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WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

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Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#281

Post by mantas »

ElFitz wrote: post #271
selestify wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which parts of it ignore economics and human nature?

The first thing that comes to mind is that rents would quickly adjust to extract as much money as possible from someone on UBI. And any increase on UBI would just lead to an increase in rent prices. People working while on UBI would squeeze those not working, or not earning enough, out of the housing market. Meaning people will probably need to work to afford living. So back to square one. Now you need to figure out…

In reality, it's more likely that UBI-happy people would move to cheap backcountry while working people would move to more productive areas. Resulting in ghettos with little interaction between both groups. I wouldn't be surprised if over time one group decided it's about time to stop paying to strangers far away. Democratical process would be awesome too. With both groups split along UBI size.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#282

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

notbeuller wrote: post #109

During covid when WFH, I received a legitimate looking SMS message with a link, so rather than clicking it, I curl --verbose'd it (and one subsequent redirect) before seeing it was an obvious phishing / troll. The next day, my VPN & SSO was disabled with instructions to contact corporate security. My use of curl had been detected and while they didn't accuse me of anything, they claimed that they wanted to make sure…

Were they taking issue with your use of a tool, or the fact that you apparently click on phishing links? Was that a test run by your company's cybersecurity department?

Is your phone personal? BYOD? Company-issued?

I can't fathom how "detecting curl" can put you in the doghouse, but I would shut you down too, for accessing malicious websites.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#283

Post by hef19898 »

bennyelv wrote: post #276
oneplane wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Employers can't even look inside user's mailboxes because there is no guarantee that it doesn't contain anything personal. Even if the company has a rule that you're not allowed to use it for personal things, the law supersedes that and you still can't do it willy nilly.

I don't think this is correct - even under the GDPR. If the company has good reason to look inside someone's mailbox (I don't think the bar for that is particularly high for a company email account) then any personal data they encounter would be being processed under "legitimate interest" as long as they don't do anything unnecessary with it in order to achieve whatever it was they were doing.

Tue bar is actually quite high. Teo things can block it: if there is a workers council, it has to approve surveillance of an employees use of IT systems. That surveillance can only be target to specific, named users and for specific purposes, almost like a mini search warrant. If there is no workers council, at the latest stage a court will have a very, very close look at what isbpresented as evidence. The middle ground is an affected employee's lawyer and the employer. Result being, that kind of comms / IT surveillance is basically never happeneing. Which is a very, very good thing!

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#284

Post by eecc »

Swizec wrote: post #192
majormajor wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Salary" or "exempt" in the US is a sub-status of "Full Time Employee". FTE in the US has much of the same of what you say - less, but still some protections, most significantly requirements around paying overtime, and paying more for it: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime - "Unless exempt, employees covered by the Act must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than tim…

> where you don't have max hours or overtime eligibility at all? No, the EU is pretty strict about those things. Only way you can be ineligible for overtime is if you own the business. And even then you’re technically eligible, but I’ve never heard of anyone paying themselves overtime. In practice the “exempt” part happens in a grey area: The boss and the employee shake hands to “make things simpler” and write down 4…

Also contractors though. I got into a quarrel with the lowlife recruiter that tried to coax me into accepting going on pager duty. They had no room for negotiation, whatever the customer said was the deal. I left… but it must have cost them a fortune in productivity loss. Penny wise, pound foolish

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#285

Post by hef19898 »

_puk wrote: post #226
phatfish wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU you should not be asked to work more that the maximum hours defined in the European Working Time Regulations. There is usually a range in these directives so member states can choose to go to the high or low end. But there is a range that has to be put into law for each country. Basically you shouldn't lose your job for refusing to work more hours than are defined in the regulations, if you do there is a tr…

A lot of contracts I'm seeing nowadays include the opt out of this working time directive. They say you can opt in or out at any point by providing a written request to HR, but defaulting to opt out at the point when all the power is with the company (the candidate is signing the initial contract, and may not want to rock the boat) seems wrong IMO.

Whether ypu opt in or out of recording hours (not sure if ypu actually can opt out, courts will propably decide that soon enough), you cannot opt out of the max working hour limits put in law. One of the exceptions being upper management, and in Germany, funny enough, doctors...

The legal limit in Germany is 10 hours net, pkus whatever break time is applicable. One exception are mainly surveilling duties, e.g. monitoring security cameras, where the limit is 12 hours. One theoretical "work around" is declaring Saturdays normal working days, as they legally are. Those 10 hours are (used to be, not surw if that changed) calculated on the average of 5 days, by using Saturday as working day on which people are not working the average is calculated based on six days with one day adding 0 hours to tje total. Not sure if that was ever tried in court so.

