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Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

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Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#371

Post by Nbox9 »

Multicomp wrote: post #363
xendo wrote: post #228

For the context, as an Amazon employee I’m not required to access email from my mobile. The only app that I need to have is virtual pager and it doesn’t require allowing Amazon to administer my phone. Physical pagers are also an option.

TLDR ooh Amazon has pagers, I wonder how? Are there any pager networks left in the US? I've always been interested in them out of historical curiosity because I was too young to use them when they were actually a thing, but from what I understood, pagers are pretty much not a thing anymore.

I wouldn’t expect a modern pager to operate on the same technology as older pager. Pagers are a thing and they have there uses. I’ve heard of a physical pager being used to symbolize who is “on call”, and a team of engineers will pass the pager between themselves. I’ve seen restaurants pass out pagers to people waiting for tables. I’ve heard talk about some medical/emergency personal still using pagers.

I imagine pagers are probably used in highly secure communications (military, statecraft), because the thing being paged doesn’t have to give away it’s location, or even the fact that it received the message.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#372

Post by reaperducer »

catalogia wrote: post #340
jml7c5 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Reddit skews young, yet the narrative there is that TikTok and the Chinese gov are just shy of evil. The iOS clipboard bug in particular has startled reddit into a wave of self-reinforcing "TikTok is spyware" stories and comments. A story like this one just reinforces that narrative, and I'm not sure there's any way TikTok is coming back from it.

I'd guesstimate the average redditor is somewhere in their late 20s to mid 30s. Compared to Congress, that's certainly young. But that's about twice the age of what I imagine the average tiktok user to be (teens.)

The local TV news uses TikTok and mentions it regularly. Not exactly a teen-age audience.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#373

Post by GekkePrutser »

scohesc wrote: post #210
koolba wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one do this as an individual as well?

Cisco had their Meraki MDM free for small numbers of devices - but that was a while ago and I'm not sure if they still offer it. Was only compatible with I believe Samsung phones as they had the best hardware security built in (KNOX?). Apple phones required (still do?) a Mac in order to deploy specific certificates to devices to enroll in MDM as well.

These days Android MDM has changed a lot.

In the 'old' days, there was an app called device admin which would control the phone. This app would be supplied by the MDM vendor. This could leverage APIs from various vendors. Samsung had Knox but almost every phone vendor had their own plugin.

This was a huge PITA because each MDM feature only worked on manufacturers A and B and very often was limited to OS versions Y and Z. It meant we had to validate each phone and OS version and have a long list of what phones people could and couldn't use. It was a nightmare as an admin. Users hated it because they often only found out after they'd bought the phone. Samsung was indeed one of the best here, I have to agree.

Since then Google has thrown this overboard and started afresh with Android Enterprise. Controlled only by Google, and offering new ways of management like the work profile which is basically a kind of "phone inside a phone". Have your work profile managed by work and the rest of your phone to yourself.

For company-owned phones they also still have more comprehensive management options like COBO and COPE. But as long as the phone supports Android Enterprise, it supports everything.

Sadly some vendors in particular Samsung are fighting this approach because they feel they have invested too much in the old method. For example Samsung won't support Google Zero Touch auto-enrolment, having instead their own alternative Knox Mobile Enrolment. This is again making things more difficult for admins. But because Samsung is such a big party, and KME is free, we have gone for it anyway (Also Google Zero Touch is not available very widely yet, each reseller has to support it)

As an Admin I'm glad to see the end of the old management model. It's deprecated as of Android 11 (and already severely limited in 10) but we've already dropped it altogether.

And no, for managing Apple phones you don't need a Mac. You just need this for manual installation of management profiles, if you use an MDM you don't need it.

However if you want to manually supervise phones (instead of using Apple DEP / or Automated Device Enrolment as they call it now), you do need one. But this is really rare now.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#374

Post by kenhwang »

wiml wrote: post #364
east2west wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From WSJ: Amazon Says Email Ordering Employees to Delete TikTok Was Sent in Error. I suspect Amazon realized late what a legal mess it is to ban an app on their employee's cell phone when they have no clear legal basis or governmental guidance. They banned employee using Huawei phones when I was working there, for some things -- don't remember exactly. But in that case, US government already banned it for its employe…

Why do you think Amazon doesn't have a clear legal basis to decide which devices are allowed to connect to their internal network services? Or, for that matter, to decide which devices ca be taken into non-public, secured parts of Amazon buildings?

They probably got informed that since phones are personal devices and not company provided, this level of restriction might land them in the parts of BYOD laws that require employers to compensate for personal device use for work.

Amazon probably decided most employees don't have anything too sensitive and it's not worth buying everyone a phone.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#375

Post by reaperducer »

jml7c5 wrote: post #297
michaelmrose wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is building concentration camps that they use for slave labor, ripping organs out of the still living bodies of political prisonersto give to its rich class, creating an increasingly dystopian super surveillance state wherein you could be subtly punished for associating with the wrong people, has no means of redress or removal of the dictator for life, and treats all enterprises as organs of the state that are…

All that may be true, yet it still does not mean rationality should be thrown out the window when evaluating claims about TikTok.

All that may be true, yet it still does not mean rationality should be thrown out the window when evaluating claims about TikTok.

If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#376

Post by spelunker »

Multicomp wrote: post #363
xendo wrote: post #228

For the context, as an Amazon employee I’m not required to access email from my mobile. The only app that I need to have is virtual pager and it doesn’t require allowing Amazon to administer my phone. Physical pagers are also an option.

TLDR ooh Amazon has pagers, I wonder how? Are there any pager networks left in the US? I've always been interested in them out of historical curiosity because I was too young to use them when they were actually a thing, but from what I understood, pagers are pretty much not a thing anymore.

Hospitals still often use pagers - they're deemed more reliable than cell phone networks. I don't know if that's actually true or not but there you go.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#377

Post by GekkePrutser »

Nextgrid wrote: post #151
koolba wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one do this as an individual as well?

For iOS you can use Apple Configurator for profile-based M2M. For remote management you need a server-based solution and I believe there's an open-source implementation of that out there.

Yep it's called MicroMDM.

https://micromdm.io/

Only supports Apple though! Not Android.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#378

Post by sdinsn »

J5892 wrote: post #164
sdinsn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China bans American apps. Why wouldn't we do the same?

Because we're not a totalitarian state built on the backbone of censorship and information control. Yet.

Is this about censorship and information control, or just about economic equity? Why should we be a market for China's applications when we can't do the same?

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#379

Post by kevincox »

_abox wrote: post #346
melling wrote: post #342

The email sent to Amazon employees was a mistake. https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/amazon-bans-tiktok-emp...

Someone goes through all the trouble of typing that explicit email and it's a mistake? Sounds more like 'pulled after huge feedback'. Though personally I'd agree with this decision. TikTok seems to be a particularly bad apple: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...

Yeah, not "This email was sent by mistake." but "Sending this email was a mistake." Two completely different sentences.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#380

Post by kerng »

variaga wrote: post #87
ehsankia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, are these 1. Devices owned by Amazon, for work 2. Personal devices with the amazon email added directly 3. Personal devices with amazon email added on Work profile Could not find this info in the articles or tweet.

AMZN employee here - In my case, it's (3)

Assuming you get somehow reimbursed, like some companies that dont have corp issued phones?
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