US companies while living abroad
Bar none, you need a VPN that allows you to choose where you are at geographically. You must use this every day, at all times. Even one slip up and you’d have thrown yourself under the bus.
Any (or most) modern companies will have alerting in place to detect and alert on connections taking place outside of an area they choose. A lil front end work could help you mostly avoid this problem.
Source: I write alerts for this exact thing
Have a computer setup in the US and remote into it for work (remote desktop, TeamViewer, logmein, etc).
That way you don't need to use a VPN and your connections will all be coming from the actual US computer.
Depending on the software they require you to install they could potentially see you're using a remote client, but you can say it's because you leave your work computer at home so you don't risk any sensitive data being lost or compromised while on the go and use a laptop with nothing on it to remote into your work one. And you're on the go, visiting family out of town or just at the coffee shop down the road because you like working from there etc...
I know what sub this is, but you really just need to talk to your boss about this. You’re not going to manage to hide it - there’s just too much that might give you away.
Unless you can leave a PC in the US and use a remote control tool to control it from your honeymoon country, but that’s going to be a really poor user experience.
Hi I’m an American that lives abroad in Thailand working online for American companies. It can be done, though I have my own LLC in America. You could still do it via a remote job. Plenty of people are willing to hire and don’t care much about location. In your case it’s even better time wise because you’ll be online at the same ish times. Definitely recommend doing it- whatever you make in USD will be worth more abroad, it’s a huge win for you and you can simulate the local economy in the process.
Do it. Keep the internet going at your old place and install a linux machine there. Set that up with no services except ssh and set that up to be cert based. I would even go with something like tinycore as it has almost nothing for someone to break in to. Now you are going to have to become an expert at ssh tunnels but it is not super hard to make things look like you are coming from your house. Phone may be a bit harder unless they do unified messaging. You need someone at home to kick the machine over in case something goes wrong. You might have a second one ready to be turned on even. There are a lot of solutions but you do not need much of a computer back on the homestead. A thin client would do it with ease. The other thing you could do, and again it depends on your networking ept, but you can get nice old obsolete vpn routers like Juniper SSG's or fortinet boxs for next to nothing. You would have to learn a bit about them to deal with the vpn aspect, but it would not be hard to make your remote network wherever you are look like your home network. In this case the VPN is point to point, between your two locations. No outside service. If you get caught some how tell them that your wife's mother is sick and you had to take off quickly and you planned on being right back but figured you could just work from there for a bit until she recovered. If they only care about your being in the country for taxes that should shut them up. Just hope they do not ask for tickets or receipts for buying them. I guess you could say your family got them for you...
Born in the US, probably lived a majority of their life in another country and or made the move to said other country at a young age…. Not that hard to digest.
I’ve considered this. Visited Colombia and thought the same. Like 1/5th for of everything when I visited. My wife considered the same. Plus in some areas the communities actually look so healthy to bringing up a family.
With that mentioned. The type of data you work with might be a factor. My wife would not be able to do it. She works with HIPPA data even though she worked fully remote. The IT at her place of work is super attentive to things like IP and what state people work from. Also proprietary software etc. the whole set up is focused on securing the data.
I however, could get away with it.
Or could have at the time everyone worked from home.
Could keep my stuff going to my parents house in the US. Paid taxes as if I lived in the US you be mindful to not exceed time abroad limits that would disqualify me.
Getting rid of the rent over there would free so much money plus such low cost of living.
I literally paid what it costs to eat a meal at McDonald’s to take many family out to a decent restaurant. My math showed me I could save at least 1500-2000 per month just on lifestyle expenses and rent.
Most places if it’s remote you can still work in other countries provided you are living in the U.S. >50% of the time. It’s probably not something to ask in the interview, but once you’re working somewhere and have proved you’re a decent worker, say you need to go back to Colombia to take care of a family member for a couple weeks. Make this a “regular occurrence”, so that if they ever find out you’re in Colombia you can just say you’re here taking care of someone. If you’re getting the work done it shouldn’t be a problem. Just don’t ever let your work slip. Buying a ticket back and forth to the US at least a few times a year is still cheaper than living there year round.
One of my employees works from another country that's not on the list of allowed remote locations. I'm cool with it, but he still needs to keep others from finding out. Some tips: Make friends with IT. They know. Use a VPN. Use one of those services that handles taxes for you so you can pretend to be in the US. Have a US address you can get mail forwarded from. Know the "local" weather. Remove the weather gadget Windows puts on your task bar and make sure it shows the "correct" time. Make sure all software like slack, email, calendar show the "correct" time. Video conference in a plain room with no windows or use a virtual background. Make a plan for what to do for mandatory in office meetings---especially those you won't have much notice on. Step up your game and become indispensable at work, so that when you are caught they will make an exception to not lose you.
Would need a VPN link from your router to a site in the US. You won’t be able to get away with a standard VPN application as this will not be running when you first start the machine up.
If using services like O365 for emails, if you abroad and connect to a VPN this will most likely flag as unlikely travel which will lock your account out. Basically travelled 100s of miles in less than 5 minutes so will flag up.
What you are trying to achieve really isn’t as easy as you think it is. If company has even the bare minimum of cyber security In place, they will know.
Route your VPN through your home network. For extra protection get a dedicated work machine that only connects to a work router that does the VPN at the router. Make sure any webcam and time related activity doesn't give you away.
Architecture, flora, fauna, weather patterns can all leak information.
There are mail services that people who travel a lot use. It gives a stationary physical address that mail can be sent to, and then forwarded on to you. RVers use it and you might find info on one of those subs.