Disclaimer: The above applies to Germany.

Fun fact: If employees violqte those limits, the line manager is liable personally. That liability includes fines, I know of one case where said fine was 10k Euro, and theoretically even jail time.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#286

Post by realityking »

majormajor wrote: post #188
Swizec wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I’m from Europe, have lived in US the past 8 years) > Is there a concept equivalent to US, salary employee? Yes. It’s called full-time employee. This encompasses anyone and everyone who does not work as an independent contractor. > If so what are they expected to work? 40 hours per week. With mandated minimum lunch time and breaks, paid minimum vacation, paid medical leave, paid maternity/paternity, govt mandated lu…

"Salary" or "exempt" in the US is a sub-status of "Full Time Employee". FTE in the US has much of the same of what you say - less, but still some protections, most significantly requirements around paying overtime, and paying more for it: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime - "Unless exempt, employees covered by the Act must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than tim…

There are some very limited cases where overtime doesn’t apply. For example, managing directors are outside the scope of most labor regulations as they’re not technically employees.

At least in Germany, managerial employees (mostly defined through hiring and firing authority) are traditionally exempt though this might be in conflict with the relevant EU regulations. We’ll see.

What I’m seeing commonly today is that your contracts will say the work week is 40 hours but x hours of overtime a month are already compensated.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#287

Post by hef19898 »

lnsru wrote: post #145
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a foreign developer living in Austria I'd like to offer a counter perspective: that might be why Austria, even in the tech scene has some of the lowest and least flexibly WFH possibilities I've ever seen in any EU job market: so the bosses can keep a close eye on you at the office, because they can't via SW. Every job I applied to, even the most liberal ones mandates at least 2 day per week at the office in the be…

Interviewing around Munich and big players have policies between 3 days in the office on the strict end and “please, show sometimes in the office” on easy going end. C’mon, it’s big step forward already from 5 years ago when people had occasionally Fridays home office. However I am stuck in the company with toxic culture from 1995, they really exist! Full back to the office!

I once had an employer, for a short time, that sold a flexible working time model. No clocking of exact hours, back when that was still normal, WFH. The day I started they handed me the detailed docs to sign: core presence hours at the office wherw more than the 40 hours I signed up for (the amounted to basicall, 10 net hours per day), WFH required Managing Director approval and was never granted. The culture was so toxic, no recyvling company wpuld have ever touched it... The head of im-house sales was regularly asked, well more like ordered, to walk the Managing Directors dog... Horrible place.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#288

Post by rpodraza »

aledalgrande wrote: post #73
cebert wrote: post #5

I don’t have an issue being monitored if it means I can work from home more frequently. I think the data would help highlight that I’m more productive working from home than in the office due to less distractions and wasted commute time. It would be helpful if firms monitoring productivity mentioned what they consider productivity to be. However, in doing this, it would also make it easy for individuals to game any p…

> my daily standup is at 9:30AM. I typically join the standup on my phone, and make coffee and have a snack. Our standup runs 30-45mins due to how it’s managed and doesn’t provide much value to me Ugh, I feel you on that. (tho I don't agree with the monitoring part, there's no need for it) I just realized that I haven't had these silly daily standups for nearly a year now, since changing companies. And guess what? My…

Same here. We switched to a standup channel where we just say what we did on the day.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#289

Post by rpodraza »

ok123456 wrote: post #247
warmwaffles wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a mechanical robot for that. Just need a device masquerading as a keyboard just sending that stuff in.

you can already do this with a flipper zero + badusb.

Nice. Flipper zero is pretty pricey tho, and in this case a simple dev board with usb (like stm32) will suffice ;)

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#290

Post by abwizz »

bennyelv wrote: post #276
oneplane wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Employers can't even look inside user's mailboxes because there is no guarantee that it doesn't contain anything personal. Even if the company has a rule that you're not allowed to use it for personal things, the law supersedes that and you still can't do it willy nilly.

I don't think this is correct - even under the GDPR. If the company has good reason to look inside someone's mailbox (I don't think the bar for that is particularly high for a company email account) then any personal data they encounter would be being processed under "legitimate interest" as long as they don't do anything unnecessary with it in order to achieve whatever it was they were doing.

this was way before gdpr. more like employee rights. employer cant just come by and snoop throu your drawers either.
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