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Comment by ditonal | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

With 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.

> 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.

You 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.

No, 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.

The 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.

>> 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."

So 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?

I'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.

>> So 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?

Yes.

Source: Been subpoenaed three times and my attorneys have had restrictions placed on what can/cannot be searched... like I am assuming most competent attorneys can provide. The party has to have reasonable indication that relevant data is on personal devices so the opposing counsel doesn't go goldfishing through a bunch of stuff to turn up potentially unrelated dirt in discovery.

US centric, but courtrooms don’t have time to hear about the technicalities that show something isn’t possible. They only care that they think it’s possible. Judges aren’t programmers and the law isn’t black and white like code.

Also, you can’t just not respond to a deposition or refuse to hand over your phone as evidence in a crime. That’s obstruction of justice and possibly contempt of court.

Basically, you can sit there for hours on end explaining that it’s impossible to break the “wall”, but that’s time and time in money in the court system (literally), or you can just fork over the phone because it’s not your personal one.

What does that have to do with accusation that Google read the messages? From the topic?

This far into the thread, it changed to justifying two phones for reasons of possible deposition. I was explaining why it’s a good idea to do that.

That doesn't make sense. They can request both of your phones just as easily as they can request access to your personal profile on an Android phone.

The idea is based on the idea (heh) that warrants must be tailored to the crime. I can’t get a warrant for your dining room then go upstairs into your bedroom to explore. Now, if a cop saw, say, drug paraphernalia in the kitchen while looking for something else, that’s fine, but they can’t go on random searches (also why they can’t search your car for no reason).

That idea extended to civil procedure and phones is that the discovery process for a civil case would be for things related to the lawsuit of which your personal phone might not be. They could certainly request it, but a good lawyer would argue that your personal phone has no connection to the work phone (of which the lawsuit is about) as evidenced by the fact that you have two phones (you intend to separate the two matters). Separate profiles on the same computer (phone) would be harder to argue.

It’s not a clear cut matter and would certainly depend on how the judge is feeling, but if there’s a possibility of keeping your personal and work life separate, why not do so? Don’t put all your eggs (data) in one basket (phone) and the like.

Make phones that self-destruct all data if the device is handed over. It should be hardcoded to do so and that should not be an editable setting by the user.

The primary reason for this would be against thieves, but it would work against courts as well, and the user wouldn't have a choice.

Again. Destruction of evidence is a crime. Even if it’s not a choice for the user, the usage of such a feature would be a crime. And also again: the law and the courts don’t care about technicalities, no matter your opinion on that matter.

People here are choosing to make things harder for themselves by coming up with ideas to skirt the law, but it doesn’t work and will only make the police go harder on you. The law (and precedent) is not on your side in this battle.

Are you sure? This is a nuanced issue. Ehat counts as "usage". Intentionally destroying evidence is a crime, but broadly automatically destroying data before you have any knowledge of an allegation is not. (Otherwise, thinks lke GDPR would be illegal in the US)

We’re talking about depositions, so the knowledge of an investigation followed by destruction of the data (whether intention or not) by handing the device over would be a crime. I can’t hand my phone over to the police and remote wipe it with iCloud, for example.

Destruction when handing to a mugger is still ok.

Well it wouldn't be the user destroying data.

Judge: "Hand over that phone right now"

You: "Sure, I can hand it over, but all data will then get wiped by the device automatically due to Google/Apple/Samsung's anti-theft design and I don't have a choice"

After that it's upto the Judge whether to proceed with the handover or not. It will be the judge who destroyed the data if so.

Let me know how that goes for you if you ever have the unfortunate opportunity to try it.

Judges don't appreciate clever tricks of any kind, and neither does the law. Anything you think of that sounds like a clever trick is not something you should actually try.

No, it wouldn't even be my trick. It would be a feature of the design of the phone and I, the user, would not even have a choice in that implementation.

The primary motive of that design would be against thieves, but it would incidentally happen to work on judges as well. The owners of the phones would have no choice.

It doesn’t matter. Judges don’t care and they have very broad authority to get what they want. You’re not getting off on a technicality. It’s that simple.

As I said before: technicalities don’t work. You’re not getting out of this. If you told the judge that, he’d change his order to hand over the data in a different way. Have fun sitting down with the police while they copy all of the data off by hand while you show them each item.

> The ony way that would be possible is by them physically taking the device off you and asking for all your pin codes / passwords.

