Do you ever get the feeling someone’s watching you?
In the age of remote working, employers have imagined new ways to keep tabs on employees — even without them realizing it.
“There’s little transparency,” Hayley Tsukayama, the associate director of legislative activism at Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Washington Post.
“Even figuring out what is on your computer can be a huge step to figuring out how you want to deal with it.”
For starters, workers are likely more at risk of being spied on when using company technology, such as phones or laptops. However, your device activity can also be monitored if you have company software downloaded to your personal devices, or if your personal tech is connected to the company network.
Most companies will install device management software — cheekily referred to as “bossware” — on devices in order to monitor employee activities on the devices.
To investigate whether your employer is using such software, iPhone users can look in their settings by clicking “General,” then “VPN,” then “Device Management,” which will show your employer’s profile should there be software installed. On a Mac, “Profiles” can be found under “Privacy & Security,” and on a Windows PC, it can be found in the settings under “Accounts,” then “Access Work or School.”
Tsukayama also recommended checking the device’s activity monitor or task manager to look for apps and software you don’t recognize, which could signal the usage of software.
“Be curious,” Tsukayama said. “Also look for the marketing material for the app you find. They will often list, as features, the things they can do.”
There might also be software downloaded that allows employers to remotely control company devices and access features like the camera or microphone, experts explained.
In Mac settings, users can see what is shared under “Sharing,” found in the “General” section. In Windows settings, users can navigate to “System” to view sharing permissions.
Another way to check whether employers have control over your devices is to see who owns the administrative account to the technology — if it’s your employer, you may be prompted to enter your login credentials every time you download an app to the device.
In addition to system settings, there may be browser extensions installed onto search engine apps to bolster cybersecurity, added Mark Ostrowski, an engineering lead at Check Point Software Technologies. Such extensions add an extra layer of security and might prompt users to not enter sensitive information into AI chatbots, or it may scan files for malware before downloading.
But they can also keep tabs on user behavior, such as how long you spend online shopping, he added, and could be used in the case of an audit.
Additionally, connecting to the company’s Wi-Fi or private network could compromise your personal information — your employer may have access to the websites you visit, things you post on social media or even private messages, even on personal devices. VPNs, or virtual private networks, also pose the same monitoring potential.
“Once you put it out there, just assume it can be seen,” Ostrowski told the Washington Post.
That being said, nothing on company accounts or devices is private — not even your direct messages via Slack or Teams. If your boss wanted to view private correspondences between employees on communication platforms or email, they could.
“If I [an employer] want to look at the content of the email that you’re sending through the corporate account, that can be done today directly between the [software provider] and the company’s security team,” Ostrowski explained. “There’s no way for the employee to see that.”
And with the introduction of artificial intelligence, new technologies could create more opportunities for employers to spy on people, like monitoring movement, recording their digital behaviors, their whereabouts and more — which has been adamantly opposed by workers, according to survey data.
In short: there should be a separation of church and state, personal and work, experts say. After all, there’s not much employees can do about being monitored.
“Workers don’t have a lot of legal rights [here],” Tsukayama said. “So you don’t have much ground to push back.”