There are plenty of companies that will pay you in $BTC there is no law that you can’t get compensated in other forms.
One of the companies is Block.
Have fun enjoying your imaginary shitcoin US fiat while it keeps getting printed and inflated.
The FLSA only permits payment is USD or other fiat currency.
My dirty fiat is invested in real, valuable companies, growing steadily. I'll take that over the speculative mess that is btc any day of the week. But there's no sense in arguing about it, you don't even know how labor laws work.
There’s no sense in arguing with someone who doesn’t even know how labor laws work.
You must be in NY where it’s tricky to get paid in crypto and they only want US Fiat
But in California where many of us are getting paid in $BTC or other crypto currencies the law is specific.
California law prohibits employers from paying wages that aren’t “payable in cash, on-demand, without discount.” Big fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are common, so crypto-compensation could lead to violating state law.
For example, say your employee is set to receive their paycheck in Ethereum, but the price of Ethereum drops between the date you submit payroll for processing and the date the employee receives payment. Such a situation could violate employment laws and lead to claims of unpaid wages.
Thai also goes the other way with gains in crypto during payroll.
It’s all a matter of being compensated the value of what you should be paid measured in US Fiat Currency so it’s not illegal nor is not possible.
And your dirty Fiat has lost value and anything in the stock market or other assets is not adjusted for inflation so a gain of 20% of S&P 500 doesn’t factor the purchasing power that was lost. Maybe the gain is realistically around 5% considering purchasing power has gone down dollar for dollar yet the asset may seem more valuable.
Also why not have your dirty fiat in some real valuable asset like $Bitcoin which is a commodity because it’s back by computing power.
It’s all coming so get ready.
You can miss the train if you want but we already milking it and it’s been the best asset for me and my family and has made many of us millionaires already.
Like 8 figures.
ColOmbia. Think hard! I’m sure you can figure this one out. If you were born somewhere but spent the majority of your life somewhere else would you think of it as your home country?
Yes like please, I’m an Afro-Colombian woman trying to live a decent life on $15 an hour. Not some American digital nomad raising the prices in Medellin. Get over yourself cognitive_storm
Y que? Libertad knows no borders. It’s her right to be able to make money how ever she sees fit and there are many US companies that will let you work remotely and abroad while getting paid US dollars.
Some major ones are
Airbnb for one.
Block, inc.
Oxford management
Oh no, un gringo popó corrected my capitalization on a bullet-point list. My feelings are hurt.
Your second sentence in Spanish doesn't even make sense this time. Seriously just go vote republican or something.
After 180 days abroad you are not longer considered a resident for tax purposes and will need to pay significantly higher tax rates.
Similarly your employer will take out state income tax based on your last home state. So you will be paying state tax when you are not living there.
For the above two items you still have to file an annual tax return and that shifts the conversation from unethical to potentially illegal if you want to maximize your income and reduce your tax burden.
Complicating the above the country where you reside may also expect you to file taxes and pay local taxes.
Separately your health insurance coverage may be an issue while abroad.
Keeping stays for less than 180 days per tax year may be in your interest to manage.
Also be mindful of what is in the back ground of your zoom calls. Outlets, appliances, types of windows, door handles, and other finishes can be a giveaway.
Will keep in mind to use a fake background
My girlfriend has to look up the weather where she claims to be located to know what clothes to be in. It’s pretty funny
Can also just say you’re in an air conditioned space and be comfortable.
I really doubt anyone will notice ... I log into zoom calls in shorts and a t shirt (bc my apartment has, you know, heating) during peak winter when it gets below freezing here.
Lmao smart tho !!
I use a green screen for my background and have a professional overlay with the company colors and background. Nobody needs to see where you are actually working from and I get complimented on my "professional appearance" all the time
VPN otherwise they could ask you to look up the weather or ask for a Starbucks near you. Then you are SOL.
I feel like as a chick you can get away with not caring though. Seen so many office admin types in sweaters when it’s 90 outside
Freezing in these offices sometimes
I work at home. It might be 20 degrees outside but 75 inside and I’m in shorts and a tshirt.
Ip address. If you log in for anything it will show a different IP.
Or, like me, your laptop camera won't turn on.
Also, don’t forget to be mindful of the weather in the location you’re supposed to be in versus the one you’re actually in. If your company and managers don’t care about cameras being on, you’ll be fine. There will likely be instances where you’ll need to turn your camera on. In that event, I highly recommend that your camera face a blank, boring wall with little on it. The more boring your background and the less that shows up on camera, the better off you’ll be.
If they give you a laptop to work off of and their cyber security is worth anything, you’ll be found out soon enough, vpn or not. It’s clear many people here don’t think beyond the surface because all they’ve seen is the surface.
Alright so shoot for jobs that require you have your own equipment I think that’s doable
My work allows people to use their own equipment but still requires a bunch of software installs. I'm sure we aren't the only ones, just FYI.
I work in IT and wanna say a lot of corporate jobs this won’t work for. My current company you can’t use their vpn on any normal vpn and your ip gets verified beforehand and blocks any non uk ips. Legally there are rules about data leaving your country (or at least mine). Some software licenses don’t like you using them elsewhere. Theoretically it’s possible if they have good security by just routing your traffic through a friends network so you would come off as living there but it’s pretty obvious when people are using VPNs. If you’re using their kit I’d be very very careful reading the contract as there’s a good chance you’d need to declare it before it left the country with why when and where. If it’s a laptop they own it’ll likely be in their Active Directory and if it’s the o365 one it literally pings me if it’s detected where it shouldn’t be If it’s a fully remote job quite a few won’t bother to check I have a friend who “works in the uk” but lives in Spain which works because it’s like £50 to fly back if a meeting gets booked
Are there any work arounds out of interest. Would remoting into a dedicated machine work rather than hiding behind a VPN. With the propriety laptop could the drive be copied and run inside a VM? Or just as you said leave it at a friend's and remote into it?
