27 ms·
One thing that happens in SV is: * Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and wo
by ditonal 6y ago
One thing that happens in SV is:
* Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone"
* Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone.
If you install corp on your phone, Google views it as a right to rootkit your phone, view all your private messages, etc. I learned this the hard way. Whether this is ethical, or legal, I don't know, but it's one of those things that seem obvious to some and not obvious to others.
If your employer expects you to use a mobile device at work, have them pay for your phone and only use it for work purposes, assume that HR can view EVERYTHING on your phone, because they can, especially at a company like Google that has both deep mobile expertise and insane paranoia around things like IP protection and stopping whistleblowers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pmiller2 6y agoThis is exactly why I don't even have my work email on my personal phone.
- janesvilleseo 6y ago100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. If my employer needs me to have a mobile phone they are paying for separate device and plan. It’s a little silly I need to carry 2 phones around but it makes my life so much more convenient. Unknown call on my work phone guess I’ll answer. If it’s on my personal then it’s spam. Leave company, no need to update or port my number. Want to go on vacation and still have my phone but not be bothered by company emails and calls. Leave my work phone at home.
- cooljacob204 6y agoWith android work profiles I don't think it's that big a deal. It's isolated from my phone, my employer can't see anything outside the profile and I just disable it on weekends/vacations.
- inetknght 6y ago> With android work profiles I don't think it's that big a deal. It's not a big deal... until it is. Like when your boss/coworker gets involved in a work dispute and you get dragged into a deposition.
- izacus 6y agoYou misunderstood - Android Work profile doesn't allow the employer to access any of your personal information. It keeps work and personal things separate by a wall. iOS doesn't allow that however - there the Apple will give everything over to employer if they so ask.
- inetknght 6y agoNo, I don't misunderstand. A deposition won't care whether things are separated by a software wall. A deposition will want everything on the device. So it's better to just not mix the two at all.
- playcache 6y agoThe ony way that would be possible is by them physically taking the device off you and asking for all your pin codes / passwords. The 'work profile' feature uses app-sandbox which in effects means every app runs as a Linux type isolated UID (not to differnt to a container), there is no breach around that unless some zero day attack comes to light, which would bw patched way before acme corps IT department picks it up. They need you to hand it over. If its your personal device, you just say piss off, no you can't have it.
- icelancer 6y ago>> They need you to hand it over. If its your personal device, you just say piss off, no you can't have it. That's not how a subpoena works if it's on the same physical device. Good luck finding a judge who understands the concept of a "software wall."
- vmception 6y agoeveryone laughing isn’t that far off you have two phones because you sell dopamine hits to users
- mamon 6y agoAnother important thing: under US law should there be any legal dispute, or investigation involving your employer you might be required to submit your work phone for search. If you don't want court, SEC or FBI going through your private stuff then it's better to keep those things on a different phone.
- khazhoux 6y agoDitto. I find it bizarre that there's people who use the same device to span pictures of their weekends and their kids, as photos of whiteboards with highly-confidential trade secrets. Tawdry jokes with friends and family alongside messages from your manager.
- thomasahle 6y agoWe use the same mind, same hands, same eyes for all of those things as well. People view and use their phone as an extension to their body. I don't think it's possible to change that.
- hinkley 6y agoIt’s a tool, like any other. If you use a tool for work or even a serious hobby, you are quite likely to end up with two or more of them.
- Viliam1234 6y agoTo build on your analogy, in some cultures people use exclusively one of their hands to eat, and the other to clean their butts. We could learn do the same with two phones, I guess.
- squarefoot 6y agoThis. And not just two phones but two laptops as well, unless the employer forbids bringing a personal one at work (which would be a reason to dump them in my case). Leave work stuff to work hardware and never ever use company assets for anything personal. A friend of mine who works for a big multinational telco (unrelated to Google) installed an open source tool on his company laptop; when he connected back on the corporate network, that tool got automatically deleted in a matter of minutes because it wasn't allowed for some reason and he got a notice about it. I can't recall the software used to keep control of corporate laptops, but according to what I heard from him it's widely used around and it catches everything: sites visited, software installs and runs, time spent working, screenshots, etc.
- jldugger 6y agoWhy would you bring a personal laptop to work?
