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macNchz an hour ago

This is something that genuinely runs the gamut across different companies—plenty don't even know the serial numbers of company-owned machines, never mind which devices individuals have, while others do effectively have live feeds of every employee's screen available to managers at all times. In between you have many businesses that manage their devices but only insofar as to enforce some basic protection and reserve the right to investigate it in the case that something does go wrong. In having conversations about this kind of stuff with company leaders, many will strongly reject any of the most invasive tracking stuff, believe it or not.

I do agree, though, that for any type of surveillance, the rise of AI presents a really problematic opportunity to allow more targeted observation, since nobody has to spend their own time looking for what people are doing, they can ask an AI to keep tabs and look out for the things they care about.

On that note, I think one of the more realistic risks for an everyday person doing personal things on a work machine is probably insider threat from a rogue IT admin, whose access allows them insight into company devices without enough oversight.

schnitzelstoat 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yeah, many companies don't want the liability issues. Like what happens if I open my bank account on my work computer? You could argue I can expect someone to be watching but I have no warning that someone is? Here in the EU that would probably be an easy lawsuit.

wpsimon3 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Can’t speak for the EU, but the companies I’ve worked for in the US explicitly state what they do not track in their privacy/use policy when giving out laptops/phones/tablets.

E.g. their anti-virus or firewall system may ignore URLs related to banking, medical, or political affiliation and chose not to log or decrypt that traffic

galleywest200 16 minutes ago | parent [-]

Once I was trying to find a scene from a TV show at work for a joke with colleagues, and the quote I used ended up triggering a very NSFW search. Did not get fired, not even talked to. Thank goodness!

jbuhbjlnjbn 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

How do you expect an employee to prove their banking actions on the company computer were spied on? I imagine this impossible to prove.

ruined 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

If the employer is spying on everything, it's quite easy.