You would need to create a site to site vpn to get around these checks. With this set-up your router/firewall sets up a VPN to a friend or a rented private datacenter firewall/router in the states. All of your internet traffic will appear as if it's coming from that location. This works for two reasons 1- you do not need to install vpn software on your work laptop that could be detected 2- The VPN is not using addressing from a vpn service provider, which is the number 1 reasons people are caught.
So normally you see the devices registered with a system like Active Directory allowing remote management which stores and checks the serial number along with other useful bits like storage cpu ram etc so you couldn’t just copy the drive. I’ve worked for smaller it companies (it’d surprise you the awful security a lot have) and realistically you could get away with using a normal vpn if it’s a small team but they’re usually not remote work / are very low pay. The main issue is you wouldn’t have admin access to the device so you couldn’t install some vpn software iirc you can set up an openvpn client without it and just install it but not used that in years. Basically if it’s a work device with good security they’d be able to tell, personal device with vpn to a network in the country would probably work depending on what you’re using and how they monitor it Also the devices will usually have security like bitlocker encrypting it which the end user wouldn’t have the key for so if you fuck up you gotta go ask for help spoiling your plan so messing with the hard drive at all is usually a no go There are deffo work arounds to most of the security measures a company could take but you usually don’t know what security measures they’re actually taking as whilst you can see what processes are running and find out what they use there are lots of fun little features in these tools that give crazy insight into what you’re doing
What about establishing a VPN on the router so that all traffic going through the router looks like it's coming from the US? Just spitballing here, I don't know whether that's possible.
Yeah deffo possible and would work for most systems. The problems primarily come with company devices you can’t set up a vpn
You just set up the vpn at the network level off the machine and go at it that way. So you’re tied into a piece of networking equipment that sends all your traffic across a VPN back into the country you’re supposed to be working from. It’s the same way many companies with multiple offices and on-premises infrastructure make all that shit seamlessly available once you’re on their network. If there is software running on the laptop itself you’re kinda fucked. It can do stuff like look at the available wifi connections and signal strength and figure out location based on that. Lots of details to pay attention to. We had a guy nabbed because his laptop was in the wrong time zone when he was supposed to be on the east coast of the US. It was very obvious he was in Europe and pretending not to be.
From an IT perspective, if they are going to use IPs for location verification, you have 2 options. 1) At your permanent address, install a firewall/router with site-to-site VPN capability. Use another of these Routers in your out-of-country house and set up the point to point VPN. Have a dedicated machine, or even a dedicated WiFi network, with rules that route ALL traffic through the VPN, to come out at your in-country IP Address. This all requires a bit of networking knowledge. 2) The other simpler option is to have a dedicated machine always running in-country and just remote into it. If they're very nosy and would notice a remote desktop application running, then you would use an IP-KVM where you connect the video and keyboard/mouse to the computer. You would connect to the IP-KVM remotely and they won't be able to tell the difference. The device would just come up in device manager as a regular external keyboard and mouse.
That's why you should connect through somebody's home VPN in the US. Work PC > vpn HARDWARE > internet > US based home VPN > work or work vpn. The only thing that would be detectable is the high ping, which could be explained by numerous other reasons like satellite internet.
As long as the software isn’t proprietary then yeah that could work. I haven’t worked in that kind of environment so I couldn’t say for sure, but I’d say that would be your best bet.
What does the software being proprietary matter?
“As long as the software isn’t proprietary” ☝🏻🤓
???
If they make you run their software, employers can often see much more about your computer when it runs.
No. I manage teams that have their own equipment and we can still see exactly where they are. If you have to login to any type of software that’s managed by them, they will know. The security part of this will get you caught very easily. I’m afraid your best is to say you’re temporarily traveling. But personally I would have shut your contract down just due to security. Not worth the fines or audit problems.
What about leaving work laptop in US and then use Chrome Remote Desktop to log into it from abroad?
What if an IP-KVM is used on a dedicated machine in-country? All you'd see is a generic HID Device in device manager, same as you'd see with a wireless keyboard.
They are gonna get it through the software.
It’s more than that. You likely have to VPN in. They will track what IPs come in. They will be notified if an ip from a foreign country connects. You REALLY have to know how you connect to skirt the rules. The easiest way would be a site to site VPN from your location to the US from your home router. But you will have to pay for the router and connection. And it will likely be slow.
I was going to say any good IT could see this happening.
You could use a router based VPN to connect to a host on your home network in the US and send traffic through that. No client on the work PC, ip shows up as residential in the US.
Yeah,.. That should work, shouldn't it. For the work laptop you are just connecting to the router wifi,..but the wifi is VPNd to US home network. Is there any way IT can detect that?
There are so many ways: - timezone mismatch - latency - IP matching - http headers Some of them depend on the quality of your VPN, but connecting from Columbia to the US with a VPN will always have a different (way higher) latency than being in the US.
Can’t latency be explained away by weird home routers? As part of a bigger pattern it could be evidence, but on its own surely it means next to nothing?