- morganw 6y agoIn case you need to do something personal that can't wait until you get home. More of an issue with a longer commute. Might have to pop down to a local coffee shop or use the personal phone's hotspot to avoid using corp net. I've had to check an account while at work to deal with my kid attempting to pay college tuition with one of my credit cards. Also looked up records so he could call the DMV to rectify something. Yeah, sometimes they're things that can wait a day, but a break from bug hunting can be nice.
- jen729w 6y agoIt’s this sort of thing that makes me really appreciate my cell-connected personal iPad, with keyboard cover. It’s a “personal laptop” in 50% of the volume that I can ~always have with me.
- sneak 6y agoI sometimes need to do time critical things, or use sites or services, and I'm never giving personal credentials of any kind to client/employer hardware. My personal laptop comes everywhere with me. Doesn't yours?
- ezoe 6y agoEven better. I have zero phone. Do you really need a phone in 2020? No. I refuse to own a computer I can't write a code running on it and distribute it freely.
- jsty 6y agoI didn’t know HN implemented RFC 2549
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoI admire you for this, I have thought about doing the same thing many times. And also making a habit of only bringing the corporate phone (and not the personal one) with me when crossing into the US for work. "Sure, feel free to search away on this phone, have at it..."
- tareqak 6y agoDon't you take both phones to work though? I could totally see a zealous legal team asking for both, and that being an annoying thing to deal with. Same thing with personal hardware used at home, but the company allowing at work from home.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. I carry three. One is from work, the other is from a different department in that same work. They both insist I have a particular type of phone running particular software. But work never calls me on those phones. They always call my personal phone.
- discordance 6y agoDo you accept work calls on your personal number? - if so that’s sounds more like training issue.
- sandworm101 6y agoIll bring that up with my commander.
- deeth_starr_v 6y agoI'm kind of surprised by the option to use a personal phone anyway. Whenever I've worked at big tech, there has never been an option to use a personal device or laptop. Even getting a USB port enabled takes a VP to ok it often. But this tends to be in R&D depts.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mnouquet 6y ago> 100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. I technically carry 4 phones...
- waheoo 6y agoI'm far more practical, I use my own phone, or I can use work phone me for personal use without restriction and without rootkits. If you require rootkits then the work phone is now a desk phone.
- ummonk 6y agoI also don’t take my work phone with me outside of work hours unless I’m oncall.
- sneak 6y agoAnyone who laughs at a professional keeping a physical security barrier between work and personal data isn't a professional themselves and can be safely ignored. I usually have four phones: Work, Personal, Personal (other country sim), emergency backup (in a buddy pouch, powered off).
- ngold 6y agoTwo phones, even two laptops and you're probably still carrying less weight then an original cellular phone with a strap.
- IndexPointer 6y ago>Want to go on vacation and still have my phone but not be bothered by company emails and calls. If you use a work profile on Android, you can disable it, eg at holidays or weekends. Not sure about the privacy.
- VikingCoder 6y agoWhen it's convenient to add a corp profile to a personal phone, buy a new personal phone exclusively for that, don't put your own profile on it at all. Use Swappa or similar. Used phones are not that expensive. And you can just Hotspot from your personal phone, you don't need data for it. YMMV, but that worked well for me.
- suifbwish 6y agoOh yea def. Used mobile devices that are most assuredly not rooted
- VikingCoder 6y agoFascinating. Do you have examples where someone thinks they're factory resetting an Android phone, but it turns out the device is still capable of a) running a corporate profile, and b) performing man-in-the-middle or any other attacks that "rooting" would allow? Or is this just a hypothetical?
- suifbwish 6y agoYes. It’s called xhelper and it can survive factory resets. https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/xhelper-malware-what-it-is-how-it-works-and-how-to-prevent-it-malware-spotlight/ https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/xhelper-malware... Unless the factory image and firmware are completely immutable they can be infected. There have been other non phone malware that can survive on certain chips on computer motherboards which would exist independently of both RAM and hard disks. Even GPUs can be infected if they have memory that does not clear when the capacitors discharge. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/intel-patches-high-severity-bugs-protecting-lost-stolen-or-confiscated-pcs/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/intel...
