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Bossware is a big legal risk

kolide.com

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Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#41

Post by VBprogrammer »

paxys wrote: post #31
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…

So you are okay with giving random companies an hour of footage of your face and part of your house just for the privilege of going through their automated screening round?

Emm, yes? What do you think they are going to do with it. They are also considering giving you access to potentially a vast amount of their IP and maybe even customer data.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#42

Post by nonameiguess »

exabrial wrote: post #14
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because workers arent slaves or robots, and being on the job doesnt make them such. Your mentality is actually staggering to me.

Can you answer this question directly: What is it that you don't want seen by a company representative, on a company computer, while being paid by the company?

How can this be a serious question? Much of my company is in an earlier time zone and I frequently log into meetings and start work while my wife is still ambling about, showering and walking around naked. My naked wife is something I don't want my employer seeing. A house is a shared space. No one in it except me accepted any sort of consent to monitor agreement.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#43

Post by ryandrake »

Terr_ wrote: post #12
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…

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.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#44

Post by halfcat »

Having run this kind of thing for customers over the years, my takeaway is that every place that wanted this was a completely toxic and paranoid work environment.

Except for one. This place that seemed to have a reasonable use case. They dealt with very sensitive legal cases involving children, and they wanted an audit trail to ensure sensitive media was handled according to their policy.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#45

Post by VBprogrammer »

vundercind wrote: post #39
silisili wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait just during the interview? That actually sounds completely reasonable.

It probably also means signing over rights for the recording to be used for training AI by some third party, plus god knows what else.

Oh christ. What absolute nonsense.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#47

Post by davely »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #36
davely wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can get mechanical mouse mover devices that are not connected to the pc at all. It should be fully undetectable.

Ah, that's a good point. I've thought about this, but I use a trackball due to mild RSI. So, I don't think it can help me there.

(This is going to make me embark on a weekend project to use an Arduino, some servos and a 3D printed finger to move my trackball.)

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#48

Post by davely »

mattmerr wrote: post #37
davely wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does watching a video pause the timeout? If so, hypothetically one could stream or locally create a video with no contents but long duration.

Ah, that's an interesting point. I haven't tried to correlate that, but it must be true. For example, the screensaver never seems to appear during Zoom calls!

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#49

Post by fullspectrumdev »

root_axis wrote: post #34
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…

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.

Re: Bossware is a big legal risk

#50

Post by dymk »

singleshot_ wrote: post #35
exabrial wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you answer this question directly: What is it that you don't want seen by a company representative, on a company computer, while being paid by the company?

I would not accept employment under any terms that allowed my employer to look at me without my knowledge, or snoop around on my computer without my acquiescence.

It's not your computer, it's a company laptop.
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