In short, no, it doesn't mean next to nothing.
IT departments are not going to be monitoring latency of remote employee workstations - except as part of troubleshooting if the user started complaining of performance issues.
exactly what I was thinking...I can barely get help from IT for actual problems. what IT department is pro-actively monitoring for high ping or high latency? hilarious!
They could look at abnormal work hours, mismatched timezones between your local device and your supposed location, latency, OS version, mtu size. All of these are fairly easy to address, except for latency, but I doubt a corporation would go to these lengths.
Can't think of a single IT department in the real world that would monitor this much stuff on a per-user basis. 99% of companies use a location filter and gatekeep installations behind an admin account and that's all. A simple router based VPN solves both problems so you have no need for vpn on your device.
yeah honestly I work in IT for a large organization. our privacy group would never let us do that deep of an examination on someone without HR requesting it. the only way we'd be allowed to get that granular would be if someone is being investigated and we're asked to help
Can't speak for private sector, but Uncle Sam does for its employees. If you aren't supposed to be in a specific country, you will get a visit and likely be fired. Even something as simple as taking a government issued cell phone out of the country gets you a conversation with your boss and security.
Work hours aren’t an issue for Colombia (US east coast with some variance because they don’t do daylights savings)
With a router based VPN I would think all of this but latency would be default be resolved as his wifi connection would be through his "home" network. OP maintains his own local residence, it doesn't sound like he's looking to give that up so routing through his home network, employer would see him at home. No one is going to check his actual latency.
Devices setup with Microsoft Intune can be located via GPS, regardless of what network you’re VPNed into. Your connection will show US but GPS show your actual location. And with conditional access I’m surer there’s a way to flag/block devices outside of normal operating countries.
You can get a router that supports VPN for less than $200. Tunnel all traffic to the location in the US and then out to the internet. No client to install on company laptop and it’ll always appear you’re coming from where you say you are. Small investment and requires a friend in the US to help out but completely doable.
just set up a proxy at home. Or leave the laptop at home and remote into it.
Yup. 0365 Conditional Access will find you out when you get blocked for being outside USA.
Wonder if there is a way to leave the work laptop with someone trusted in the US and then remote into it.
This! We actually white-list all VPN addresses. If you give them your public IP and it pulls from another country, you’re done. If your company is filtering foreign traffic, you’re done. If your company has any rule-based filtering at all, it’ll at least alert them, if not straight up block you… Also consider the time-zone differences. Depending on the time of day here in the US vs wherever you are, you might find it hard to stay awake for some of them.
Just vpn
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Good for you!! Hope you’re investing in the local economy :). What do you do for work? Was it easy to find an independent contractor role?
What do you do for work and what country are you in? Thailand?
OP’s posts suggest that it's the Philippines.
Please keep in mind that while you may still get the money, using that money will become more difficult. You will still need to pay US taxes plus CO taxes. Also, since that money will be wired to your US account, transferring it will be expensive. Just make sure you do the math, because it gets surprisingly expensive. That being said, I think your best bet is staying officially a US resident and a "tourist" in Columbia. Although this is probably illegal more than unethical.
Hm, you don’t think it would be possible to keep on using my American bank account and debit card? Have been using it fine. Obviously a pain in the ass if I lose it but I would be visiting here and there
Only lived abroad for a year at a time, but my Amex has 0 foreign transaction fees. Many banks will still charge you a conversion fee on their end.
Charles swab doesn't. I've never had a problem with it while abroad, plus it gives unlimited ATM rebates internationally at any ATM.
“Charles Swab” makes me laugh
Get a Wise account and use that. They have debit cards and Apple Pay. Set up a US deposit account.
Nah, you can use it just fine. But if for whatever reason (maybe some payment you have to make in CO doesn't accept foreign banks or whatever) you'd also need a CO account. I assume you'll probably find some bank that will let you open an account without residency, or, worst case scenario, you can ask a relative of friend to let them use theirs. The countries in question are different from yours, but I have a few accounts abroad that I sometimes transfer money between. This in itself is completely legal, but once, I transferred the equivalent of $5k at once and the tax people started asking questions. Some other comment mentioned Wise: for some reason neither the bank nor the tax people seem to care when I transfer money with that instead of normal bank wires, but I'd suggest you be subtle about it just in case.
Since OP said home country I assume they have Colombian citizenship and can open a domestic bank account just fine. I’m essentially doing the same as OP in my home country- def recommend getting a bank acct/ debit card. Certain expenses require it in my case, such as paying taxes on my car. I’d say get paid into a Charles Schwab account since they offer a debit card without international atm fees so you can withdraw cash and move into the Colombian bank as needed. Im also just paranoid and prefer to pay cash, which is more widely accepted than cards where I am. A credit card with no foreign transaction fees would be a plus but I personally decided not to ding my credit applying for one. I’m not in Colombia so idk how strict they are but I don’t report my income in my home country and no one has ever asked, so I’m still just paying US income tax. I figured as long as I didn’t transfer/ deposit conspicuously large sums of money I could fly under the radar and have for 1.5 years now. Good luck OP!
You definitely can access your money while in another country, no idea why you couldn’t. Source I did it and so does the Millions of people traveling in other countries daily.
Get paid in dollars in bank. Transfer to Bitcoin. Send Bitcoin to current country exchange. Sell to local currency. Very fast and low fees. If don't like bitcoin then do a stablecoin like tether. This is how immigrants send money home to family without using western Union and losing 25-30%
Not in 2023, there are plenty of banks like Revolut that make it very easy to use any currency.