- userbinator 6y agoIt's ironic that such things are made possible by the degree to which computers are being locked down --- a "factory reset" isn't really, if all it does is reinstall from a "recovery" on the device itself. xhelper certainly won't survive a full reimage, which is an actual "factory reset" and only available to those with fully unlocked phones such as some of the Mediatek-based ones. That's done by holding down a button while plugging into USB with the battery disconnected, which causes it to go into BootROM mode (and this is really a ROM). Then SPFlashTool can be used to erase and rewrite the entire internal eMMC. http://networkingathome.blogspot.com/2017/04/restoring-mtk-based-phones-from-sp.html http://networkingathome.blogspot.com/2017/04/restoring-mtk-b...
- reaperducer 6y agoAt my company, in order to get access to the corporate email and such on your phone, they require you to install their app on the phone. Then you're required to sign a document acknowledging that when you leave the company they will remotely wipe your phone, including all of your personal apps, documents, photos, etc. Mixing personal and work hardware is never a good idea.
- Macha 6y agoYes, my last two employers have been similar. And given the requirements, both provide company phones. I run into coworkers who then decide to use the company phone as their only phone, because the company phone is usually the top of the line iPhone or Samsung Galaxy replaced every 2 years when their personal phone otherwise is some mid range Android or 2+ year old iPhone. Even when pointed out that the company can wipe it when they leave or even if they just suspect its been compromised, they don't seem to care. I just don't get it.
- observr9 6y ago> Even when pointed out that the company can wipe it when they leave If someone intends to leave, they can first revoke the company's access to their phone.
- tristor 6y agoNot if it was set up with corporate deployment methods. Look into what Apple MDM is capable of on an iPhone, for instance.
- neura 6y agoYeah, this is exactly the opposite of reality. It is not "company's access to their phone", it is "company's control of their phone". I think you misunderstand what's being required of many people in exchange for access corporate information from their phone.
- reaperducer 6y agoIf someone intends to leave, they can first revoke the company's access to their phone. If the company has the software installed to remote wipe a phone, they have the software to stop you from locking them out.
- fishywang 6y agoOn Android, the work profile is supposed to solve that problem: you only add your corp account and install corp apps in work profile, and it's (at least supposed to be) isolated from your personal, default profile on your phone. This is even explicitly stated in work profile enabling flow. The spy activities described in the article is not about actual personal activities on the phone. One is looking at other's corp calendar, which can only be done inside corp profile (you need your corp account to be able to look at other's calendar); The other is making changes on the corp proxy type of thing, which obviously also can only be done with corp account.
- inetknght 6y ago> the work profile is supposed to solve that problem: you only add your corp account and install corp apps in work profile Wait until your personal phone, with its work profile, comes into scope of a work-related deposition. You'll find just how paper thin that argument is.
- eschneider 6y agoYeah, you haven't lived until you've had all your work email subpoenaed. Been there, done that.
- jedimastert 6y agoThis isn't a legal argument as much as a technical one. Work profiles prevent employers from accessing non-work-profile information
- black_puppydog 6y agoAnd as a non-legal argument, it won't hold up in a context where anything non-legal essentially doesn't matter.
- joshuamorton 6y agoWhy would my personal phone come under a work-related deposition? Work emails written on my phone might be, but those are accessible without physically taking my phone.
- bsanr2 6y agoBest Buy did this when they released their employee app. In signing up for it, it said they had the ability to view everything on the phone, and to wipe it clean if need be. I used my employee discount to buy a cheap secondary phone with no SIM to use in the store, and eventually decided not to load the app even onto that. We need "permissions" for employment, a standardized listing of privileges you give up when you sign your employment contract. If your employer breaches this, you get a fat payout courtesy the NLRB. You could say, "Sounds like you should just read your employment contract," and I would reply, "Sure, and I guess we don't really need Miranda rights either."
- iamdamian 6y agoYou may be interested in reading Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson. In it, she explores the scope and implications of employer power in the US and compares them with the power of governments.
- snarf21 6y agoExactly. If they want you available on the move, buy you a new phone that is only for work.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- comeonseriously 6y agoIf I'm required to be on call (and I don't mind being on call; I write the software so I should answer questions when it fails), I require a work phone. I never, ever, put work comm on my personal phone (or laptop, etc). Period. What company that can afford me cannot afford a phone for me?
