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Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

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Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#31
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly unwise to interpret their concern that charitably--it only has access to photos and it's a chat app. It has the same concerns any other chat app would have. They don't publish PSAs about texting.

But if we recognize that it is yet another chat app, like every other chat app, why are people even downloading it in the first place to prompt Wal-mart to feel the need to issue a statement?

It only has the privacy profile of a chat app. The "OUR Walmart" app offers other functionality, like legal advice and concerns specific to employees, that I would imagine I would love were I an employee myself.

That said, I don't think it's out of order for... whatever OUR walmart is (a union?) to release a privacy statement. But painting them as identity thiefs, phishers, or ad resellers is absurd. In my view, Walmart is pandering to fears without actually identifying real concerns.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#32
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's totally unsurprising to hear. Wal-Mart apparently defaults to portraying unions as pure evil. I don't know what the current procedure is like, but they used to make new hires watch laughably biased "educational" videos about unions. I don't remember the contents in detail, just that they roughly reminded me of '80s anti-drug PSAs/specials, with union organizers essentially taking the place of the "drug pusher"…

It works, too. In the popular media, unions have been so thoroughly demonized for several decades. Lots of middle-aged folks now will have grown up with their only idea of the union as being the lazy teamster who does nothing all day except file grievances, or the fabled electrician who won't plug in your power cord at a trade show because it's someone else's job. And the kinds of people who're going in for these job…

I'm in my late 30s. My image of unions is an amalgam of my uncle who got paid well for his union job and the guy I knew a decade ago who bragged about intentionally disrupting a UAW production line.

(and of course other stuff, but I've seen both ends of it. I also don't give the UAW a lot of credit for tiering their recent agreements: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-moto... It's almost literally "got mine".)

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#33
post #26
post #11

It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively. But WalMart probably doesn't have much to fear from the Labor Department. Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. It's really tough to organize a union today, even though the law as written is pro-union.

I don't know. The next administration might actually be tougher re: pro-worker laws against multi-national importers of Chinese made stuff. This might not apply to unions necessarily though.

Trump gets to pick 3 of the 5 National Labor Relations Board members.

That agency is currently at odds with a Trump owned Las Vegas hotel.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/17/news/companies/trump-hotel-l...

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#34

Just to play devil's advocate here, this is from the article: > The app, called WorkIt, invites users to register by providing a name, email, telephone number and ZIP Code. Users can also s hare (sic) their job title and Wal-Mart store number.... That is a bunch of personally identifying information. You can easily steal somebody's identity with those bits of information, or at least have a good idea of who they are.…

I'm not convinced by your argument. People freely give away this information and more to facebook, etc.

But not in one giant queryable SQL table.

I'd worry about parallelized spearfishing attacks across multiple stores, "Good Morning DEF, have I reached store number 12345 cash handling office? OK good to hear, this ABC at walmart corporate IT calling back about that trouble ticket your coworker XYZ entered about your store in Springfield, is XYZ at work now? Oh OK, well, anyway the ticket says XYZ is having trouble accessing the credit card portal, the ticket says you're trying to log in using the password of "password2", and back at HQ I can't log in using that password either so I'm planning on resetting her password, which will completely lock her out of the system for at least a week, unfortunately, but that's how ... Oh wait, you say there's a post it note on the monitor that her password is actually "ilovejustinbeiber", hold on a moment let me try that. How about that, it does work. Hey thanks for helping out, gonna save a lot of trouble for everyone. I'm not going to reset XYZ's password since it does work, I'll just close out the ticket with "can't reproduce problem", whoever took the ticket here couldn't enter the data right and obviously whatever problem there was is fixed now. Have a nice day out there in Springfield, Make Walmart Great Again (or whatever it is they say) Bye!"