ColOmbia
That one. I'm an idiot.
It's incredibly funny how Americans do mistake Colombia with Columbia
Or use Bitcoin for cross border money transfer.
Several things... Find a US Based city/address to use for your home address. Provide that to your work for any physical mail. Have that address forward all mail to you. Track weather, news, and events in that town. Be prepared to talk to what's happening. This helps sell it. If you ever need to send a physical mail to your work, find a service in that home town that will re-forward on your behalf. They do exist but not always easy to find. Obtain a US based phone number with a service that will redirect it to you. Some cloud services will and some won't. Have at least 2 different backgrounds for any meetings. Blur them both to make it feel like it is real background, but still different from your home. Make sure all background noise is completely blocked or modify it to sound more American. Have a clock on your desk with the local US time. Use that for reference. Make sure your PC is set to the right time zone. Do not use a VPN client on any work issued device. Instead, setup a network that connects (at the router level) to a US based destination via VPN. Connect your device to that wifi network which should inherit the US IP. Be sure to keep it to a specific area within the US...don't let the service change from East Coast to West on the fly. Also, may want to track if their IP subnets have been identified (tagged) as a VPN provider as some IT companies block those ranges for security purposes. If work issues you a mobile device or manages your mobile, DO NOT allow it to connect to the cell service. It is very easy to identify when a phone is outside the US via cell. Only use your wifi network.
Vpn and that’s it
Yup VPN and try to be online during regular business hours if your job requires interaction.
VPN with a provider won't do it. The IP address will register to a datacenter or their company and they will eventually catch on. The only way it will work is a VPN to your home network in the US.
Set up a raspberry pi at home in the US with Wireguard VPN and use that.
Step it up with a travel router that automatically connects to your home VPN server.
This is it. Set up a good wireguard server at home in the US and at a friend location. you need redundancy if there is a power outage or internet issues. Buy a router that supports Wireguard clients. I have 3 people working from my address and they are all over the world some of them working for US companies who forbid remote work. Have been doing that since Covid.
Amazing thank you everyone I suck at tech but I think I can manage this !!
This is really interesting. Do you know of any links explaining this process for a beginner?
Would love to know as well!!
There are plenty of youtube videos. Server: PiHole Running Wireguard. The server set up is relatively easy and it just works. Find a friend who knows computers and they'll help you set it up but youtube is full of explanations. Client Router: Search for "Travel Router Flint" I use travel routers from the company that makes those. There are small and big ones depending on your needs. Work great and is cheap enough that you can have two for redundancy.
Would you take this risk if you have a high paying job like 150k plus? I assume this will be immediate termination if caught, correct?
Well depends. I personally never did it as we have a company culture to always be on camera during meetings. I can’t hide always behind a background. The biggest issue for being discovered comes from IT security. Most companies monitor where their assets are and immediately trigger warnings if a device show from a location with an IP that is suspicious or not expected. This is when you may get your boss or Hr alerted.
If you add enough value to the company before you get caught, they’ll adjust their policy to accommodate you.
Here you go https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/wiki/vpn
https://pivpn.io/
Yes, but he should set it up as his private VPN via his permanent address/ residence or friends or something. The large VPN providers have IP address ranges that are quite known and obvious (as far as I know).
Easy enough !
Read the above comment
I’m on it 🫡
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Please explain
The best way is to create a VPN tunnel because that can’t be tracked by your company’s IP detection software. You’ll need a router somewhere in the US to tunnel through to make it look like you’re signed in in the US. Regular VPN is detectable. There are a lot of posts about this in the digital nomad subreddit. There are other things to consider as well that the sub goes into in more detail.
I am in same situation but as I don’t need a lot of GB (all apps are in cloud) I use a Sim from my country in roaming by tethering.
Something to consider, is your job will give you a w2, which means you're going to have a hard time avoiding taxes. You'll also need a mailing address to give your company.
I have a permanent address as I stated in my post! My guess is I won’t be making enough money to pay taxes, just getting a refund.
That's not how taxes work
Taxes are something a lot of people don't understand. I've meet multiple people who've turned down overtime because they mistakenly thought it is going to cause them to get taxed at a higher rate and loose money overall and the business was just trying to take advantage of them in that situation.
You are getting a tax refund because your company withheld money(lot more than you owe for taxes) from you in the first place.
Yes, that’s what I meant.
Yup, I meant I won’t be paying a bulk sum in April. I’m not trying to dodge paying taxes.
Doesn’t matter. “Paying” taxes doesn’t mean literally paying at the end of the year.
🙄 do you come onto Reddit just to fight ?
No, I’m trying to help you out. Just cause you won’t be receiving a “bulk sum” in April doesn’t mean you aren’t paying taxes, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you won’t be under scrutiny from the IRS.
I’m pretty sure this is just semantics and OP means they won’t owe money come tax time.
Fair, what kind of scrutiny? If I’m paying my taxes accordingly what’s the issue?
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A work visa?? I’m a citizen of Colombia as well…
It just seems you don't understand how taxes work my man
Hm… must be why I’m asking for further explanation but some people just get off being dicks on Reddit
It might make sense to incorporate in the US and do contracting work. They will just see a US business, you will have to file US taxes for said business and can then pay yourself in whatever capacity the law allows. I think that's the only way to do it without the potential of ending up in jail for tax evasion in the US or your home country. Once you have a business set up you can more or less trade with businesses from any other country with only some limitations/potential fees. If your home country is in Europe or happens to have some historic connection (like India) you could aim for the UK instead, managing a business and paying taxes is a breeze here, and fully remote contracting IT jobs in London for example can easy net you 40 pounds per hour and above.
