Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

onezero.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 278 posts

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#51

Post by robben1234 »

I'm a remote contractor. Usually, if my customer wants me to install some tracking software (recording you're present in front of PC, tracking mouse/keyboard activity, etc) I agree only on one term: they need to send me a machine with this software so I can use it while doing work. I lose customers this way, though most of the time people agree to not have this kind of software involved instead of rejecting offer altogether.

If I worked in an office environment and company wanted me to use tracking software I'd see no problems with it. But it should be installed on a company provided phone. Which in the best case I'd leave at office off work, or in other cases - carry home and store it there.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#52

Post by cj »

souterrain wrote: post #46
alistairSH wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one know if an employer is abusing MDM? Honest question... I have no idea. I just point my iPhone's mail app at our Outlook 365 server and that's it - I assume that installs a profile that allows them some remote access (I believe they can remote wipe the phone, but maybe not), but no idea how to tell if they're doing anything else. Edit - looking at Settings->General->Profiles, there is one entry, which is…

Ask. Since this often affects larger enterprises, start at the help/service desk. If that doesn't get you an answer, try Information Assurance or Information Security departments. Lastly, most large orgs have a Privacy office. During all communications, make it clear what your concerns are; perhaps even link to articles like this one. Corporations that care about customer and employee privacy will take such inquiries…

> Ask.

This is a good recommendation.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#53

Post by blaird »

alistairSH wrote: post #42
souterrain wrote: post #33

If your employer subscribes to an ethical model which permits them to abuse MDM, viewing your web history and tracking your location, you need to do more than remove your personal device from their control. You must find a new employer—preferably while you make public this repulsive behavior.

How does one know if an employer is abusing MDM? Honest question... I have no idea. I just point my iPhone's mail app at our Outlook 365 server and that's it - I assume that installs a profile that allows them some remote access (I believe they can remote wipe the phone, but maybe not), but no idea how to tell if they're doing anything else. Edit - looking at Settings->General->Profiles, there is one entry, which is…

I worked at a security startup where installing Slack/email on our personal phones (BYOD policy) was possible via an MDM (but was optional, we weren't forced). I don't know every detail, but many of our engineers were naturally spooked and did lots of checking to make sure no packets flowed to the VPN from apps not within the MDMs control (just slack and mail).

I personally was fine with this as I don't want to carry two devices, I like being able to check in via Slack (especially if I was on call), and we had several folks who had our security/IT team under a lot of scrutiny proving this wasn't overly invasive.

It helped that we were a small startup, so our IT and security teams were 20 feet away :)

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#54

Post by davidf560 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #22

Interesting that this was just about spying, when the real reason to keep work email off your phone (imo) is to maintain work life balance. If I can access my work email on my phone, I will access my work email on my phone. Constantly. I'm bad enough with my phone and my personal email. Everywhere I've worked I've told my manager I turn off work when I leave (unless I'm oncall). I've never had this be a concern, acro…

Having work apps on your phone is not mutually exclusive to having work/life balance though.

I have work apps on my personal device primarily for when I'm away from my desk during work hours. I disable notifications etc. outside of work hours.

I wouldn't say I'm really happy with it, but it does permit me some freedom to be away from my desk without the risk of missing something important during the day. It's a trade-off I've decided I'm willing to make.

Work also provides guest wifi which is conveniently configured by the Android for Work profile, so data usage while at the office isn't really a concern.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#55

Post by Aeolun »

I did the opposite. Put all my personal stuff on my work phone. No way am I going to carry around two of those bulky monsters. The only bad part is that a bunch of my online identities are now directly coupled to work, unless I can convince them to let me keep the phone if I ever leave.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#56

Post by Aeolun »

alistairSH wrote: post #42
souterrain wrote: post #33

If your employer subscribes to an ethical model which permits them to abuse MDM, viewing your web history and tracking your location, you need to do more than remove your personal device from their control. You must find a new employer—preferably while you make public this repulsive behavior.

How does one know if an employer is abusing MDM? Honest question... I have no idea. I just point my iPhone's mail app at our Outlook 365 server and that's it - I assume that installs a profile that allows them some remote access (I believe they can remote wipe the phone, but maybe not), but no idea how to tell if they're doing anything else. Edit - looking at Settings->General->Profiles, there is one entry, which is…

If you installed MDM, it’s probably been fairly clear. The iOS warning is kind of scary as I remember.

Also found under Settings -> General -> Device Management.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#57

Post by spookyuser »

erinaceousjones wrote: post #4

At least if your org is on Office365 and doesn't have too restrictive policies, you can get your email over standard IMAP. There also exist some nice man-in-the-middle proxies which pretend to exchange servers that you've implemented the policies they ask for. I've got multiple "work" (one is a volunteering role) office365 exchange accounts on my personal phone, using [ https://sites.google.com/site/bikomobi/exchaine…

I've also used exchained but I find that I have to constantly restart it for my emails to work.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#58

Post by ptero »

souterrain wrote: post #33

If your employer subscribes to an ethical model which permits them to abuse MDM, viewing your web history and tracking your location, you need to do more than remove your personal device from their control. You must find a new employer—preferably while you make public this repulsive behavior.

This generally is a reasonable advice, but companies change policies. Even if MDM policy today sounds benign (although IT departments make mistakes, too) it can morph into something much more invasive in the near future, "because cyber". MDM on my personal phone is the line I personally would not cross. My 2c.

Re: Don’t Put Your Work Email on Your Personal Phone

#60

Post by cannonedhamster »

alistairSH wrote: post #42
souterrain wrote: post #33

If your employer subscribes to an ethical model which permits them to abuse MDM, viewing your web history and tracking your location, you need to do more than remove your personal device from their control. You must find a new employer—preferably while you make public this repulsive behavior.

How does one know if an employer is abusing MDM? Honest question... I have no idea. I just point my iPhone's mail app at our Outlook 365 server and that's it - I assume that installs a profile that allows them some remote access (I believe they can remote wipe the phone, but maybe not), but no idea how to tell if they're doing anything else. Edit - looking at Settings->General->Profiles, there is one entry, which is…

Generally MDM software swallows up everything. It's been a while since I managed an MDM instance but we could track everywhere the employee went by default and when I suggested we turn it off there wasn't an option nor did management want to. We could see every app pretty much everything on the device. I will never install MDM on my phone after managing it. I've also seen phones accidentally wiped. Back up your phones.
Post reply on HN