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Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

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Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn't sound like company policy, and more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications. Yeah it feels like something is definitely missing here. If it's some kind of legal discovery, it's no shocking that the person cannot delete "personal stuff" before they hand it over, that would basically render pointless whatever they are doing with the phone.

The only way there should be a legal hold on a phone like that, is if it is her work phone, which she shouldn't be having nude pics of herself on in the first place.

Personal devices could certainly be a part of discovery.

Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#134
The first tweet is sensationalist. If it was for a legal subpoena for discovery then their hands are tied, they have to deliver everything and cannot be seen to have deleted anything. It just is what it is and that is how the courts work. For the second one claiming apple requires you to use a personal account it sure just sounds like most people at apple have no idea how to properly provision a corp. account and just tell you to use a personal one as its easier. One of those things when you onboard where they tell you its not supposed to work like this but we will just do this to get you up and running and fix it later. Most of the time there is no later. I would not be surprised if many people in the heat of the moment and with a new job just say screw it, I'll fix it later. Again there is generally no later. That is on them as well as on apple.

Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#135
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And do not sign up for online services you are using personaly with work email.

I work in healthcare. It blows my mind how many people use a work email for communication regarding medical appointments including results and very personal information. I’m a complete outlier in how conservative I am with this stuff and I’m nowhere near as fastidious as the HN gold standard.

It blows my mind how many healthcare providers routinely transfer sensitive information over insecure channels like email in the first place and ask the patients or carers involved to do the same. The most basic data protection regulations enshrined in law in my country are being openly violated, to say nothing of medical ethics and patient confidentiality.

Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#136
I don’t get it. Why would you sign in with any personal information on a work device? Just create a free account and use it for work. I have zero sympathy for people who use personal accounts on work devices : just because they let you take it home doesn’t mean it’s not 100% work territory.

This sounds less like bad corporate policy and more like naive employees who didn’t think through the importance of separating work and personal devices.

Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#137
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. +100 I used to think people were paranoid about this stuff until I ran a big email system. Most big companies have a department in compliance or counsel that reads your mail, either in response to a complaint or randomly depending on the industry. Accused of sexual harassment? Your JDate and Match emails support the idea that you’re lonely. An external entity thinks somebody embezzled money? Your late credit ca…

Exactly. And do not sign up for online services you are using personaly with work email.

I had a co-worker that signed up with everything with his work email. Actually he did all his internet stuff from work (didn't have home access oddly) After some badgering from us he got his own email. when he was hit in the second round of layoffs this helped him a lot.. Even if he was initially schlepping to library to get his email..

Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#138

Create a firewall between your personal and professional time. Another name for this is “setting healthy boundaries”. Always create new accounts for anything work related -- GitHub, Apple ID, whatever. Don’t install work apps on your personal phone. Don’t enrol your personal phone in corporate MDM. If they want you to use a device for work, ask them to give you one. Don’t do personal stuff on your work devices. Don’t…

I agree with most of this, but I'm curious about the specific case of Github. If I join a company, are there any big dangers to just having them add my personal GH account to their organizations or private repos, and then if I leave the company they can remove me again? This seems to be how a lot of developers in my orbit do things. (I mean any dangers at the account/permissions/privacy level - separate from "having…

No. Having a separate GitHub is just a pain. GitHub provides adequate separation itself (you can add multiple emails and configure notifications accordingly)

Re: Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts

#140

Create a firewall between your personal and professional time. Another name for this is “setting healthy boundaries”. Always create new accounts for anything work related -- GitHub, Apple ID, whatever. Don’t install work apps on your personal phone. Don’t enrol your personal phone in corporate MDM. If they want you to use a device for work, ask them to give you one. Don’t do personal stuff on your work devices. Don’t…

I'm really surprised at the number of personal GitHub accounts that are being used in my org and at others. I guarantee their access isn't being removed when they depart. And it seems common at a ton of companies.

GitHub actually manages attaching business org to personal accounts very well.

You can make notification emails related to the business org repos go to your work email, while all other notification emails go to your personal email.

When you fork a business org private repo into your account, it stays attached to the business org. Other members of the org can push to your fork of that repo but not your other personal or open-source repos. When your account is separated from the org, you lose access to your fork.

If the business org requires extra SAML/OIDC through their central auth service, you can still access your personal and public repos without doing it.

So yeah the business still has to remember to disconnect you from the org when you leave the company, but that's still true if you make a new github account anyway?

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