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>In 2017, a Facebook manager alerted the company's security teams when a group of interns she was managing did not log into the company's systems to work from h

by clubm8 8y ago

>In 2017, a Facebook manager alerted the company's security teams when a group of interns she was managing did not log into the company's systems to work from home. They had been on a camping trip, according to a former Facebook security employee, and the manager was concerned about their safety. >Facebook's information security team became involved in the situation and used the interns' location data to try and find out if they were safe. "They call it 'pinging them', pinging their Facebook accounts," the former security employee recalled. >After the location data did not turn up anything useful, the information security team then kept digging and learned that the interns had exchanged messages suggesting they never intended to come into work that day — essentially, they had lied to the manager. The information security team gave the manager a summary of what they had found. So basically, if a Facebook manager couches their request as concern for your safety, they can track your location on your personal account to uncover where you are? This makes me uneasy.

cheeze 8y ago
It's Facebook. Are you surprised in the least?
Gaelan 8y ago
Those were employees, to be fair.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  Employees are not property.
  - yebyen 8y ago
    But the employer was monitoring the employee's activities on company-owned infrastructure... (I think the messaging is a different story than the location data)
    - metildaa 8y ago
      Personal accounts, especially private chat messages on said accounts should not be dug through at a manager's whim. Sure, an employee should know better than to use a chat platform from their own company when off the clock, but its still scummy of Facebook to trawl PMs.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        Interns might be a special case. They're younger, and the company has something of a duty of care.
        cblades 8y ago
        They absolutely do not. Interns are adults, not children.
      - CGamesPlay 8y ago
        Five years ago when I worked there, the Messenger interface had a "recording" icon with a tooltip saying "All employee:employee conversation is recorded". You can argue that it's scummy, but they are very up-front about it.
      - yebyen 8y ago
        "Private chat messages" are one thing, and I think you may have something because Facebook is so ubiquitous, but for the sake of argument (and I don't know if this is true) assume that the employees were required to have work accounts on the company platform, and using their work accounts... this seems like a boogeyman scenario because Facebook, and we all have Facebook accounts, and love to hate Facebook for their privacy violations, which are real. But we are talking about employees communicating on the corporate platform. This gets a lot clearer cut in my opinion if instead of Facebook, we say EvilCorp, and instead of "chat messages" we say we're talking about "company emails." If I send my coworker at EvilCorp a number of emails on their work account on Tuesday about how we're totally going to get drunk on Wednesday instead of going to work, and they respond in agreement, do you still have a problem with the employer digging through those comms when the employees do a No-Call No-Show on Wednesday? I mean this seriously; if you're going to coordinate your planned truancy-from-work event with other co-workers and use work email to do it, you should expect to get caught. You might find it scummy, but I don't think there's a court in the world that is going to declare that it was illegal, except maybe in Germany or some other country with super-privacy laws. Educate me for sure, if you know I'm wrong. And even then, I suspect that there's a language they could include in their Employee Handbook that would make it OK. The company network is for company business. You're not usually entitled to hide your work-product from your boss. More seriously, something in the art of OpSec is lost today. If you work at Facebook and do this, at least use Hangouts.
stygiansonic 8y ago
It’s probably the “safety check” feature here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_by_Facebook#Workplace_and_Facebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_by_Facebook#Workpl...
dictum 8y ago
It's a tale as old as time. https://fablesofaesop.com/the-farmer-and-the-snake.html https://fablesofaesop.com/the-farmer-and-the-snake.html
CGamesPlay 8y ago
Although the quote doesn't mention and I don't know for sure, I bet this was via the internal Facebook employee app, not the production Facebook product app. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they did read production messages afterwards (at least when I worked there it was quite explicit that FB reserved the right to review employee-to-employee conversations on messenger).
- hopler 8y ago
  There's what the company reserves the right to do (so you can't win civil tort damages in a suit), and then there's what is acceptable behavior by individual employees. Not the same. The company has the right to peek at data they hold, but most individual employees don't.
pexaizix 8y ago
Discussing not showing up to work on Facebook using Facebook requires a level of retardation whose existence I wasn't aware of.
debatem1 8y ago
Maybe I'm naive, but I used to work at Google and I'm 100% certain that back then if someone inside the company had used data in this way they would have been fired unconditionally and immediately. Now I wonder whether the companies are different or the times are.
- modzu 8y ago
  ive also seen the reverse: a VP makes the request and it is never questioned if you value your job. the answer is always, "yes sir"
- porpoisely 8y ago
  Because google is any different from facebook? So sick of the google PR here. Facebook is following in google's footsteps. Anything facebook has done, google has done. Not only that, google has far greater ties to government and a particular political party. Google's real motto is "Be as evil as I can be". Facebook's motto is "Be like google".
  - debatem1 8y ago
    The last line in the comment you responded to is, and I quote: "Now I wonder whether the companies are different or the times are." I think that makes it clear that I'm at least asking the question you lead with (but do not appear to have read far enough in what I wrote to see...). The accusation that I'm affiliated with Google PR is way off base and that should have been superficially obvious from what I wrote above. I suspect and hope, but cannot prove, that your other assertions are similarly wrong.
    - porpoisely 8y ago
      I answered your question. My assertion is that neither the times nor the companies are different. Google was always evil. And facebook has always followed in google's footsteps. And I wasn't accusing you of being part of Google's PR team. I'm saying I am sick of the google pr that I see here, especially in relation to facebook. Everytime people bring up facebook, someone always tries to imply google is better.

by clubm8 8y ago

cheeze 8y ago

It's Facebook. Are you surprised in the least?