Which is likely legally allowed for a deposition.

> They need you to hand it over. If its your personal device, you just say piss off, no you can't have it.

Telling the courts/lawyers to piss off is not a viable option. That's not how depositions work. You might be able to get a lawyer to file legal motions with expert testimony attached pointing out they shouldn't need access to the whole phone for the reasons you said, but 99% of people will not bother getting a lawyer for something like this.

Or you could just get really drunk and lose your phone. Happens all the time. The phone company will verify you called for a replacement and the bar will verify you got trashed.

IANAL but this strikes me as bad advice.

IANAL, but isn't that obstruction of justice and/or contempt of court?

Yes, probably. That would presumably be why this suggestion includes details that would make proving your intent difficult.

Is that how depositions work though? Being deposed means being asked questions in a very official manner by opposing counsel. During discovery, they can issue a subpoena/warrant which gives them permission to take your possessions.

> Telling the courts/lawyers to piss off is not a viable option. That's not how depositions work. You might be able to get a lawyer to file legal motions with expert testimony attached pointing out they shouldn't need access to the whole phone for the reasons you said, but 99% of people will not bother getting a lawyer for something like this.

No, that is now how subpoenas and depositions work. I've been involved in a few. The judge needs a specific reason to approve inclusion of your personal device: like a record of information having been sent to it specifically or being used in a context relevant to the case at hand. And the information request will have to be specific to the case at hand, so you can just return with "There is no information on those devices relevant to the subpoena parameters" (said under oath).

If they demand your personal device anyway, because the subpoena is too broad or something, you can fight it with the judge and argue why it shouldn't be included.

If you never, ever mix personal and work then you should have no difficulty getting your personal devices excluded from a work related inquiry.

Does a deposition care when you say you didn't use your personal phone for work? Why wouldn't they ask for your so-called personal phone?

IANAL. I just have some knowledge/experience.

A deposition about a work related issue may ask to see all devices that you use in connection with your employer. So yes, a deposition will care when you say you didn't use your personal phone for work if you can prove it by it not being on any device list found with work-related services.

A device list can be obtained (usually easily, sometimes with a court order) through many services you use. G Suite, Github, Microsoft Account, Slack, Reddit, etc... these all track what devices have logged into them with your account. Signal and Telegram have your phone number. And of course any email sent has a list of addresses to which it was sent. So make sure your personal devices aren't found to be communicating with coworkers or vendors and you'll have a valid argument for "I didn't use my personal device for work".

Whether it will stick will largely depend on how good the lawyers are because that's just one way your device can be in scope for a deposition. Another way would be if any messages from coworkers are sent to/from your personal email or phone number then that can also bring your devices into the scope of a deposition. It might depend on whether the content or context of the messages suggests that they're related to the subject of the deposition and that the conversation had been moved (eg, an attempt to hide it). Again, it largely depends on the quality of the lawyers involved.

Depositions don't assume you are honest.

I 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.

When 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.

> 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_Devic...

https://simplemdm.com/apple-user-enrollment/

It 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?

What's the point of a $3000 contract review if the employer's response will be "Not changing it, sign or walk."

Well, it helps you decide whether to sign, or to walk, right?

But who would pay $3K for a contract review??

...someone whom Google is about to make a millionaire?

Employment 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.

What 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.

What do you mean by professional here? My guess is some mix of emotional detachment, serious tone and use of the right jargon and vocabulary?

Put bluntly, being a PITA when it wasn't at all necessary, as corp-issued devices are common. If I were a manager hiring this guy and heard that he kicked back the standard contract everyone else has for a pointless reason that had a workaround everyone already knows about, I'd have ended it right there because it casts their judgment in a poor light and I could see them causing me or my department issues in the future.

"Poor culture fit".

This is not an answer to the above thread.

"What do you mean by professional here?", the answer to which is "not being a PITA for no reason". Seems pretty direct to me.

The comment I replied to claimed that being professional about requesting a change to your contract can get you the requested change approved, implying that being unprofessional will get you kicked out. My question was, how to be professional in the way that will get your change more likely to be accepted. If you claim that you can not get the change approved in any way, then you are not answering me, but contradicting the comment I was replying to. Sorry if breaking it down like this seems condescending.

No offense taken. My point here is that this entire process of "changing the contract" was unnecessary on its face, and everyone involved knew it. The professional thing to do would have been to not spend the cycles even pursuing it.

