Apple explicitly asks employees to merge their personal and work accounts • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by renerthr » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #208

renerthr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most big companies have a department in compliance or counsel that reads your mail They read the email of your personal email account if you use it in the company-owned phone? Or they read the email of your company email account? In other words, when you say 'This. +100', what do you mean by 'This'? The parent comment raised many points and I'm confused as to which one you're referring to. Edit: To be clear, it's m…

+100 to the entire way of thinking from the original post. work/personal should be treated like church/state where they are kept separate. yes, if you read your personal email on a corp device, then there's a good chance corp is reading your personal emails. and 100% yes, the corp can/do read your corp email. they are required to keep copies of every email sent by employees, so just assume at some point some corp law…

> they are required to keep copies of every email sent by employees

Required by who? (Sorry, I'm not so knowledegable about these things)

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

#212

Post by norov » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #180

I feel like I might be crazy but… isn’t this an issue with Apple products at work in general? I am issued a MacBook Pro and iPhone from my employer. The IT dept. configured them to connect to our corporate infrastructure: Exchange, MS365, VPN, Dropbox, Slack, printers, etc. IT did not issue me a corporate iCloud account. I can add my personal iCloud account to these devices if I want, and then I’ll get all my music,…

Why not set up a gmail.com account for your apple.com account? That way you still keep the clean iCloud account for work only.

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

#213

Post by dylan604 » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #57

hammyhavoc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like advice learned the hard way. Stay well, and don't burn out!

I doubt it. I've never heard first-hand of anyone running into any trouble that this would mitigate. Some people are just crazy overzealously fearful of employers and BigCos.

I've personally started working for a company that demanded any code that I write during employment for company is owned by them regardless if I write it during working hours or at home. I had to list out each project that I had worked on or continuing to work on to establish a history of before/after start of employment. Any new personal project had to be added to the list after a discussion to see how that project and continued employment could co-exist.

The concept here is that if you learned something new at work and then implement it into your own private projects, the company wants that project since they paid for your time learning new something. Also, NDAs and other forms of copyright and what not gets weird.

To me, the gold standard of how to do this is how Woz handled the creation of the first Apple computer. He took it to his employeer multiple times being told they did not claim any ownsership on each occassion.

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

#214

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #107

pommecore wrote: post #68

Some time ago when I hired on at Apple (I've since moved on to greener pastures) I had a tough time provisioning my corporate MacBook. Every time I tried entering my work email address I got kicked into an unfamiliar auth flow that ended up not working. After I mentioned how much trouble I was having, someone sitting near me in the office told me I needed to use a personal Apple ID to provision the device. I created…

"I went so far as to carry two iPhones, one personal and the other "corporate," and I only ever used my "corporate" iPhone with Apple employee apps. I never even connected my personal phone to the campus WiFi; I used wireless data for that phone the entire time I was there." This is the way. Carry two devices. Separate personal/work devices. Never connect personal to corporate network. Never send messages between per…

> Don't do vacation research, medical research, social media, Spotify, anything personal at all on your work device. Ever.

That's quite extreme. What is your threat model?

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

#215

Post by 3np » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #193

3np wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if the org is paying for your seat.

My question was more, if I create a free account and it is linked to an organization, is that a paid account? The company didn't make my account, I did.

Note: Speculation.

Without actually reading the ToS properly, I imagine you're good if your org is paying for your seat in their org (as opposed to a free org, but if it's a company with private repos I'd assume it's the case). That'd be reasonable.

If reality is that you actually meed individual billing for each individual account, that would be kind of crazy and I hope that's not the case.

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

#216

Post by dylan604 » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

renerthr wrote: post #211

dylan604 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+100 to the entire way of thinking from the original post. work/personal should be treated like church/state where they are kept separate. yes, if you read your personal email on a corp device, then there's a good chance corp is reading your personal emails. and 100% yes, the corp can/do read your corp email. they are required to keep copies of every email sent by employees, so just assume at some point some corp law…

> they are required to keep copies of every email sent by employees Required by who? (Sorry, I'm not so knowledegable about these things)

Corporations have to follow guidelines/rules/laws in order to be in good standing. If the corp is sued, the corp will have to respond to discovery requests from the plantiff's attorneys. In the past, so many companies have deleted emails so that they did not have to turn over incriminating evidence has lead to laws being passed that require a minimum amount of document storage. I don't know the details other than it is a thing.

Edit: search "email retention laws" for more precise rules and specifics

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

#217

Post by beermonster » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

Cd00d wrote: post #148

shaggyfrog wrote: post #7

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 get that in the "most secure boundary" sense, I should have a work provided phone for work stuff, BUT... I don't want to carry two phones. I'm part of a team that owns some responsibility for fixing things that break in the night. I find it freeing to be able to reply to a Slack or Outlook email while I'm with my kids at the playground. I see the above advice all the time, but I can't help but think it only relates…

> I don't want to carry two phones.

Neither did Hilary Clinton

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

#218

Post by squarefoot » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

They seem to imply the use of work devices also for personal use; this is a risky practice with every company, don't do that. Huge privacy issues aside, it is possible that the employer could claim property or at least some leverage on your personal projects if they can demonstrate they have been worked on using the company assets during work time, which especially in times of remote working is hard to define. Use work devices only for work related activities (no personal surfing, email or social media) and do the rest on your own devices you are never going to hand over to your employer.

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

#219

Post by roudaki » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:23 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #182

Cd00d wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that in the "most secure boundary" sense, I should have a work provided phone for work stuff, BUT... I don't want to carry two phones. I'm part of a team that owns some responsibility for fixing things that break in the night. I find it freeing to be able to reply to a Slack or Outlook email while I'm with my kids at the playground. I see the above advice all the time, but I can't help but think it only relates…

If you're trying to get promoted by doing unpaid overtime and/or unpaid oncall shifts, you're a class traitor screwing over your colleagues. Help them by setting healthy boundaries even if you don't actually need them yourself.

You are wasting your breath. You know he thinks most people are lazy and earning below 200k "for a reason."

A guy won Nobel prize proving your quality of life or happiness does not improve above 75k. Thats what you need.

And in IT you dont need to do unpaid overtime or sacrifice your time with family to get to 75k. Everything above that and you are doing it on purpose cause you value money over family and personal relationships. And that is your choice. But that is not healthy and that should not be norm.

And if you need your workers to work 16h a day with unpaid overtime but they are refusing your workers are not lazy you are incompetent CEO. Or just evil level of greedy.

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

#220

Post by sircastor » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:24 AM UTC

shaggyfrog wrote: post #7

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 was sort of into the idea of having my calendar on my phone until I learned my company could remotely wipe my phone at any time. That’s a world of trouble from a misunderstanding, or a bitter IT person.