Gaelan 8y ago

Those were employees, to be fair.

nitrogen 8y ago
Employees are not property.
- yebyen 8y ago
  But the employer was monitoring the employee's activities on company-owned infrastructure... (I think the messaging is a different story than the location data)
  - metildaa 8y ago
    Personal accounts, especially private chat messages on said accounts should not be dug through at a manager's whim. Sure, an employee should know better than to use a chat platform from their own company when off the clock, but its still scummy of Facebook to trawl PMs.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      Interns might be a special case. They're younger, and the company has something of a duty of care.
      - cblades 8y ago
        They absolutely do not. Interns are adults, not children.
    - CGamesPlay 8y ago
      Five years ago when I worked there, the Messenger interface had a "recording" icon with a tooltip saying "All employee:employee conversation is recorded". You can argue that it's scummy, but they are very up-front about it.
    - yebyen 8y ago
      "Private chat messages" are one thing, and I think you may have something because Facebook is so ubiquitous, but for the sake of argument (and I don't know if this is true) assume that the employees were required to have work accounts on the company platform, and using their work accounts... this seems like a boogeyman scenario because Facebook, and we all have Facebook accounts, and love to hate Facebook for their privacy violations, which are real. But we are talking about employees communicating on the corporate platform. This gets a lot clearer cut in my opinion if instead of Facebook, we say EvilCorp, and instead of "chat messages" we say we're talking about "company emails." If I send my coworker at EvilCorp a number of emails on their work account on Tuesday about how we're totally going to get drunk on Wednesday instead of going to work, and they respond in agreement, do you still have a problem with the employer digging through those comms when the employees do a No-Call No-Show on Wednesday? I mean this seriously; if you're going to coordinate your planned truancy-from-work event with other co-workers and use work email to do it, you should expect to get caught. You might find it scummy, but I don't think there's a court in the world that is going to declare that it was illegal, except maybe in Germany or some other country with super-privacy laws. Educate me for sure, if you know I'm wrong. And even then, I suspect that there's a language they could include in their Employee Handbook that would make it OK. The company network is for company business. You're not usually entitled to hide your work-product from your boss. More seriously, something in the art of OpSec is lost today. If you work at Facebook and do this, at least use Hangouts.

stygiansonic 8y ago

It’s probably the “safety check” feature here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_by_Facebook#Workplace_and_Facebook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_by_Facebook#Workpl...

dictum 8y ago

It's a tale as old as time. https://fablesofaesop.com/the-farmer-and-the-snake.html https://fablesofaesop.com/the-farmer-and-the-snake.html

CGamesPlay 8y ago

Although the quote doesn't mention and I don't know for sure, I bet this was via the internal Facebook employee app, not the production Facebook product app. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they did read production messages afterwards (at least when I worked there it was quite explicit that FB reserved the right to review employee-to-employee conversations on messenger).

hopler 8y ago
There's what the company reserves the right to do (so you can't win civil tort damages in a suit), and then there's what is acceptable behavior by individual employees. Not the same. The company has the right to peek at data they hold, but most individual employees don't.

pexaizix 8y ago

Discussing not showing up to work on Facebook using Facebook requires a level of retardation whose existence I wasn't aware of.

debatem1 8y ago

Maybe I'm naive, but I used to work at Google and I'm 100% certain that back then if someone inside the company had used data in this way they would have been fired unconditionally and immediately. Now I wonder whether the companies are different or the times are.

modzu 8y ago
ive also seen the reverse: a VP makes the request and it is never questioned if you value your job. the answer is always, "yes sir"
porpoisely 8y ago
Because google is any different from facebook? So sick of the google PR here. Facebook is following in google's footsteps. Anything facebook has done, google has done. Not only that, google has far greater ties to government and a particular political party. Google's real motto is "Be as evil as I can be". Facebook's motto is "Be like google".
- debatem1 8y ago
  The last line in the comment you responded to is, and I quote: "Now I wonder whether the companies are different or the times are." I think that makes it clear that I'm at least asking the question you lead with (but do not appear to have read far enough in what I wrote to see...). The accusation that I'm affiliated with Google PR is way off base and that should have been superficially obvious from what I wrote above. I suspect and hope, but cannot prove, that your other assertions are similarly wrong.
  - porpoisely 8y ago
    I answered your question. My assertion is that neither the times nor the companies are different. Google was always evil. And facebook has always followed in google's footsteps. And I wasn't accusing you of being part of Google's PR team. I'm saying I am sick of the google pr that I see here, especially in relation to facebook. Everytime people bring up facebook, someone always tries to imply google is better.