As I posted above, regardless of what method she uses, she should ask permission. Many employers allow bluetooth tethering of PDA's/handhelds as the range is only a few feet. As long as the IT dept. signs off on it, she's cool. The reason I was so harsh on her in my first post was that she was obviously *totally* unaware of the implications and possible consequences of plugging her own wi-fi AP into a company LAN (on the wrong side of their firewall) in a user-dense environment with possibly hostile neighbors.

The important thing for ANY employee at ANY company to remember is that the network resources of that company belong entirely to the company. Employees are given access only so that they can do their job.

To any others who view this post, remember that everything you do online at work is not private or yours. Every email you send or receive, every page you view, everything you do online is on the company dime and belongs to your employer, not you. Make sure you read and understand your employer's policy regarding email, web-surfing, online radio stations, you-tube, etc. And most importantly- When in doubt, ask permission!


cheers,
kernelpanic

That's probably true in the USA, but it's not the case in many other places. Here, for example, since the pages you visit can disclose your personal, private, tastes/religion/political affiliation, are considered as personal data and the employer cannot control them if he doesn't tell you beforehand.
Of course it's good advice to know and read company policies (if they're in place, if not you're free to do as you will).

The OP is in the U.S.
That also is not true in the U.S. The law here is-
Email- <your_name>@company.com is not yours AT ALL. it belongs to the company. Every mail sent or received. There is no expectation of privacy ever.
Here's a good example(emphasis mine)-As an aside even when not at work-
Even personal email sent from home has no expectation of privacy unless encrypted. Why? It's the same as a postcard sent through the mail. (Encryption would be the envelope which conceals the note within.) Since it is sent across multiple servers in plain text anyone can read it and there is no penalty legally or otherwise, should they do so. People/companies can put threatening sigs at the bottom of the message stating otherwise. But that doesn't make it so. (I always wondered why such statements always appear at the bottom of the message? Isn't it too late by then ) As a rule- never send anything in an email that you wouldn't shout in a crowded restaurant.

There's probably more grey area when it comes to Internet surfing or other online activities. But the general rule is that The company's network resources belong to it. If an employee writes an hour-long rant online about discrimination against Islam and is fired. He can say that is was discrimination based upon religion. The company will simply counter that that employee abused company resources and should have spent that hour doing their job. In that hypothetical I'm not going to take sides. It would be wrong to fire someone based upon their personal views. But if it's personal, leave it at home.
Companies don't keep tens of thousands of dollars of equipment transferring tera-bytes of data running smoothly so that Joe Blow can check his myspace page, or fill their file-server with illegal MP3's

Just my 2 cents...
kernelpanic

[edit] P.S. I did not write this hour-long rant from work...