- eschneider 6y agoDoes it flag me as an old that the last thing on earth I want to do is check work messages/docs from my phone? There's a concept of 'checking out for the day and going home' that's important to not going crazy, especially now. If something goes wrong, or there's an emergency, folks have a number they can text/call. But constantly check messages? No way.
- alistairSH 6y agoMaybe I'm old too. I used to keep work email and calendar on my personal phone. A few years later, I disabled the email because it distracted from life. I leave the calendar simply to let me know when I have an early meeting (my day normally begins at 9, but work with teams in India, so occasionally have earlier meetings).
- neura 6y agoThat's my point of view. I definitely want the information available on my phone, but I never want it to interrupt me. Even if I get a slack message during the day, for example. To me, part of getting older is the more frequent "was that meeting tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn or the day after tomorrow..." and I don't want to go check my laptop. ;)
- lambda_obrien 6y agoI don't even have my full calendar on my personal phone, I just share the "busy" status calendar as a public calendar then subscribe to it on my phone. I can see when my first meeting is, but nothing else!
- kls 6y agoI gave up a phone, 4 years ago due to the fact that I am involved in anti-child trafficking and while it is not a grave risk, the reality is there are bad people that traffic in children and the less trackable I am, the more that risk profile goes down. Anyways, that is just backstory to say, getting rid of my phone was the best thing I ever did, I have a burner with a few hundred minutes on it, in my truck for emergencies but I honestly never use it. A good deal of people could actually untethered themselves from their phone dependency and actually find out that they enjoy it a lot more than being leashed to one.
- draw_down 6y agoNot only they can see it all, they can choose to wipe it all at any time. Some goofball can lose their laptop in a coffee shop and corporate decides better safe than sorry, and then oops there goes all your pictures of your baby. Or your blood sugar measurements, or whatever else. You're absolutely correct- any device that work expects you to do work on, should be bought and paid for by them. (And I'm sorry, but "profiles" do not cut the mustard.)
- brundolf 6y ago1) This is why I never have and probably never will work at a giant company, because those tend to be the ones that think this way (and have the resources to do something about it) 2) This is why I only ever sign into Slack on my phone, not my work email. It neatly compartmentalizes work stuff, and isn't subject to the device-wide security policies that you sometimes have to agree to when signing into company email.
- arminiusreturns 6y agoSame here. I have been on the other side of the equation too, having to impliment and admin MDM, and every time it made me feel dirty knowing the power it really gave me over an employees personal phone. The worst part about it, especially the more I have adventured into SV land, is how often the culture pretends "we dont do that sort of thing" but being the kind of person who knows lots of lawyers, I read the legal docs and yep, sure enough, the handbooks and vast array of other docs all talk about it in the fine print. So there are employees that balk when I tell them why I don't use company email on my personal phone... and I get a bit frustrated that these are the people who ought to understand this sort of thing! I will always want separate phones for employers that want to use MDM on the device, or else I just won't do any work on the phone... which unfortunately in some companies is looked down on. Glad I'm in a better environment these days (mdm exists on the sly, but I am not pressured to use email outside work hours) That said, this is also why I don't want to shift into the management path either, because that changes once you are in mgmt.
- djrogers 6y ago> assume that HR can view EVERYTHING on your phone, because they can Patently false, for many values of ‘everything’ and ‘phone’. An MDM has zero visibility into an iPhone’s browsing history, iMessage content, or the content of any app not installed directly by the MDM. So things like Signal, WhatsApp, and even the default mail app are off limits.
- vosper 6y agoWhy is this being downvoted? Is it not accurate? If so could someone explain where djrogers is wrong?
- astrange 6y agoIt is correct, with the exception that MDM can erase your phone and can install a VPN on it. But you can easily check if it did or not.
- Nextgrid 6y agoAn MDM can install a root certificate + VPN and snoop on your network traffic (which would disclose a lot of things).
- heavyset_go 6y ago> If your employer expects you to use a mobile device at work, have them pay for your phone and only use it for work purposes, assume that HR can view EVERYTHING on your phone, because they can, especially at a company like Google that has both deep mobile expertise and insane paranoia around things like IP protection and stopping whistleblowers. This also goes for company-issued computers. I've run into more than a couple people that learned the hard way that they were being monitored through company equipment.