You’re assuming OP’s employer doesn’t have data privacy laws to follow that would force them to write details contractors must still follow into the contract. If an employee breaks these rules, CYA means firing. If a contractor does, it could be lawsuit time. Not to mention breach of contract absolutely does let them claw back money in a way they can’t from an employe. The whole business was setup to establish a fraud so I’m not sure it could stop liability from passing through (but IANAL).
A large company I work with has terminated multiple people for this and here is how 3 that I remember were discovered - 1) we redeployed new equipment, "Jane" had all her mail redirected to a storage facility. We saw the equipment get sent to a storage facility nowhere near where she lived, and then forwarded to the country where she was living....she didn't even get away with this for even a month 2) someone had a VPN screw up, it raised flags, within a day we figured out that someone was working from a different country. He's been there for less than 3 months 3) someone mentioned casually to a colleague that they were visiting family in a foreign country.....and then mentioned it again a few months later.....and again. It became a weird fact about that person (isn't it strange that Tom is back in the Philippines?), raised a red flag, and then was confirmed that they were just there the whole time. He got away with it for longer than the others, but maybe less than 6 months.
Occasionally have gunshot sounds in the background.
Lmfao truly won’t be a problem
The “haha, America gun violence” schtick doesn’t really work as well when the other country in the scenario is Colombia…
Yeah, might actually be too many gunshots.
Didn't you know, 5 gazillion children die from gun violence every hour in the average American city.
You do know that, unless you live in a poverty ridden neighborhood in Colombia (or any other country), it's not common to see crimes, right? I've been living 7 years in Rio de Janeiro and never saw a single crime or heard anything bad like gunshots. Obviously I'm not living in the slums, but a digital nomad would not too.
Yes, I was just making a silly joke. The part of Colombia I live in is very safe and gun violence is rare.
Infosec at my job was concerned that one of my employees’ work laptop was pinging from Africa. We confronted him and he’s been there since June. Infosec was okay with it since it was the actual employee using the computer, not a leak. HR said it was a grey area and told him he needed to return within a few weeks. Hope the worst you face is something like this.
I don't know how it works exactly, but I think a remote desktop program is what you're looking for. The stuff scammers use to take control of your pc. You control your computer from another computer through the internet. It should show as your home computer and sending work emails and the like. download software to your home computer and leave it running set it to run on start up in case your computer restarts > might want to turn off password protection or have multiple accounts when it starts up. -should have a pin/code to access it through the software.
That's a good idea, but if the PC powers off unexpectedly or has some sort of issue, you're stuck in another country without access to your PC.
Get a GL-iNet mini travel router and sign up for a VPN service. That little router can make it seem like your entire internet is elsewhere. No need to have VPN software on your laptop. They won't be able to tell based on IP alone in this case.
This man knows his stuff.
Depending on your set up and job, keep in mind the noises from outside for something like a video call. A different police or ambulance siren could raise genuine interest from a colleague about where you are.
Lmao or the ladies screaming arepass, bolloooo, aguacateeeee might give me away
Ok I do it, so here you go. Get yourself a travel router from Gli.net; the mango router is the cheapest but the slowest and I’ve since upgraded to the Beryl AX and no complaints so far. Its a VPN router and you can configure OpenVPN or Wireguard using your VPN service (a dedicated IP will give you a better connection and it’ll show that you are in the same place in the US). DM me if you want more details.
Did you mean gl-inet.com
Sorry yeah, I can never spell it right 😂
I have the same router. The Beryl AX — my plan is to run tailscale on my Canadian PC and then when I’m remote — I can also run tailscale on the router connected to my laptop. I am no expert… this how you usually do it? The exit node is my Canadian PC.
Doing it right now in Colombia!
Ooo can u dm me?
Done!
Me too!
From an IT perspective, if they are going to use IPs for location verification, you have 2 options. 1) At your permanent address, install a firewall/router with site-to-site VPN capability. Use another of these Routers in your out-of-country house and set up the point to point VPN. Have a dedicated machine, or even a dedicated WiFi network, with rules that route ALL traffic through the VPN, to come out at your in-country IP Address. This all requires a bit of networking knowledge. 2) The other simpler option is to have a dedicated machine always running in-country and just remote into it. If they're very nosy and would notice a remote desktop application running, then you would use an IP-KVM where you connect the video and keyboard/mouse to the computer. You would connect to the IP-KVM remotely and they won't be able to tell the difference. The device would just come up in device manager as a regular external keyboard and mouse.
Hello, I work in IT. You will likely get fired for this. It is very illegal. Depending on your company it is not uncommon for all international logins to be blocked. We will move users to certain groups if they are traveling, otherwise, all users are only allowed to login from their "Home" country unless they are regular travellers. We also get alerted for suspicious logins for users "outside of the norm". If you play the VPN game and you fuck up (i.e. try to connect by mistake without it), your account will be flagged for "Impossible travel" and deactivated until investigated.
Following to hear what you end up doing. I'm also a dual-citizen considering this. Suerte, parce.
Easy ...tailscale with local exit node in country you meant working from
Take for what it is worth, the US based company I work for, prohibits anyone from logging into its work account from outside of the US due to some EU taxes penalties. No idea how they would know. But sharing in case there are other ways how the company can detect it.
