Remote workers using 'mouse-mover' technology are getting caught | Hacker News Reader

Remote workers using 'mouse-mover' technology are getting caught

theverge.com

14 pointssimula6714 comments

It would seem like mouse movement is a bad metric to incentivize.

The paranoid people using mouse wigglers were right about management tracking it.

Or maybe they just thought the autologout was annoying...

Wells Fargo has a giant mortgage processing division with floors of people who have nothing to do since there are few new mortgages and virtually no refinance activity.

They are likely actively looking for people to fire.

It’s weird though, because that is literally what layoffs are for. Maybe trying to get under the press radar, since folks will start freaking out if they announce layoffs?

There are laws like the WARN act that companies would prefer not to deal with.

It would also expose information about their deal volume which they’d rather not disclose probably, unless they have no choice. Impacts to stock price and the like.

Could also cause a crash in the industry, which they’d rather not start.

Amazon review:

“Lost my job and livelihood getting caught with this. Had to give up kids to adoption due to health care costs. Definitely jiggled the mouse though. 3 stars.”

So they can catch this, but cheating in computer games.....

Article sub-title:

> Last month, Wells Fargo reportedly fired over a dozen employees for using tools that fake productivity at work.

No mention of anyone else getting caught (let alone fired). Ever. Anywhere.

Good luck catching the ones that put something on the space bar in a text box. Without intrusive surveillance there’s no way to tell if it’s legit work or not.

Satire this coy generally isnt appreciated, but the "intrusive" bit was good bait.

I mean it does not require too sophisticated software to not just look for keyboard activity, but also check if the a activity is withing human limits. Having 120000 keystrokes in 1 minute probably would raise the eyebrows of anyone

So basically a nerfed keylogger? How does that stop USB devices masquerading as keyboards that can type pre-saved content at normal speeds? You could even refresh the content using LLMs so it’s not like it’s typing the same phrase over and over.

Am I the only one not against intrusive surveillance provided it's the company computer?

Cameras on in their bedroom seeing a wooden bird peck at it while typing executive reports fed by gpt-6.

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