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Bossware is a big legal risk

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Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#101

Post by ebiester »

exabrial wrote: post #9

The reasons given are pretty much a nothingburger and standard compliance items you should be doing anyway! I am trying to figure out what exactly is the problem people have though: you're literally on a company asset, being paid by the company, you've signed copyright away, you're aware their is no expectation of privacy. Use your cell phone or your home computer for home business, work during company hours, doesn't…

From the article: "Abruzzo’s memo cites things like wearable devices for warehouse workers and GPS cameras on truck drivers, but she pays particular attention to computer-based surveillance, calling out “keyloggers and software that takes screenshots, webcam photos, or audio recordings throughout the day.” The memo goes on to mention tools that keep watching when employees are off the clock, such as those that 'track employees’ whereabouts and communications using employer-issued phones or wearable devices, or apps installed on workers’ own devices.' "

So, we according to the article, we are not only talking about screenshots and access to the computer's contents. I will accept a charitable interpretation that you are comfortable with a subset of bossware, but the article was talking about a wider swath.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#102

Post by manuelmoreale »

paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

Not arguing against your points but I'm wondering if this is more a US related issue? I never heard this being a thing here in the EU but maybe it's just me being unaware of all the various situations. I don't know anyone who works from home (whether in tech and in other sectors) that has to deal with all that nonsense.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#103

Post by aljgz »

ryandrake wrote: post #43
Terr_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO there's a huge difference between "we do this because we had too many fraudulent applicants and this is a compromise compared to having you interview in-person" versus "this is representative of how the entire employment relationship will go." If the former, their fears are not unfounded: Sometimes the person who impressed you in the interview is not actually the same person who arrives for their first day of wor…

I think the former might strongly imply the latter. If a company can't think of a single way to ensure the person who interviews is actually the person who comes to work the first day (hint, there was a time when webcams did not exist), then that company is probably also inclined to inflict lazy, intrusive surveillance-based schemes on employees after they're hired.

Genuinely interested to know what are some ways you suggest. The times webcams did not exist, coding interviews were done in-person.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#104

Post by Lanolderen »

ebiester wrote: post #100
hnthrow289570 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're probably at the point where it's cost effective to pay for traveling-to-interview again, especially for the later-round interviews. That is, unless companies are lying about how much damage bad hiring does. I don't suspect they are, but they apparently can't also do the math to go back to that option.

Are the interviewees going to come to my house? What do you do if you're a remote company?

Using a coworking space sounds viable. Past that maybe a cafe if it's not gonna be a heavily technical interview where you need peace, quiet and a whiteboard.

Edit: Maybe a library? Most around me have rooms for working in groups.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#105

Post by fnordian_slip »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #102
paxys wrote: post #57

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Workers in WFH "gig" jobs are made to install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones (which are requi…

Not arguing against your points but I'm wondering if this is more a US related issue? I never heard this being a thing here in the EU but maybe it's just me being unaware of all the various situations. I don't know anyone who works from home (whether in tech and in other sectors) that has to deal with all that nonsense.

Germany reporting in, couldn't see that becoming a thing here. I have about 99% wfh currently, and if my employer would try to implement something like that, the union would probably not even have time to get involved because the works council ("Betriebsrat", not sure if that's a good translation) would swat it down instantly.

It sounds insane, but believable for the US (but that might be my bias showing, I've always heard bad things about worker's rights in the US).

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#106

Post by rsynnott »

davely wrote: post #22
woleium wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just assume it does

No kidding! We have some ridiculous timeout on our work machines that triggers the screensaver after 2 minutes of idle time (we can’t change this). After it’s triggered, you need to enter your password to unlock (company mandated, 10 chars minimum, no repeating chars, at least 1 upper and 1 lower case char, at least 1 special symbol, change every 90 days, can't be too similar to last 10(!) passwords). Okay, this is a…

This... sounds like their security is doing their job, tbh? Like, yes, if you have access to sensitive data your computer _should_ lock when you are away from it, and you shouldn't be able to circumvent this.

I am, generally, very sceptical of corporate surveillance stuff, and think that it should be largely banned. But this particular case isn't surveillance, it's security.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#107

Post by Kiro »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #49
root_axis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you vet a candidate remotely without having them on the cam? Especially today with all the LLMs, it's pretty much a hiring requirement if you can't bring the candidate in for an interview.

Easy, you ask them to talk you through their reasoning. LLM’s are fucking terrible at this for anything nontrivial.

Not my experience at all. I would say humans are much worse at this.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#108

Post by Terr_ »

apimade wrote: post #51
CoastalCoder wrote: post #7

I was surprised (perhaps I shouldn't have been) to encounter bossware-like surveilance in an interview process . About 6 months ago I was interviewing with InterSystems, a company that does healthcare software. Only when I signed in for the online coding interview did I learn that they required I have a webcam on myself the whole time. I don't like using coarse language. But it was the first time I struggled to not u…

Cybersecurity nerd here, have talked to many platform and financial company CISO’s, security teams and recruiters over the past few years. Fake interviewees are pretty rampant. We’re getting to the point where presenting yourself in-person to a government representative, agency or a private attestation company will be part of the onboarding process. At this point it looks like it’ll be iris scans. In the US it’s even…

> At this point it looks like it’ll be iris scans.

Oh god no, a piece of not-that-secret information which can't be revoked when eventually leaked.

"This is a courtesy alert that your iris scan has been found on the darkweb..."

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#109

Post by kristopolous »

brokenmachine wrote: post #86
klntsky wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is a requirement nowadays. Scammers learned how to generate realistic CVs and they organize people to pass online interviews for them. After getting the job, they do nothing, get their salary for the first billing period, and leave.

So there's people who are capable enough to actually get jobs like that working for them? They'd need to get more than one job per pay period for that to be more lucrative than just doing one of the jobs they were approved for. Also the money would be split between the scammers. That sounds like more work than actually doing a normal job, but I guess it may be more automatable. I don't know though, interview processe…

Tech interviews?

Most are formulaic bullshit.

You can coach someone to pass them in a few weeks, that's what the bootcamp phenomena is about.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#110

Post by SpaceNugget »

triyambakam wrote: post #2

So how do I know if my work computer features such surveillance?

There's a (_relatively_ benign) bossware-like software on my work provided laptop. It forces updates of browsers and common software like the company VPN. When it updates and restarts my browser, it helpfully mentions that if the browser itself was unable to restore my tabs, I can always ask IT to look up what tabs I had open before the update. Maybe ask your IT services if they can help you remember what you had open a few days ago.
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