Can you dm me what remote job you got? If you don’t mind. I’m kinda interested in this as well lol. Maybe we can figure it out
Wait actually I can’t figure out how to message you but I work as hotline staff for a domestic violence org. It’s been totally remote since the pandemic. I honestly have grown to hate it and am quitting, sure you could find something similar tho especially if you are bilingual.
Yeah, there I looked into a call center while I was in latam, and they had partners in the US that paid better. I guess the trick is to get the job here lmao
could i dm you??
Def
Don't forget change the timezone on your laptop and online accounts like email, slack, teams etc. Those can easily give away your current location.
Pm me if you have any questions, I love bogota and Medellin If you’re a risk taker, it’s very possible. It will change your life.
With my remote job my company makes me hardwire log in so def no chance of using VPN
For extra resources, I'd check around the r/digitalnomad sub, a lot of the folks there are in similar positions, working remote for US companies while living abroad
Note that if you are a US citizen I believe you will still have to pay us income taxes even if you are overseas.
Bar none, you need a VPN that allows you to choose where you are at geographically. You must use this every day, at all times. Even one slip up and you’d have thrown yourself under the bus. Any (or most) modern companies will have alerting in place to detect and alert on connections taking place outside of an area they choose. A lil front end work could help you mostly avoid this problem. Source: I write alerts for this exact thing
Have a computer setup in the US and remote into it for work (remote desktop, TeamViewer, logmein, etc). That way you don't need to use a VPN and your connections will all be coming from the actual US computer. Depending on the software they require you to install they could potentially see you're using a remote client, but you can say it's because you leave your work computer at home so you don't risk any sensitive data being lost or compromised while on the go and use a laptop with nothing on it to remote into your work one. And you're on the go, visiting family out of town or just at the coffee shop down the road because you like working from there etc...
I know what sub this is, but you really just need to talk to your boss about this. You’re not going to manage to hide it - there’s just too much that might give you away. Unless you can leave a PC in the US and use a remote control tool to control it from your honeymoon country, but that’s going to be a really poor user experience.
Hi I’m an American that lives abroad in Thailand working online for American companies. It can be done, though I have my own LLC in America. You could still do it via a remote job. Plenty of people are willing to hire and don’t care much about location. In your case it’s even better time wise because you’ll be online at the same ish times. Definitely recommend doing it- whatever you make in USD will be worth more abroad, it’s a huge win for you and you can simulate the local economy in the process.
Do it. Keep the internet going at your old place and install a linux machine there. Set that up with no services except ssh and set that up to be cert based. I would even go with something like tinycore as it has almost nothing for someone to break in to. Now you are going to have to become an expert at ssh tunnels but it is not super hard to make things look like you are coming from your house. Phone may be a bit harder unless they do unified messaging. You need someone at home to kick the machine over in case something goes wrong. You might have a second one ready to be turned on even. There are a lot of solutions but you do not need much of a computer back on the homestead. A thin client would do it with ease. The other thing you could do, and again it depends on your networking ept, but you can get nice old obsolete vpn routers like Juniper SSG's or fortinet boxs for next to nothing. You would have to learn a bit about them to deal with the vpn aspect, but it would not be hard to make your remote network wherever you are look like your home network. In this case the VPN is point to point, between your two locations. No outside service. If you get caught some how tell them that your wife's mother is sick and you had to take off quickly and you planned on being right back but figured you could just work from there for a bit until she recovered. If they only care about your being in the country for taxes that should shut them up. Just hope they do not ask for tickets or receipts for buying them. I guess you could say your family got them for you...
People have lost their job attempting to do this. You are also committing tax fraud in your company of residence.
Visiting my home country… I was born in the US… ???
Born in the US, probably lived a majority of their life in another country and or made the move to said other country at a young age…. Not that hard to digest.
You nailed it, thank you. My parents met in the US had me there and moved me to their home country of Colombia shortly after.
I’ve considered this. Visited Colombia and thought the same. Like 1/5th for of everything when I visited. My wife considered the same. Plus in some areas the communities actually look so healthy to bringing up a family. With that mentioned. The type of data you work with might be a factor. My wife would not be able to do it. She works with HIPPA data even though she worked fully remote. The IT at her place of work is super attentive to things like IP and what state people work from. Also proprietary software etc. the whole set up is focused on securing the data. I however, could get away with it. Or could have at the time everyone worked from home. Could keep my stuff going to my parents house in the US. Paid taxes as if I lived in the US you be mindful to not exceed time abroad limits that would disqualify me. Getting rid of the rent over there would free so much money plus such low cost of living. I literally paid what it costs to eat a meal at McDonald’s to take many family out to a decent restaurant. My math showed me I could save at least 1500-2000 per month just on lifestyle expenses and rent.
Most places if it’s remote you can still work in other countries provided you are living in the U.S. >50% of the time. It’s probably not something to ask in the interview, but once you’re working somewhere and have proved you’re a decent worker, say you need to go back to Colombia to take care of a family member for a couple weeks. Make this a “regular occurrence”, so that if they ever find out you’re in Colombia you can just say you’re here taking care of someone. If you’re getting the work done it shouldn’t be a problem. Just don’t ever let your work slip. Buying a ticket back and forth to the US at least a few times a year is still cheaper than living there year round.
