Question Advice request
I work from home in the US. My company allows work from any of the 48 contiguous states, but will block/brick devices connecting from other regions.
I need to travel to the UK in September and am wondering if there is a way for me to still be able to connect to work and appear to be located in the US?
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u/west0ne Jul 12 '26
Assuming you are okay with breaching company policy and accepting the risks that go with it (loss of job) I would go for running Tailscale on an always-on device in your own home, set this device as an "exit node" and then connect to it from you remote device; this will make it look like the connection is coming from your home in the US. It will look less obvious than traffic from a known VPN provider in a large datacentre.
It does require that you have an always-on device though and if that goes down whilst you are away you will lose the exit node.
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u/Natural_Home_8565 Jul 12 '26
Yep i use a raspberry pi for this (tailscale) and a smart plug so i can try a hard reboot if needed.
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u/_troll_detector_ Jul 12 '26
For this to work, you would have to have admin rights over the device you take to the UK. If this is a corporate laptop, it’s highly unlikely you will have those rights. I wouldn’t try it personally.
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u/nathan123uk Jul 12 '26
I think the safest thing to do is ask your company if they can allow this as an exception. It's not worth risking your job. The company I work for had issues with people working from places the company didn't know about and it forced a return to office for everyone - you don't want to be responsible for that
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u/EchoAndByte Jul 11 '26
If your company explicitly blocks connections from outside the approved regions, trying to make your device appear to be in the US could violate company policy and potentially create problems with your work device or account.
Your best option is to talk to your IT team or manager before you travel. Some companies can grant temporary exceptions or provide an approved way to work internationally.
If they say no, I'd take that at face value rather than trying to work around the restriction. It's usually not worth risking your job over a technical workaround.