My aunt’s recent company got bought out and they’ll no longer let her work in Mexico, where she just bought a house. She a US citizen hoping to retire soon. Is there a way for her to work in Mexico but appear to be in the US? She needs to be able to VPN into her company network.
Regardless of the legalities, this is possible. Going through a VPN to VPN into her company is likely detectable and probably a bad idea.
You seem to imply in other comments that she still has a US residence. If this is true, this is how I would handle things:
- Set up RDP on a PC (Windows) in her US residence.
- Take a laptop or other computer to Mexico. Use this to directly and easily access the PC in the US via RDP.
- Use the US PC through the RDP connection just like you would if you were physically present in the US.
- Profit.
I think the major downside besides legality is what happens if the PC in the US somehow gets turned off or connection is lost. I know you can set PCs to automatically restart, but I have this set up myself on some remote machines and I can tell you that this doesn’t always work. If it’s a huge pain to either get the US to restart the machine or you don’t have someone to call to go into the house and restart the machine, it’s going to be an issue.
Just work in Mexico as is. If she gets caught oh well 
she gets fired lol
Keep in mind, Azure conditional access can have Geo blocking in place in some Azure tenants. Depending on the companies policies. And those conditional access policies often apply to even using SSO on a VPN, if SSO is setup for the VPN client in question.
Also to note, if the VPN disconnects or they attempt to authenticate anywhere by accident with the VPN off, the IP will be reported via Azure AD sign in logs, and it’ll be clear.
In large cities in Mexico, there are lots of American immigrants who work remotely. They have groups and social associations. Let her find them and those people will either have much more experience with situations like this, or will have connections to find work that does allow working from Mexico.
Nope. IP addresses are pretty clear where you are. Unless she is a super smart IT person who can run IP routes in a computer and get it to ping somewhere else.
Play by the rules, the legal shitstorm can bankrupt you.
This is asked a million times a day use the search…
There’s a company which sets up some thing on a home computer in the US and then they send you some router that you take around with you, but I cannot remember what the name of it was but you should look into that. You can do it with a machine at your house
I wouldn’t lie about where she’s working… she might just need to look for a new remote work job and be honest about where she’s located.
Hi , check keepyourhomeip.com , their setup will help her
she will need a vpn on a hardware, try flashedrouter.com - the dedicated version will do.
I tried this to create a private VPN tunnel with gl.inet slate ax routers. Did a test also by taking the client router to my friends house and was successful in having my home ip with the VPN tunnel. But my question is, my work laptop also has a location option. Do I need to turn the location off? I think if I do turn off the location, IT security team wouldn’t like that!! Any advice ?
In this case i will set up the machine at another person place or have someone that can access the machine in my apt or house in the us.
Are you familiar with having a travel router with a personal VPN set up it connects through / a virtual machine to an American server? Virtual machine will be the main connection to any other VPN or connection. I realize that it becomes more difficult to do this depending on how security conscious the job / industry is. Some people do just fine using a basic commercial vpn, but some jobs it definitely can be spotted easily.
The set up you described I heard is the best, but it has some downsides that you listed. There are also services that can set this up. They will send a router and everything.
She’s a US Citizen and Resident and lives in Texas (she’s not Mexican), she just lives in Mexico half the year. She pays US taxes. She’s not trying to hide from the government, she just wants to be able to work when she’s in Mexico.
It can be done trust me on this.
If I use data on my phone while in Mexico the IP displayed shows as if I was in my city in the US and if I use the phone as a hotspot then the devices connecting to it also get routed the same way.
There are some websites that block you if you’re in Mexico and this lets me get to those while down there, same with Netflix/Hulu/prime content.
Not really difficult to do
She’s not Mexican. She’s born and raised in Chicago. She’s not even of Mexican decent. Her home is in the US and pays US taxes, she just lives in Mexico half the year like a snow bird. What she’s doing is not illegal lol.
Omg is that the smell of Mexican tax fraud?
If she’s physically in Mexico while she’s working, she will owe taxes to the Mexican government. That’s the big issue here.
Also the legalities of her company, because she would be technically forcing her company to operate in Mexico via her employment.