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Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

> I'm more surprised Amazon (or any company, really) employees using an employer-managed device would have TikTok on them to start with, to be honest.

I am too. Many years ago at my employer, someone fat-fingered a command and wiped every single iPhone/iPad that an employee had configured to connect the company email system. Even after restoring a backup, the devices would just wipe themselves again unless the owner managed to remove the MDM profile before it reconnected to the internet. A good fraction of my coworkers were affected.

I'm not giving anyone access to do that to my personal data.

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Not exactly the same, but where I used to work someone had turned on "wipe the phone after x incorrect pins" without notifying anyone. Lots of people with kids got their phone remotely deleted.

After that I've never allowed an employer to control my personal devices. Not that I actually did before, didn't know activating that stuff had so bug implications. I just wanted the calendar on my phone.

With Android work profiles the employer can require you to allow remotely wiping the work profile, but that would not allow them to touch your personal profile.

If you can't handle your phone being remotely wiped, you also can't handle it being lost, stolen, or broken.

For me, it's a minor inconvenience at best, not a death sentence.

I'd rather be able to blame myself for my stupid mistakes - not be beholden to Amazon's (or whoever's) MDM profile. Especially when companies don't make it clear that "if you log into your email on your phone using this app, we install MDM, root certificates, have the ability to remote wipe, etc. etc. etc."

I saw that warning when I started to set up my phone and I immediately stopped. If anyone needs to contact me about something urgent they can do it using the work approved IM client that doesn’t require a profile to be installed.

If it does get to the point where I need to have access to my company email, I will have a separate device.

That being said, if my phone was erased, it would only be a slight inconvenience, I can restore from backup.

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