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Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

bloomberg.com

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Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#321

Post by austincheney »

rodgerd wrote: post #241
austincheney wrote: post #80

Here is the key part of the article: > Straight-up Big Brother, perhaps, but it’s perfectly legal for businesses to keep an unblinking eye on employees as long as they disclose they’re doing it. It is the companies equipment, network (on their side of the VPN), time, and so forth. That being said it is legally fine so long as they disclose they are doing so. If they monitor in ways that have not been disclosed they r…

> It is the companies equipment, network (on their side of the VPN), time, and so forth. That being said it is legally fine so long as they disclose they are doing so. Is the employee's house company property? Are the other people living there company property?

Then use your personal computer.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#322

Post by agkkeoo »

novok wrote: post #226
tzm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spying on your employee, or using covert monitoring tactics, is rarely legal. Not sure on the criminality, but privacy laws are enforceable. Also, there's a distinction between monitoring and spying. Ex: California Social Media Law (2013) https://readwrite.com/2013/01/15/californias-new-privacy-law...

They install cameras everywhere, they have a full rootkit on your machine, they log every network interaction and email/chat and they let themselves do it through 100s of pages of policy documents that you have to sign as a condition of employment. It might as well be covert in practice.

Using snooping software for recording of all command lines, including arguments, is common practice at many companies.

Also when network connections are recorded it does not stop at a list of ips, surveillance software commonly also provide easy-to-consume search facilities and cross reference capabilities, dashboards including comprehensive history and supplied annotation, i.e can tell when and how often you visited facebook.com, what you looked at, how much time you have spent at non-essential sites, and of course it also does this when you're at home using your employer's laptop for WFH or anything else.

The same is true when using a company phone when travelling, it can not only tell your employer where you're staying currently, but also where you usually stay at your holidays.

One such software is ms atp, if you have "Advanced Threat Protection" installed, it does occur. I would be surprised if it holds up in any EU court, because when I worked with development of similar software, long before gdpr, it did not.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#323

Post by lmohseni »

jameslevy wrote: post #305
qwerty456127 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because he couldn't walk up behind me to see me working, he secretly installed a program on my computer that took a screenshot every 30 seconds > The irony was that I was probably the most productive person in that office (in my humble opinion). The easiest and the most efficient way to ruin my productivity is to look at my screen. I can't work (nor can I pee - a funny coincidence, that's called "paruresis") when s…

This is one reason why it's really not natural for some of us to do whiteboard coding interviews, or even CoderPad, etc. interviews. It's like trying to pee when someone is watching you, although that's not an analogy I would encourage job seekers to make to a hiring manager.

I've failed several CoderPad interviews in a row, it's to the point where if a job listing specifically mentions CoderPad, I won't apply :\

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#324

Post by bob33212 »

cortesoft wrote: post #57
lmilcin wrote: post #11

Two sides of the story. One: people that are doing this are likely to have already been bad bosses. I don't think this changes anything. Two: I work for a large bank. My director, on a town hall, told us they do understand that not everybody will be able to focus on the job as before and that they expect us to spend less time actually working and be unavailable more often. Then he URGED us to actually do so. To take…

Yeah, I think bosses who freak out about people not being productive while working from home underestimate how much people can avoid being productive while physically at work.

It is a moral thing for people like that. They want to see 8+ hours of work a day. There is not much thought given to what was accomplished in those 8 hours as opposed to what could have been accomplished in a culture that prioritized results over the appearance of busyness.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#325

Post by bob33212 »

lmilcin wrote: post #65
cortesoft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think bosses who freak out about people not being productive while working from home underestimate how much people can avoid being productive while physically at work.

Exactly. Wrong mental model. Your best bet is to hire/make/keep people interested in being productive. When this is lost there isn't going much you can do to improve productivity. Keeping employee chained to their desks will not magically make things get done. This is so naive. I wonder how humanity landed in the situation where half of all managers don't get the first thing about managing people.

It is cheaper to hire someone like that than a really good manager. Also if you hire a lot of managers like this you end up with an organization of hundreds who are running around looking busy.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#326

Post by ianai »

obmelvin wrote: post #298
gruez wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because every place I've worked (including corporations) I've had local admin on my box and could see the entire process tree. That's assuming that the spyware isn't some sort of rootkit that tries to hide its presence. If you're on windows, it's also very easy to hide behind some generic looking executables like svchost.exe

You are certainly correct, but a bit of light digging + reflection on your company can give you a lot of confidence. For example, I work at a startup and I can say with great certainty that my boss has way too much going on for him to have installed any sort of rootkit after wiping the previous data and before I set up my admin account.

You’re not the average employee-computer user!

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#327

Post by ianai »

ddoolin wrote: post #182
commandlinefan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure?

I've been driven to the store and told to pick out my own computer and accessories and nobody ever had it in their hands for any length of time other than the employee who carried it to me. This has happened in two of my seven or so jobs. As a counterpoint, however, at another position the boss was indeed spying on us, which wasn't surprising if you worked there for any appreciable time since he was a complete contro…

That’s far from average practice. I couldn’t care less for the obviously non-abusive cases. They’ll never number significantly.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#328

Post by chillfox »

HenryBemis wrote: post #292
novok wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor or a full time employee at the 70k people companies? Was it in the past 10 years? If you used a company provided computer, did you investigate what was running? Did you go beyond the typical process manager and look into the kernel modules list? They often don't disclose explicitly that this stuff is running, because it rightfully creeps people out and the 'security' types don't want people to know.

Contractor here, I mainly work on mega-big corporations. I always check what run on my PC. I never use the work machines for anything personal. FFS I don't even use their guest wifi. I stick to my data plan. I have noticed the last few years that BlueCoat is on the rise. From some article a couple of months back I read that the company/Fund that owned BC also bought Sophos.

Speaking of wifi, I have seen it used to check when people come to work, go on break, etc... (tracking mobile phones).

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#329

Post by opless »

blattimwind wrote: post #242
gambiting wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so is CCTV in the office not allowed??

Wait, 100 % CCTV coverage of all corporate premises is not allowed in the EU? surprised free-est country of the world noises

Public spaces, entry points yes.

Over workers, pointing at workstations no.

However, MTIM proxies by bluecoat ... Apparently is okay.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#330

Post by rsynnott »

stronglikedan wrote: post #91
lodovic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the employee is informed upfront. Otherwise it's a privacy issue.

There's an expectation of privacy on company owned hardware?

If you were having a conversation with a colleague in your office kitchen, and then noticed your boss was aiming a high-gain directional microphone at you, how would you feel about that?
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