How to prevent VPN connection from changing Registry entries for Proxy

Chip G · 26 Sep 2017

Greetings,
Every time I connect to a particular VPN that I use on a regular basis, many of my PC setting are changed including Proxy settings and a number of other things in the registry. It seems that I can manually edit my registry and search for a keyword (name of VPN proxy provider) to delete all the entries so my PC is usable again after I disconnect from the VPN. However, I am curious if there is a way to prevent these registry settings from being changed at all? It is strange to me that just by connecting to a particular VPN all these registry entries are getting changed. I have admin rights on my Windows 10 machine. I see there are several other accounts that are "hidden" on the machine too so I am guessing that corporate IT may be doing some management behind the scenes but am not really sure and want to prevent ANYONE from causing changes to my system except for me.

Is this possible? If so, please advise.

Thanks for reading and feel free to let me know if you need more info to help me figure this out.

Berton · 26 Sep 2017

Not sure about your situation but most ISPs require Control Panel, Internet Options, Connections, LAN settings and the first option about Automatically detect settings be the the only thing with a checkmark. Some ISPs and Networks may require Proxy settings but they will be provided as needed. I have seen infections change that to redirect the browser/s. Maybe the Security tab needs to be checked, sometimes it has to be reset to Default.

lx07 · 26 Sep 2017

Run as standard account. There is no reason for VPN to change anything in the registry outside of HKCU (CU is current user). What is changed under that hive isn't interesting.

Chip G said:

I am guessing that corporate IT may be doing some management behind the scenes but am not really sure and want to prevent ANYONE from causing changes to my system except for me.

You can't. If it is your PC you can secure it. If it is their PC (or you connect to their network) then it is up to them.

I will tell you that for the last 20 years I've worked as a IT consultant in banks. Not once have they let me connect directly to their network since about 1997 (except by their idiotic mistakes). Prior to that it was normal.

If it is a work PC it is a work PC.

If you can go to work, open up a VPN and copy all your companies documents to wherever then I'd assume that either your IT were rubbish or it didn't actually matter what information you had.

Samuria · 26 Sep 2017

What is the proxy address it could be on the PC anti virus often setup a proxy to check all traffic

Chip G · 26 Sep 2017

Thanks for all the thoughts. I believe that I have full admin rights so I would think I could lock it down but it seems that somehow things get changed. They all appear to be related to zscaler and wreak havoc on various aspects of performance of web applications. When I manually remove all references to "zscaler" from the registry, everything seems to work really well but the next time I start a VPN session the zscaler junk appears again so I have to go through the whole process again.

Thoughts?