Your employer may know everything you do on your phone or computer. Maybe he even knows you’re reading this article. But how do you know?
Companies have more and more ways to monitor their employees. They can obtain information from common office applications and use special software to monitor their WiFi network. The goal may be to protect internal company information or measure employee performance, but it has serious consequences for staff privacy.
“There’s little transparency,” said Hayley Tsukayama, who leads legislative activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group. The first step is knowing what may have been put on her computer, and even that can be difficult, she says.
There’s no foolproof way to tell if you’re being monitored, but certain techniques can provide clues, security and privacy experts say.
The risk of espionage is higher with a corporate device that your employer will eventually recover. But you are also at risk if you have downloaded professional software on your home computer or if you use their networks.
To be on the safe side, do the following checks on any device or network used for work.
Certain phone and computer settings may allow your employer to monitor you remotely.
Check if mobile device management software has been installed. This allows your employer to monitor your activities remotely and take control of your devices. On an iPhone, go to Settings > General > VPN > Device Management. A profile should appear if your employer has one. On an Android, go to Device Admin Apps in Settings (the name may differ slightly depending on the device). On a Windows laptop, go to Settings > Accounts > Work or School Access. On a Mac, you’ll find this setting under Privacy & Security > Profiles.
Such employer software – bossware, in tech jargon – can also be found by looking at what’s running in the background on your laptop, Ms. Tsukayama says. You should consult the task manager or activity monitor. For quick access on PC, press Ctrl Alt Del. On a Mac, click Utilities in Applications. Go through the list of apps and Google any you don’t recognize.
Coworker.org, an employee support organization, offers a list of suspicious apps. Note that some may be hidden, Ms. Tsukayama warns.
Look for remote sharing settings, which would allow your employer to remotely control your device, including the microphone and camera, advises privacy researchers Diana Freed, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and Julio Poveda, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland. On Macs, they’re located under System Settings > General > Sharing. On Windows, they are located under Settings > System.
Finally, check that you are in the administrative account of your device. Startup screens may ask you to log in as a user separate from administrator, or your computer may prompt you for an administrative password every time you try to download an application. This could indicate that your employer has control of your device, Tsukayama said.
Hidden apps and settings aren’t the only things tracking you. Go through all the apps installed on your laptop and search for any you don’t know about. Which ones regularly ask you to install updates? Do you know what these apps do? Have you ever been asked to install a remote troubleshooting application with IT?
“Be curious,” Tsukayama advises. “Find the marketing pitch for the app you’ve found online. It often lists all of its features.”
Check your web browser extensions, recommends Mark Ostrowski, engineering manager at Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity company. If browser extensions are part of your company’s security tools, they’ll likely make themselves known, he adds. A pop-up may warn you not to enter a patient’s information into ChatGPT, for example. Another may also tell you that they check whether the files you download contain malicious elements.
These extensions are used to manage security risks, such as malware or internal data disclosure, but they can also track user habits. If the company decides to audit you, it will know if you spent half the day shopping on Amazon, Ostrowski says.
Avoid downloading personal extensions on the same browser that your employer licenses, he added. Don’t download the Garmin web extension on your company-provided Chrome browser if you don’t want your employer to be able to access your workout data.
Using WiFi or a corporate virtual private network (VPN) can also put you at risk.
Even if you’re using a personal device on the company network, your employer can track your activities, including your messages, browsing and social media posts, Ostrowski says. Any traffic passing through a corporate VPN (used for security purposes) can also be monitored, Ms. Freed and Mr. Poveda say. Use your personal wireless access rather than company connections for personal activities. You can also use a personal VPN on a home laptop without company software on work WiFi, Ostrowski said.
Much of what you do is collected by employer applications. Even if you don’t use company devices or networks, your boss may have an idea of what you type, search or say.
Tools like Microsoft Office, Slack, Google Workplace, and Zoom often track user activity for security or compliance reasons. But they also allow administrator accounts (i.e. your employer) to retrieve information in certain cases.
“If [an employer] wants to access emails that you send to the company account, it can be done right away directly between the [software provider] and the company security team,” said Ms. .Ostrowski. The employee has no way of knowing this. »
This means your employer could read the email you sent to your doctor or a message to your co-worker criticizing your boss. It could see how many meetings you attended and whether you had the camera and microphone enabled.
New artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are in development that could one day provide businesses with deeper monitoring capabilities.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, a majority of Americans oppose using AI to track what employees are doing on the computer (51%) and whether workers are at their desk (56 %). And 39% of them are opposed to it evaluating performance.
“American law doesn’t give workers a lot of rights” in the area of employer monitoring, Ms. Tsukayama says. “They don’t have a lot of ways to defend themselves. »
So what to do? Review your company policies. Not all employers describe their monitoring methods, but some do, Tsukayama says. If you are part of a union, seek advice from them if you have a problem. You can also ask questions directly to IT.
Best protection? Separate your personal data from your professional data. Even if it means having two phones. If you don’t want your employer to see your baby photos, your medical records, or your sultry text messages to your significant other, don’t put them on the devices you use for work.
“Once you put them in there, assume they can be seen,” Ostrowski says.