It's like asking what the best way to write a lisp in INTERCAL would be. The best way is to not do it.

The thing is, from many sources I keep hearing that the suggested unchangability of terms and pay is just a negotiation tactic. They will come to you with printed documents, with policies that things totally cannot be changed, it's like that in the system, there is just no way. Then in many cases magically there are suddenly ways to change all those things after some more negotiation. You obviously need a strong position for this, good alternative offers etc, but you don't have to be Michael Jordan for the above story to happen.

A lot more things are open to negotiation than some people imagine. Even including buying a fridge at your local chain store or similar. Not every time, and not to everyone who merely says "I want".

I'd get a lawyer to advise on the text and the change, make sure it really means what you think it does. And talk to them about your concerns, explain why you want the change. Make it clear you are open to other reasonable solutions.

Depends 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.

Probably 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.

Fun 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.

We 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.

This 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.

You 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.

Only 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.

Typically what I've seen is if something is policy before hand, then it's legal, such as retention policies for email. In this case to do something similar, you would need the phone to not retain more than 24 hours of information or similar or be jumped and have your devices forcibly taken a away and get into some sort of 5th amendment edge case where you don't have to give the contents of your mind / say anything.

Judge: "Hand over that phone right now"

You: "Sure, I can hand it over, but all data will then get wiped by the device automatically due to Google/Apple/Samsung's anti-theft hardware design and I don't have a choice in the software settings to disable that"

After that it's upto the Judge whether to proceed with the handover or not.

At this point, if the judge proceeds with the handover, it will be the judge who destroyed evidence.

>We need an OS that self-destructs all data if surrendered, and that should be a hardcoded feature of the OS.

You want to automate the destruction of evidence? I understand thats typically treated as confirming whatever is the most damaging possibility.

Google 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.

yeah android phones are totally safe from google

Another 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.

Ditto. 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.

We 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.

It’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.

To 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.

This. 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.

Why would you bring a personal laptop to work?

In 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.

It’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.

I 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?

Nope. I find the personal phone sufficient. If corporate IT wants to know when I'm browsing linkedin, im fine with that.

Also, corporate has given itself the right to search any and all devices on me while at work, so that's double incentive to leave the home laptop at home.

Sometimes your work computer is so locked down that some work tasks are made much easier by having a machine you have full access to.

For example we needed to program an Arduino-type board, but that's not possible with our work laptops (no admin rights, USB ports disabled, etc); we never found a solution other than a personal laptop. Or a colleague needed to run a supplier's simulation tool that needed admin rights, and couldn't get an exception fast enough. Or you need to run a Linux tool.

> Sometimes your work computer is so locked down that some work tasks are made much easier by having a machine you have full access to.

This is not very persuasive. What you really have there is two work laptops.

Even 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.

I didn’t know HN implemented RFC 2549

I 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..."

Don'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.

>> 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.

Do you accept work calls on your personal number? - if so that’s sounds more like training issue.

Ill bring that up with my commander.

I'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.

> 100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason.

I technically carry 4 phones...

I'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.

I also don’t take my work phone with me outside of work hours unless I’m oncall.

Anyone 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).

Two phones, even two laptops and you're probably still carrying less weight then an original cellular phone with a strap.

>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.

On 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.

> 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.

Yeah, you haven't lived until you've had all your work email subpoenaed. Been there, done that.

This isn't a legal argument as much as a technical one. Work profiles prevent employers from accessing non-work-profile information

And as a non-legal argument, it won't hold up in a context where anything non-legal essentially doesn't matter.

Why 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.

Because some lawyer convinced a judge that there may be pertinent information on it. If there's any suspicion that you may have used your personal device to communicate with co-workers, then they'll want to see it. You can't prove you didn't without turning it over. If they find you didn't use it, then thanks. If they find you did, game over. That's the point of the discovery process. They don't know what information is out there, so they're going to get as much of it as they can and sort it out later.

> If there's any suspicion that you may have used your personal device to communicate with co-workers, then they'll want to see it.

No, they'll want to see the communication. Which the company will be compelled to provide. The device isn't relevant. (In my, admittedly limited, experience, this is how these processes actually work)

The original discovery request may be something along the lines of "please submit all communications that occurred in an electronic format via printed copies, blah blah leaglese". You then wait until the last day allowed in the discovery request, and then send over what ever print outs you have decided to release. If opposing counsel feels you've left something out (intentionally or otherwise), they can/will go to a judge to get a warrant. That warrant will not state "collect print outs of communications from personal devices". It will state "collect any personal electronic devices".

