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List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

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Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#41
post #32
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I prefer the European way of some items. I think the American way of treating the work computer as a company asset and just locking it down to an insane degree makes way more sense. Especially for areas like finance.

Exactly this. I've been in a lawsuit with Oracle (as engineer, not direct). And their discovery hit EVERYTHING. If I used work devices for personal messages, my personal messages would absolutely been in scope. Or if I used personal devices for work, my personal devices are now in scope. Hell NO! My work laptop is on my personal network. Its also on its own vlan and can only talk to the imternet, and not fellow devic…

I have my work items on a separate network as well but my motivation is more not trusting some random item being pushed down from corp and having it scan my network or something.

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#42

"ban personal messaging apps at work" What does that even mean? I doubt you can forbid the usage of personal messaging apps except in very exceptional cases (like a court room). On the other hand: Using personal messaging apps for work related information is a no-go anyway because of confidentiality agreements basically everyone signs.

Colleagues often setup WhatsApp groups etc so not on company slack/ms teams which will be monitored/loggged

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#43
post #34

What? 75% people use personal chats for work? I've never seen this in my over 20 years working in the UK, Poland and few other countries. Personal messaging apps were always banned everywhere I worked.

I have not for couple of years, but before covid I've worked in a well-known Polish company that was trying to force everyone to use at first HipChat, then some awful OSS chat. My team set up discord then.

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#44
post #5

I don't understand why they put this up like it's working in their favor. Their website doesn't explain anything extraordinary that makes them different from the average chat app, except that it is europe based.

Why would they need anything different? If they offer the same features as other chat apps, they can simply aim to compete on price (and/or on other non-functional attributes like performance, reliability, UX, social connection, etc).

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#45
post #6

At least for the financial institutions on this list, I can say they have no other choice. Regulation forces them to log everything to avoid insider trading, etc. Any communication outside of their internal systems can't be logged and is therefore a compliance risk.

GDPR guarantees a right to privacy even on work devices. I think you need to filter out personal messages if compliance requires logging.

Not to forget many constitutions enshrining privacy of correspondence which extends to emails and instant messages. Lot of work done to poke holes on it but generally it still holds somewhat in many countries.

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#46
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick your poison. “Take” sounds too threatening.

"Inject" is clearly the right word here.

Actually...

Shakespeare’s Othello (c. 1603‑1604)

Iago says to Othello: “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, / … O, thou wilt choose thy poison, and be damned!”

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#47
Our company does the same. We are not allowed to use whatsapp for any work-related stuff.

This is for several reasons, mostly security and data-loss prevention. On Teams we can monitor with purview what happens with personal (customer!) data, which is mandatory here in europe under GDPR. We must take steps to ensure it is only processed by entities we have a data processing agreement with.

But we don't block people from using it for personal purposes of course. Whatsapp groups between colleagues to coordinate lunch options and nights out are super commonplace and perfectly fine. Even on work hardware (on android on the personal side of the phone, on iOS we just block copy/paste into whatsapp from corporate app).

I even saw our CISO using whatsapp web on his corp laptop. It's fine as long as it's not used for actual work. Here in EU it is mandatory to permit some level of personal activity even on work devices.

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#48
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Inject" is clearly the right word here.

Actually... Shakespeare’s Othello (c. 1603‑1604) Iago says to Othello: “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, / … O, thou wilt choose thy poison, and be damned!”

Shakespeare did not have to deal with today's tech problems.

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR guarantees a right to privacy even on work devices. I think you need to filter out personal messages if compliance requires logging.

It provides a right to privacy if the company allows personal messaging services on the device, but I don't think it provides a right to having personal messaging apps on the device(s). Personally I think it's much cleaner to keep work stuff on your work device(s) and personal stuff on personal devices. The only place that gets sticky is where companies don't provide the device but want you to have work information o…

It is a right in EU to have some level of personal activity on work-supplied devices. This does not come from the GDPR but some other legislation. We had a call with HR about that only recently when some leader again suggested "just block xyz on work devices".

And if you don't want to use BYOD we are required to supply a phone if we require employees to use one (which we do, for MFA).

Re: List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

#50
post #32
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I prefer the European way of some items. I think the American way of treating the work computer as a company asset and just locking it down to an insane degree makes way more sense. Especially for areas like finance.

Exactly this. I've been in a lawsuit with Oracle (as engineer, not direct). And their discovery hit EVERYTHING. If I used work devices for personal messages, my personal messages would absolutely been in scope. Or if I used personal devices for work, my personal devices are now in scope. Hell NO! My work laptop is on my personal network. Its also on its own vlan and can only talk to the imternet, and not fellow devic…

Discovery doesn't work like that in Europe though. It's not nearly as all-encompassing. And personal messages definitely would not be in scope. I think this is one of the reasons there is so much difference in strategy.

When we get requests to "legal hold" an account for discovery, this is always coming from the US.

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