If they want to install anything on my phone other than apps I choose to install for my own convenience they better give me a work phone.
Exactly this. Any employer trying to put private devices into their MDM is totally unprofessional anyway… Most MDMs allow access to the GPS Data and have a remote wiping function, it would be a privacy mess for the employee AND employer.
Years ago, I worked in the IT department at a university that brought in an MDM for accessing work email on personal devices with a policy of wiping the phone if you got your unlock code wrong 3 times. I refused to use it on my personal device and told the head of the department that it was far too risky as you could accidentally do this with the phone in your pocket. He disagreed, but less than a week later, this exact thing happened to him, got his unlock wrong 3 times, phone wiped, no backup done. He still refused to change the policy even with the inconvenience it caused him. I just laughed.
One of my colleges had MDM enabled for staff and students alike. (I realize this is likely a configuration problem, rather than malice or whatever)
The number of students who, nonetheless, did it… mind boggling.
Remote wipe? Lawl fuck no. Not worth the risk that some asshole has a bad day and wipes them all for fun.
I can understand it for certain things but… frankly there should be some sort of like… laws? About what your employer can require of you. Sure, company phone go for it, idgaf. But if they would need to remote wipe a device, maaaaaaaybe they shouldn’t be allowed to let employees use their own. You want full control, company, you get to pay for that with another phone, phone line, etc. (extra bonus, most people won’t carry the work phone when they are off work, so they are less reachable for unpaid labor :) )
“You need to install this on your phone”
“Oh I don’t have a phone”
“you’re welcome to try”
hands over my brain-dead flip phone with no ‘app’ capability
Virtually all current flip phones run either Android or KaiOS under the hood. The giveaway would be any Google app pre-installed, or any app you already recognize.
The era of “dumb” flip phones is long over. I would be very surprised if any are still being manufactured.
my current one actually does have an older, and very stripped-down, android… but no google anything installed, and no google play. i don’t even have a data plan attached to it–although it does have a mobile browser and can function as a hotspot.
Mine just gave us all phones.
Too much litigation chance
MDM when configured properly only get a specific section of your phone that’s separate from your personal use section, so they don’t see your apps and personal data.
Correct. Having configured one, this is laughable.
We have never, and will never, integrate someone’s personal phone into our infrastructure. Everyone gets a company phone. If you want to use the company phone as your personal phone, or the phone you use to cheat on your husband, that’s your call. Just don’t complain to me when video of you pleasuring yourself end up backed up to our cloud storage and discovered by IT when tracking down large files eating up storage. (Yes that happened.)
Wtf how? Was someone cybering over vid chat and checked the record option?
She was recording herself, sending the video file, then deleting the file from the phone. Our phones are configured to immediately back up, so (I am assuming) that while she put together the e-mail or text, our phone was dutifully doing its job.
Oh man how embarassing. I imagine you make it pretty clear that the company phone comes with this capability after that incident lol
Setting aside the issue of whether this post is overstating the risk of MDM software on a personal phone, I had a tangentially related experience that might provide a tip for anyone who’s in a similar situation.
I like to have the convenience of checking my work messages and chats on my personal phone, so I have Teams and Outlook installed and using my work account.
When I first went to sign in to my work account on Outlook, I got this message like “Outlook needs to run with administrator privileges in order to provide the necessary security for this account” and shunted me off to some system settings to approve the permissions. Big nope.
So I tried Outlook Lite, and it made no such demands and works perfectly. So for anyone else who’s run into this, try Outlook Lite! I hope this helps somebody.
I didn’t even know there is lite version.
I just use the web version… Outlook kept killing my battery.
Thanks for the tip.
Or, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t use Outlook. Outlook still is email and as such has IMAP support, use a different email app to check outlook.
Fuck everything about Microsoft
Sadly you won’t always have a choice. My university has disabled any non-Microsoft client support. They do this to “protect the privacy of the teachers”. Currently I’m running a windows VM on my server with Outlook to forward the emails to my personal email. Which in the end is even worse for them GDPR wise
This is a woefully misinformed post…
Since when are companies installing MDM on peoples personal devices?
It is usually just for corporate devices, where you shouldn’t leave any personal data on.
I quit my job of over a decade using the same phone and email, I left to go competition. I gave them all my passwords.
I’ve kept my personal phone a lot longer than I had theirs lol
If your employer expects you to access corporate resources or be available to respond / on-call out of hours, then they should issue you a corporate device to do so.
My previous employer was acquired and the new owner required jumping through these kinds of hoops to use company email or Teams on our phones.
As an end result, everybody stopped using those on their phones. Once the laptop lid was shut, work wouldn’t be bothering you until you open it the next day. Sometimes stupid things can lead to good outcomes.
Yeah this exact scenario happened where I used to work. The only time it’s an inconvenience is if we’re all in person for a tech summit or something, but having the personal contacts of a few co-workers let’s me check in on any plans I might have missed.
Nowadays my phone is too old to even run slack, so I’d require work to buy me a new, separate work phone anyway.
But truth be told, it’s amazing being unreachable. I logged on to the work slack today Monday morning, and found out that the company had an all hands on deck show stopper bug last Friday ~1730 lol not for me it wasn’t. I was walking my dog enjoying the brisk winter air, completely oblivious until I logged back on this morning to read the postmortem. 😌
Your bosses make you do this? For me I just installed Teams and Outlook, and even that was voluntary.
Just* lol
Like I said I didn’t have to, it’s just convenient to be able to keep an eye on teams when I am slacking off yknow
You keep an eye on Teams? Hahaha lol Teams keeps an eye on you. 60 permissions needed to install Tems 3 trackers needed to install Teams
You have no idea what software you are installing on your “personal” (its not personal anymore) device.
Not really? Checked now and the only permissions it has at the moment is location while using and access to pictures. The latter is on purpose so I can upload stupid memes to the non-serious chats
Hahahahaha you are funny. Im not asking, Im letting you know. Its not a matter of opinion.
Okay. Enjoy your tinfoil hat.
Lol
Separate profile and container. Idiot meme.
These people really don’t know how MDM solutions work.
Can you elaborate? I have simple mdm on my work phone and would like to know exactly what they see and can do
Not that I am hiding anything. It’s more curiosity at this point
Posted from my personal phone
This depends on the configuration of the MDM and the MDM vendor. For example, most MDM deployments to Android for instance conform to Android For Work, which functions in practice to a virtual machine from a user’s perspective, and doesn’t have access to a non workspace content. iOS has a similar functionality which, while less commonly used, is there specifically for use on personal devices to sandbox off ‘work’ content where pervasive features like factory resets and access to phone logs and sms records don’t function, and you can’t access the more advanced features without having purchased the device via a corporate account.
SimpleMDM has a credit card-less trial which you could set up to see what features exist and how they work from the vendor side. You won’t have access to some of the ‘supervised’ features without being a business,but you can see the buttons offered when you aren’t a corporate-purchased device readily enough.
For corporate owned devices, the rules are very different though.
But, in all honesty, no one is going to be looking at it unless there’s a very good reason too. IT sure as hell doesn’t have enough resources to monitor it.
MDM largely exists to remote wipe a lost or stolen phone.
In reality, yes there will be snooping. I’ve had a new colleague that had to explain why they had parked several times near the HQ of a competitor outside working hours. Answer: he lived in that village and his favorite bakery was were he had parked. After that he removed the company tracker from his car, a car that he was leasing and paying for himself. He had only installed the tracker as a courtesy to facilitate on site personnel tracking and it was abused in the shortest order.
Anything that can be abused, will be abused.
Can I have your email password? I promise I won’t monitor it because I’m very busy 😁