- nathanvanfleet 6y agoSo you learned this the hard way but you don't have any opinion on whether it's ethical?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zobzu 6y agoFor what it's worth your comment is technically wrong and misleading - really, it's FUD. Android is very specific about company-owned vs personally-owned phones. Personally-owned lets you setup devices with a work profile where very little non-work data is available to the employer. They don't know your personal apps, they dont know your IP address, and they dont know where these apps go (ie no personal network logs). They have no access to these either. Even for company-owned devices (which require a specific setup, if you bring in your own device that means factory reset and things like hitting 7x the white screen on the first new setup page), the mobile device management api doesn't give you all that much. There's no remote access/rootkit, you can't see private messages (they can see messages you send over a work chat app they own, so if its google hangout chat f.e., by looking at the hangout service itself) Here are the different modes: https://developers.google.com/android/work/terminology https://developers.google.com/android/work/terminology and you can follow the API links to see what they do if you want to verify what I just wrote.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 6y agoExcept that in the Employment Agreement that Google made me sign when I worked there (I don't know if it is still like this) Google specifically called out that they reserve the right to rootkit your personal devices that access "Google's corporate information" (basically that means accessing your work email because you needed to use your corp laptop if you wanted to access the internal network) But I agree that if they were talking about the "Android" feature, an employer could choose not to go that route.
- the-rc 6y agoWhen you signed your agreement, that Android technology didn't exist, so reserving themselves the right to get root on your devices accessing corporate information was the closest, yet very blunt, approximation. Personal devices were highly discouraged or even forbidden for a long time, but employees kept asking about them, for the convenience. These use cases and internal dogfooding were major factors in the eventual development of Android Enterprise and related products.
- sershe 6y agoSeeing how well corporate IT apps work on my work laptop (slowness, constant updates and general clunkiness), the main reason I'd never install one on my phone is that I'm afraid they'll make the phone completely unusable - not thru malice, but thru sheer incompetence.
- StreamBright 6y agoI never install anything work related on my phone. Company has to provide a phone that can be looked at with backdoors rootkits etc. Articles like this just confirms that this is the right course of action.
- dheera 6y agoYes, this. If an employer wants me to install an app, they had better provide the hardware, too. Also, never use employer-supplied computers for personal stuff, and don't login to your personal accounts with it. If you work at Google you can afford a laptop that you truly own.
- staticassertion 6y agoSeems weird. We have MDM at my company and there's no way I can "spy" on your phone or otherwise perform rootkit like work. It all goes through a work profile, which is isolated from your personal apps/ information.
- novok 6y agoIf you can push and run an executable, you can theoretically root a phone or laptop whenever you need to. It doesn't even need to be root, a background process accessing the right things can be enough. It's not rootkit right now, but rootkit later.
- austincheney 6y agoWho is dumb enough to install employer spyware on their phone? If the company mandates such insanity then simply don’t bring your phone to work. The only way this could make any sense is if they provide you the phone AND pay for the service plan.
- dvtrn 6y agoPeople who aren’t starting and ending their days reading HN, probably.
- austincheney 6y agoThe down votes beg to differ.
- smartician 6y agoThe article doesn't mention anything about mobile devices though?
- iamdamian 6y agoIs this based on the article or is it speculation?
- nwsm 6y agoI have Teams installed on my iPhone. How does that give my company access to anything of mine?
- discordance 6y agoMost corp IT teams require employees to install a mobile device management profile, which enables you to then run teams, get email access etc. it’s also what gives your company privileges on your phone. Some MDM profiles can have pretty nasty access enabled (e.g. route all IP traffic via Corp net, access device location at all times, remote wipe etc). Take a look at what your MDM profile says if you have one installed.
- _jal 6y agoThis is exactly right. When my employer started requiring apps on my phone, they started paying that phone bill and I got a another one. Completely aside from denying observability to shitbag panty-sniffers like Google HR, it is important to me to be able to wipe that phone when I leave to know there is no remaining access/sensitive info/etc. while also not wiping anything important to me. Same reason I keep personal stuff off my work laptop and vice/versa.
- morty_s 6y agoOh wow, is this not common knowledge?
- pers0n 6y agoSimple solution just use a $20 4yr phone that only has WiFi access and you only use for work, no cellular data Old smartphones are cheap these days
- jjav 6y agoCan't upvote this enough. Never give these remote administration rights to an employer on any personal device (phone typically, but any).