3 ms·

Also think what impact it's gonna have on organization. Would they have access to everything an employee types? Any website they visit?

• yellowapple 11y ago
  In reality, if you're using a machine that's owned by your employer, you should always assume that everything you do is being monitored at all times, regardless of what operating system said machine is running, because chances are in favor of that being the case. Expect at the absolute least some sort of web traffic monitoring (probably via a corporate proxy); in some cases, I've seen companies install keyloggers (and, in fact, this is the "legitimate" use case for keyloggers, remote administration tools, etc.). You should also expect that any mobile device accessing company resources (including - and especially - email) is effectively giving your employer root access. This is almost certainly the case if you use a mobile device with Microsoft Exchange. In other words, in the context of employee workstations, Microsoft's spying is effectively a non-factor for employee privacy. Now of course, this is all describing intra-organizational surveillance. Microsoft's data collection is inter-organizational, which has rather significant implications for healthcare organizations (since now Microsoft is the single-point-of-failure for a HIPAA breach), financial institutions, law firms, the works. That's all a bit of a digression from the point of children being automatically spied on, however.
  • mdekkers 11y ago
    > In reality, if you're using a machine that's owned by your employer, you should always assume that everything you do is being monitored at all times, regardless of what operating system said machine is running, because chances are in favor of that being the case. Expect at the absolute least some sort of web traffic monitoring (probably via a corporate proxy); in some cases, I've seen companies install keyloggers (and, in fact, this is the "legitimate" use case for keyloggers, remote administration tools, etc.). It is one thing for a company to do so. I really really doubt that companies are OK with microsoft having a copy of all activity from all their employee's workstations.
    • yellowapple 11y ago
      Right. But from the context of the employee, it's a distinction without a difference. By using a company computer, the chances of your activities being keylogged and tracked with absurd amounts of granularity go up significantly. If you're not the owner of the hardware (and, hell, sometimes even when you are), all bets are off. Of course from a company's perspective will the distinction actually be meaningful, but that didn't seem to be what the parent comment was going for.
  • tacone 11y ago
    Installing keyloggers is not legal in all the countries. If you look at the advanced economies, I'd dare to say in very few of them.
    • yellowapple 11y ago
      Even where illegal, few employers realize this. "It's our hardware, we bought it, so we have the right to monitor it in infinitely-fine-grained detail" often kicks in well before any ethical or even legal implications do.