9 ms·
100% 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 d
by janesvilleseo 6y ago
100% 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."
- izacus 6y agoSo you're saying that judge will ignore the separate profiles but it'll magically stop from depositioning all your phones that might contain work conversations? That's a tall order. Also, the title says that GOOGLE spied on someone - which is not a deposition, is it?
- bee_rider 6y agoI'm not sure how these subpoenas usually are worded specifically, but it doesn't seem like that contrived of a situation. Like, if you aren't the suspect and are ordered to hand over all devices used to communicate to <suspicious co-worker X>, if you have a separate device you just hand the thing over. If you hand over a personal phone, they are presumably going to bump into your walled off section and have some questions. Plus, you don't have a phone, while they are working on the thing, which seems like a pain. This is assuming you aren't in a "hand over all electronic devices" kind of situation.
- icelancer 6y ago
- teeray 6y agoI would still be concerned that laws are still focused on physical things. Even if there’s a personal / work virtual barrier, I wouldn’t want the presence of work information anywhere on a personal device transmuting that device into a work device in the eyes of the law.
- inetknght 6y agoWhen vulnerabilities are found which meltdown (pun intended) those barriers perhaps it's not such a bad idea that the law is oldschool here. It's a sobering reminder that those walls are indeed only imaginary.
- judge2020 6y ago> iOS doesn't allow that however - there the Apple will give everything over to employer if they so ask. Regular MDM used to do that (just as Android used to do that), but Apple has been working on the same "wall" to separate work and personal info. https://www.apple.com/business/docs/resources/Managing_Devices_and_Corporate_Data_on_iOS.pdf#page=4 https://www.apple.com/business/docs/resources/Managing_Devic... https://simplemdm.com/apple-user-enrollment/ https://simplemdm.com/apple-user-enrollment/
- an_opabinia 6y agoIt is utterly insane to me how confused people are in the rest of this thread. There are people getting paid like $200,000 a year, and they can't be bothered to pay a lawyer $3,000 to read their employment contract once and explain any of this to them?
- shemnon42 6y agoWhat's the point of a $3000 contract review if the employer's response will be "Not changing it, sign or walk."
- quesera 6y agoWell, it helps you decide whether to sign, or to walk, right? But who would pay $3K for a contract review??
- an_opabinia 6y ago...someone whom Google is about to make a millionaire?
- quesera 6y agoEmployment contracts are fairly uniform, and just not that complicated. A simple contract review is not expensive. One or two hours, a few hundred dollars per -- if you're feeling fancy. Special cases are special. But most cases are not special.
- lokar 6y agoWhat we know is one person said that's what happened. I certainly know of people who have suggested and gotten changes to agreements like this. But you need to be professional about it.
- bonoboTP 6y agoWhat do you mean by professional here? My guess is some mix of emotional detachment, serious tone and use of the right jargon and vocabulary?
- aNoob7000 6y agoDepends on the application. We run Blackberry UEM, and good luck it seeing profiles. The application just wants to take over the entire phone doesn't matter if it is an iPhone or Android. I walk around with two phones now, one for work and my personal one.
- squarefoot 6y agoProbably not applicable in OP's case. If XYZ company was my employer, the last tools I'd use to protect my data and communications would be any of XYZ's products.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoFun fact: If a judge orders you to surrender your phone because it might contain evidence relating to a case, it doesn't matter how you've segregated data on your phone. Sometimes businesses literally put some services on different physical boxes in case a court sees fit to collect the entire machine. If you had a bunch of other VMs on it... shrug.
- dheera 6y agoWe need an OS that self-destructs all data if surrendered, and that should be a hardcoded feature of the OS. Something like a fingerprint scanner that needs to be scanned at least once every 24 hours or all data gets erased.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThis still means you don't have your personal phone if you have to surrender your work one, and they live on the same hardware. Even if you wiped the data, if the government wants to seize your crud, they're still gonna take it.
- dheera 6y agoYou just buy a new personal phone in that case. At least the data is wiped the moment they seized it. Imagine a hypothetical phone that is covered in fingerprint sensors where if it senses foreign hands touching it, it auto-deletes everything. That might not be the most feasible hardware implementation but I'm sure we can think of something to that effect.
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoOnly if it is a state owned (diplomatic) device. Without diplomatic protection, you can be can be charged with, depending on jurisdiction and circumstance, anything from evidence tampering, obstruction of justice, to contempt of court. Technical hacks to human problems are only viable when you are shielded by sovereignty.
- 6y ago
- throwaway2048 6y agoGoogle is a special case, via play store the effectively have complete control of almost every android phone. Its foolish to think they wouldn't use it.
- liveoneggs 6y agoyeah android phones are totally safe from google
- 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.