Or some team calls like twenty electronics departments and tells all of them to toss all their ipad stock into a large shipment box because they were shipped with faulty batteries while reading back all the info they gathered to build trust, then let them know a courier from UPS (fake brown uniform) will present a (fake) ID and pick up that box of ipads in an hour and they can expect replacements air shipped later that day. Remind the employee to make sure they sign and save the (fake) return receipt. Imagine what a large team could do with a phone that takes pictures, snapping serial numbers of boxes on the shelf and a half hour later reading the serial number list back to the clerk over the phone.

This is all old stuff, but the advantage is you can parallelize it. If "they" hit one store every night there would be emergency emails printed out and taped up and handed out by the next week, but if you run this right you could do maybe 200, 300 stores.

Even better if a competitor paid you to pull this off on Black Friday when half the IT staff took the day off anyway and all you need is to sow chaos to make money. Or do this the day before earnings are announced to really mess with them financially.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#35
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not interfering with the right to bargain collectively though. For all we know, they're genuinely warning their employees that they may be involved in a PII collection scam. They can't reprimand/dismiss you for using the app, but surely they can tell you it's unwise. I don't see why people are so quick to tie Wal-Mart to the pyre; for what they pay, their employees are satisfied to an outsized degree. Given t…

Former Walmart employee here. Before there was any such thing as smart phones, they still used to instruct us not to speak to union people, and to report being approached.

Whatever you do, don't report union reps approaching Wal-Mart employees. It's the quickest way to get a store shut down and everybody blacklisted. Wal-Mart is terrified of unions and has an almost religious zeal for prosecuting them.

Edit, source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-over...

http://rense.com/general65/union.htm

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#36
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced by your argument. People freely give away this information and more to facebook, etc.

But not in one giant queryable SQL table. I'd worry about parallelized spearfishing attacks across multiple stores, "Good Morning DEF, have I reached store number 12345 cash handling office? OK good to hear, this ABC at walmart corporate IT calling back about that trouble ticket your coworker XYZ entered about your store in Springfield, is XYZ at work now? Oh OK, well, anyway the ticket says XYZ is having trouble acc…

I don't think labor unions are goi to run a scam like that. This is ridiculous. Walmart has all this information in dbs right now and they're way more likely to get hacked.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#37
post #26
post #11

It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively. But WalMart probably doesn't have much to fear from the Labor Department. Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. It's really tough to organize a union today, even though the law as written is pro-union.

I don't know. The next administration might actually be tougher re: pro-worker laws against multi-national importers of Chinese made stuff. This might not apply to unions necessarily though.

That was rhetoric to attract a demographic that felt displaced by globalism and by an Other that wasn't white.

Never once were unions touted as a solution, despite unions pushing for contracts that would prevent outsourcing and would set compensation plans for workers whose jobs were automated away or moved overseas.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#38
post #21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own link lists some of the collected data as PII.

Employment data considered "linked" information, and not core PII. Core PII is: "any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother's maiden name, or biometric records"

You're talking about core PII here. I'm saying the signup requirements probably constitute PII when taken all together.

Full name (if uncommon) and email address (if private from an association/club membership, etc.). IP address (I'm pretty sure they can log your IP address unless they specifically say they don't.) And Zip code is mentioned as PII if linked to any of the above.

These are all things they request for signup, and then you can optionally include your job title and your store number. All that stuff put together is very clearly PII, so I'm not quite sure what your point is.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#39

Just to play devil's advocate here, this is from the article: > The app, called WorkIt, invites users to register by providing a name, email, telephone number and ZIP Code. Users can also s hare (sic) their job title and Wal-Mart store number.... That is a bunch of personally identifying information. You can easily steal somebody's identity with those bits of information, or at least have a good idea of who they are.…

Name + telephone number + address is exactly the kind of information that you used to be able to get out of a phone book and can probably still buy from the DMV.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#40
post #8

1. Hello Streisand effect. 2. Does anyone else hope semi-anonymous apps like this will lead to a new age of unionization?

2. More than you can imagine. Technology should be bringing an end to sharecropping, not further increasing economic inequality.

I should have a pony.
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