Sunday, June 27, 2021

Working from home? You’re probably being spied on

 Working from home? You’re probably being spied on

Excerpt: Rather than being trusted to accomplish their jobs out of physical view, a startling number of employees are being tracked and measured through privacy-invasive software which can surveil their web browsing habits, track their app usage, monitor their screen time—periodically capturing screen images—and even transcribe their phone calls. The fascination with digital workplace surveillance software—sometimes called “bossware”—is increasing, according to a recent survey funded by ExpressVPN, in collaboration with Pollfish. Of the 2,000 employers surveyed, 57 percent “implemented employee monitoring software in the past six months.” Of those that had not deployed such software, 59 percent said they were “very or somewhat likely” to do so in the future. (...) In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as thousands of companies shifted to WFH models, a certain panic arose regarding potential, lowered productivity. The combination of removing workers from a potentially collaborative in-office environment, expecting them to simultaneously tackle childcare and work, and hoping they can manage the stress of a global pandemic, often led corporate leaders to believe that their employees’ productivity would slow to a crawl. Those concerns, it appears, led to increased demand for digital workplace surveillance software. [Been working from home, Folks? Playing a few hands of poker when you’re supposed to be working? Big Brother–or Big Boss–may have been watching. It seems this is a growing issue. Malwarebytes sends out two brief article summaries--3 to 6 articles each--each month. They're free. Ron P.]

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