> If opposing counsel feels you've left something out

No, this isn't correct. If opposing counsel has evidence[0] that the personal devices have relevant communications not already provided, they can file for a subpoena to have you turn over personal electronic devices. Your counsel can file a counter-motion, and you'll probably have a hearing.

No where will there be a warrant, unless you're in criminal proceedings.

Like I said already: as far as I know, litigation holds and discovery are fairly common, and what you're describing is not. To clarify, this is all assuming you use a work profile and a personal profile.

[0]: I don't necessarily mean evidence in the legal standard, but they need some basis for this. "A feeling" isn't enough.

If they take my phone in court I'm not too concerned. I just don't want them to be able to sniff my personal profile info without me knowing.

> I just don't want them to be able to sniff my personal profile info without me knowing.

They will, and you won't. (I've been there.)

Care to elaborate? Was this using work profiles?

But that's no longer "spying", is it? You just shifted the goal post.

> You just shifted the goal post.

Arguably. I don't see it as such though. I see it as: if my phone would be fine in a deposition then I don't have to worry about work spying on their device. But if I have to worry about what work might find out on a device then I'd be a lot more worried about what might show up in a deposition.

What's said in private is supposed to stay private. It helps to demonstrate that it has stayed private if it can't be compelled especially from unrelated circumstances. Whether "private" means discussions with your family, your friends, your coworker, your boss, your commander, your patient, your client...

...it's very important to keep work separate.

Does this apply to just having Slack on your phone?

Slack records a device id when you log in -- have you noticed that you get a notification saying that you've logged in from that device? And a lawyer won't care that it's your personal device. They'll want to see it because it shows up in an audit log from your employer. They'll want to check: have you saved any work content? Have you copy/pasted work messages elsewhere? Just about anything is fair game once the device is identified.

Well that settles it. Next time I switch companies, I'm getting a separate secondary slack device. Also probably important for keeping the company out of your side-projects.

Let's say I don't care about a deposition, but I am only scared of my company spying on my personal activity. Should I be worried if I use a work profile?

iOS offers 'work profile' support for this as well, as of mid-2018. Specifics can be found on page 8 of https://www.apple.com/business/docs/resources/Managing_Devic...

As per your second point, realistically it was probably even done on work devices and not personal phone anyways. As for the second example, the person actually submitted a change to a corp extension, so that must've also been done on a work device. So none of these example have anything to do with personal devices.

Does 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.

Maybe 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).

That'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. ;)

I 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!

I 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.

I'd probably be fired if I didn't have a cell.

Then the company better being paying/providing said cell to you. If a company requires something to be used, they need to provide it.

They won't ever admit it. It's like if you were hiring someone: most people won't hire someone who doesn't have a phone number because that would be an inconvenience to them, but they can always make up another excuse for why not to hire the person.

Fortunately in my line of work it's not that uncommon to have anything other than a burner phone and even then a lot of people don't even have that. I went completely without one for about 2 years and then decided to get a burner when I had to walk back to my house to get some tools to fix an issue with my truck. Figured I at least needed one for those kind of situations.

I wish there was a cal sync different from mail and the rest. Having to login to a secure device to check meetings for the next morning in an annoying ritual.

My office allows the standard iPhone apps to connect to Exchsnge. I don’t see a profile installed on the phone. As far as I can tell, the only change is a required PIN (which I would have anyways).

I'm in the middle. I have developers that work whenever they feel like it, and they email me with questions at all hours. I like to be there for them when I can (but I don't feel bad when I can't).

I've set up my email client on my phone, so that it only notifies me if one of my developers emails me. I use the VIP feature of Samsung's email client, which seems to be unique to that specific client, since I haven't been able to find another with it. I can check the email (if I can), and decide to answer right away (if I can), or just snooze the notification for later.

Everyone else can KMA after hours. Or text, if it's an emergency - but they better say what the emergency is in the text, or they may not get a reply.

> I've set up my email client on my phone, so that it only notifies me if one of my developers emails me. I use the VIP feature of Samsung's email client, which seems to be unique to that specific client, since I haven't been able to find another with it.

