Fwiw, it's not tracking location
> The app, called Blip, generates a geofence — a virtual boundary, created by the employer using GPS — that detects when an employee enters or leaves.
> The app, called Blip, generates a geofence — a virtual boundary, created by the employer using GPS — that detects when an employee enters or leaves.
Don't get me wrong, I despise this but it's not tracking strictly speaking.
But to do that you have to share location permissions all the time with the app. And you have to trust it enough to give it those permissions.
Also here's a solution with no app and no location tracking: detect when a phone has connected to on-premise WiFi.
I was about to suggest the same. Always-on location tracking is an extremely lazy and disrespectful way to replace a punch card.
Here's your replacement app:
- When arriving at work, you open the app while on employer's WiFi and tap "Start my shift"
- Before leaving work, you open the app and tap "End my shift" (but this is not required)
- During your shift, the service tries to periodically validate that your phone is still on WiFi (via LAN pings, silent push notifications that trigger checkins, or background polling)
- During your shift, if the service can't verify that your phone is still on the WiFi for 30+ minutes, it sends you a push notification asking you to open the app and check in. Otherwise, it ends your shift.
- If there's some WiFi dead zone in the workplace where they need to work for more than an hour, give the employee the option to respond with a one-time GPS location instead of joining the WiFi.
Boom. This was not hard. Doesn't even need internal infrastructure; can do this whole thing based on WAN IPs.
Told my manager I simply wouldn't use it and why and he gave me permission to use the webapp on the company issued laptops.
Last thing I need is my manager seeing me traversing the city drunk at 2am or whatever. I'm not on their time so whatever I'm doing is none of their business.
A user cannot elect to grant "geofencing only" permission. And even if they could, users have no way to audit the geofence coordinates to verify that they are being used in the described manner.
Even if implemented exactly as described, it's not hard to see why this can still leak non-work-related personal data. If an employee walks past their workplace at 2 AM, that's not information that an employer should have.