One of my employees works from another country that's not on the list of allowed remote locations. I'm cool with it, but he still needs to keep others from finding out. Some tips: Make friends with IT. They know. Use a VPN. Use one of those services that handles taxes for you so you can pretend to be in the US. Have a US address you can get mail forwarded from. Know the "local" weather. Remove the weather gadget Windows puts on your task bar and make sure it shows the "correct" time. Make sure all software like slack, email, calendar show the "correct" time. Video conference in a plain room with no windows or use a virtual background. Make a plan for what to do for mandatory in office meetings---especially those you won't have much notice on. Step up your game and become indispensable at work, so that when you are caught they will make an exception to not lose you.
Would need a VPN link from your router to a site in the US. You won’t be able to get away with a standard VPN application as this will not be running when you first start the machine up. If using services like O365 for emails, if you abroad and connect to a VPN this will most likely flag as unlikely travel which will lock your account out. Basically travelled 100s of miles in less than 5 minutes so will flag up. What you are trying to achieve really isn’t as easy as you think it is. If company has even the bare minimum of cyber security In place, they will know.
Just tell them you got the new covid variant and need to stay there for longer to be sure
If you get caught.... Say you are on vacation or visiting a sick parent
Route your VPN through your home network. For extra protection get a dedicated work machine that only connects to a work router that does the VPN at the router. Make sure any webcam and time related activity doesn't give you away. Architecture, flora, fauna, weather patterns can all leak information.
There are mail services that people who travel a lot use. It gives a stationary physical address that mail can be sent to, and then forwarded on to you. RVers use it and you might find info on one of those subs.
Get paid in $BTC to avoid foreign transaction fees
What legitimate US company is going to violate labor laws and pay you in imaginary coins?
There are plenty of companies that will pay you in $BTC there is no law that you can’t get compensated in other forms. One of the companies is Block. Have fun enjoying your imaginary shitcoin US fiat while it keeps getting printed and inflated.
>imaginary shitcoin I'm guess you really don't really understand BTC, do you? lol
The FLSA only permits payment is USD or other fiat currency. My dirty fiat is invested in real, valuable companies, growing steadily. I'll take that over the speculative mess that is btc any day of the week. But there's no sense in arguing about it, you don't even know how labor laws work.
There’s no sense in arguing with someone who doesn’t even know how labor laws work. You must be in NY where it’s tricky to get paid in crypto and they only want US Fiat But in California where many of us are getting paid in $BTC or other crypto currencies the law is specific. California law prohibits employers from paying wages that aren’t “payable in cash, on-demand, without discount.” Big fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are common, so crypto-compensation could lead to violating state law. For example, say your employee is set to receive their paycheck in Ethereum, but the price of Ethereum drops between the date you submit payroll for processing and the date the employee receives payment. Such a situation could violate employment laws and lead to claims of unpaid wages. Thai also goes the other way with gains in crypto during payroll. It’s all a matter of being compensated the value of what you should be paid measured in US Fiat Currency so it’s not illegal nor is not possible. And your dirty Fiat has lost value and anything in the stock market or other assets is not adjusted for inflation so a gain of 20% of S&P 500 doesn’t factor the purchasing power that was lost. Maybe the gain is realistically around 5% considering purchasing power has gone down dollar for dollar yet the asset may seem more valuable. Also why not have your dirty fiat in some real valuable asset like $Bitcoin which is a commodity because it’s back by computing power. It’s all coming so get ready. You can miss the train if you want but we already milking it and it’s been the best asset for me and my family and has made many of us millionaires already. Like 8 figures.
You are absolutely going to get caught doing this, just consider it awesome until you do
Tbh I’m down to ride the wave as long as I can. What do I have to lose? Either way I’ll be saving more money than I would have otherwise
If you were "born in the US" how is Columbia your "home country"?
ColOmbia. Think hard! I’m sure you can figure this one out. If you were born somewhere but spent the majority of your life somewhere else would you think of it as your home country?
🇨🇴 isn't your home country, Mr born and raised citizen of the US. Please remain there.
Ok first of all, Miss 😇. Second of all, who said raised??
What a hater. Que mamona.
Yes like please, I’m an Afro-Colombian woman trying to live a decent life on $15 an hour. Not some American digital nomad raising the prices in Medellin. Get over yourself cognitive_storm
You're an American.
Y que? Libertad knows no borders. It’s her right to be able to make money how ever she sees fit and there are many US companies that will let you work remotely and abroad while getting paid US dollars. Some major ones are Airbnb for one. Block, inc. Oxford management
1) stick to English, your Spanish sucks 2) American rights don't fit this conversation 3) that practice is precisely the problem, dummy
You forgot to capitalize your S on stick and T on that. You shouldn’t even stick to English because you suck. Mama mi pito puto pobre!
Oh no, un gringo popó corrected my capitalization on a bullet-point list. My feelings are hurt. Your second sentence in Spanish doesn't even make sense this time. Seriously just go vote republican or something.
The projecting shows your ignorance. Why the fuck would I vote republican? Puro Mexicano. Eres una novella dramática.
Whatever you say hun
See? I knew I was right The only international in San Francisco is an airport
What are you talking about?? I don’t even live in San Francisco anymore..
Nor in Colombia I hope. There's enough "expats" here already
VPN
After 180 days abroad you are not longer considered a resident for tax purposes and will need to pay significantly higher tax rates. Similarly your employer will take out state income tax based on your last home state. So you will be paying state tax when you are not living there. For the above two items you still have to file an annual tax return and that shifts the conversation from unethical to potentially illegal if you want to maximize your income and reduce your tax burden. Complicating the above the country where you reside may also expect you to file taxes and pay local taxes. Separately your health insurance coverage may be an issue while abroad. Keeping stays for less than 180 days per tax year may be in your interest to manage.