Maybe not quite as simple to set up, but you should be able to get something similar on most clients with a folder and a filter. I've done this for some of my important/urgent folders, with K9-Mail set to only show notifications from those folders (notification class).

Readdle's Spark mail client for iOS/MacOS has many of these features. Doesn't help for your samsung, but in case any other iOS folks are scrolling by. :)

This is my mentality. Sadly it means I'm only a midlevel after 8 years. Apparently I don't have enough dedication to move up the ladder since I don't have Teams on phone and don't work 9+ hours per day.

If you're forgetful like me, it's really helpful to be able to check what time the first meeting is tomorrow when I set my alarm before bed.

Now that work from home is a thing, I also like having an standard way to communicate with work and be at least partially productive in case my laptop dies. I have my Do Not Disturb settings set so that the work profile doesn't show me email or chat settings outside of work hours on weekdays so I can start email triage during my morning bowel movement if I want, but it won't nag me if I'd rather spend that time in quiet contemplation.

At 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.

Yes, 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.

> 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.

Not if it was set up with corporate deployment methods. Look into what Apple MDM is capable of on an iPhone, for instance.

Yeah, 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.

If 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.

I personally keep separate devices, but I understand the idea of only having the employer-provided phone. All of our important data is in the cloud on Google or Apple's servers. Your pictures, messages, emails, and everything else are off-site. It doesn't matter if the company wipes your phone since there's nothing on it other than thin-client apps.

> they don't seem to care

Maybe their lives are just not tethered to their phones. I use my phone for phone calls, texting, and maps/navigation. That's about it. It would be a bit inconvenient to lose my contact list without warning, but I export those periodically in case I lose my phone.

> 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.

Best 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."

You 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.

1) 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.

Same 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.

When 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.

Oh yea def. Used mobile devices that are most assuredly not rooted

Fascinating. 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?

Yes. It’s called xhelper and it can survive factory resets.

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...

It'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-b...

Don't pay for that out of pocket. It's their responsibility.

This 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.

If 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?

Yes, 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.

Seems 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.

If 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.

I 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.

Is this based on the article or is it speculation?

> 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.

Why is this being downvoted? Is it not accurate? If so could someone explain where djrogers is wrong?

It 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.

An MDM can install a root certificate + VPN and snoop on your network traffic (which would disclose a lot of things).

Seeing 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.

I have Teams installed on my iPhone. How does that give my company access to anything of mine?

Most 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.

Can you be more specific? It's really hard to find information on this and I'm 90% sure I'm ok but I can't see what they're seeing.

I see. I have Teams installed through the app store; my company doesn't have much guidance on mobile usage so I guess I'm safe.

Who 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.

People who aren’t starting and ending their days reading HN, probably.

The down votes beg to differ.

Exactly. If they want you available on the move, buy you a new phone that is only for work.

This is exactly why I don't even have my work email on my personal phone.

Can't upvote this enough. Never give these remote administration rights to an employer on any personal device (phone typically, but any).

Simple 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

So you learned this the hard way but you don't have any opinion on whether it's ethical?

The article doesn't mention anything about mobile devices though?

Oh wow, is this not common knowledge?

Not 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.)

For 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 and you can follow the API links to see what they do if you want to verify what I just wrote.

Except 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.

When 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.

That doesn't track. By the time they pulled this crap (including the "you didn't sign it, would you sign it again?" and it turned out to be different), we had been given at least one Android phone (ADP1) and maybe the second as well (N1).

I dogfooded pretty much everything from the G1 to the N5, Xoom included. Until Lollipop or Marshmallow arrived, we were discouraged or forbidden from having corporate accounts on personal phones, because there weren't the necessary Blackberry-style features yet, e.g. remote wiping. I remember Honeycomb (the Xoom) having only encryption, but no wiping. At some point you could add your work account as the primary on your personal gift phones (dogfood ones were a different story), but that meant that the device got bricked when you left the company, forcing you to a factory reset — and there was still no good isolation.

I definitely had my personal account as the primary on my N5 along with a work profile and I believe that's the first device/OS combo where it was feasible, if you ignored the annoying duplicate app icons in the launcher. The first truly "tolerated" personal devices were probably the Christmas gift Chromebooks from a few years earlier, as long as you used Yubikeys.

Didn't the policies even predate Android? They definitely were there well before Lollipop. Unless they were introduced post-Aurora, in 2010 — i.e. in the N1/Eclair days, keeping the phone vintage theme.

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