Hey everyone, I need some advice! HR asked me to look into one employee's activity while he's working from home because there are concerns about his productivity. I confirmed that his machine is powered on and that he logged in early, but the firewall logs show minimal user activity for the entire day. We have a Group Policy Object (GPO) that enforces a screensaver timeout after 20 minutes of inactivity. When I checked the local event logs, I found something strange: there are repeated events showing the screensaver being invoked and then dismissed almost immediately—typically within a second. This cycle happens about every 15 minutes! My theory is that if someone were using a USB mouse jiggler, the screensaver shouldn't be activating at all. So my question is, could a hardware jiggler still cause this issue, or does it suggest that something else is going on, like a script or presence-spoofing tool?
6 Answers
This seems pretty simple, but is the employee at their desk and waking the machine up every time the screensaver kicks in? I mean, they could just be playing games or something instead of actually working.
I’m no expert on this stuff, but I’m guessing that consistent timing suggests the use of something that’s resetting a 20-minute timer every time there's mouse movement. It sounds more like an installed utility that monitors input rather than a physical mouse jiggler. I could see someone using it to simulate activity—if the screensaver kicks in after 20 minutes, the tool probably simulates movement to cancel it immediately, which seems like something a lazy employee might do!
If the timing isn’t exactly the same each time, I suspect the employee is just not doing anything at their computer. When the screensaver activates, they instantly dismiss it and keep doing whatever they're actually working on.
You might want to take a look at any presence-aware settings. They're designed to keep the machine active, and it might be causing this weird screensaver behavior.
Are mouse jigglers blocked in your system? Because this could definitely point to them using a jiggler app to avoid the screensaver!
Honestly, I find this whole situation fascinating from a technical perspective. But it’s surprising that HR and department heads are so eager to have IT check if people are really working. You either finish your tasks or you don’t, right?
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