| |
| ▲ | firefoxd 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, we use zscaler. It even included the list of AI prompts I've written and in-app activities. | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you're working remotely, the solution is to have a personal laptop next to your work laptop, and use the personal laptop for AI, email, apps etc., even if it is for work (unless you are using a service that costs money). Your employer should be fine with this arrangement because all they care about is that their data is not exfiltrated. | | |
| ▲ | sippingabonedry 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > even if it is for work > Your employer should be fine with this > all they care about is that their data is not exfiltrated. Your suggestion for dealing with an employer that only cares if data is exfiltrated, is to... exfiltrate their data? | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | No. I didn't suggest exfiltration. | | |
| ▲ | cowlevel 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes you did - you suggested passing employer data through a non employer laptop | | |
| ▲ | phoghed 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If they allow you to access email, work apps, etc off corporate network then they don’t care and you’re not exfiltrating anything against their wishes. To suggest otherwise is just goofy. They weren’t suggesting you move data via a usb drive or something. Even that your employer would disable if they cared. | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Depends on what counts “employer data”. If you type a question into ChatGPT is that “employer data” even if it is a work related coding question? Probably not. If an employer is using Zscaler and employees can still “pass employer data” anyway then Zscaler isn’t achieving anything. Get rid of it so employees won’t try to work around such intrusive monitoring. | | |
| ▲ | saagarjha an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yes? If I go out and start asking questions about this build failure which contains internal product names that is absolutely “employer data”. |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | freeone3000 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is almost textbook data exfiltration, with company data on a personally-owned device. This is almost certainly forbidden by policy, and if it isn’t, it should be. Do work stuff on work hardware, do non-work stuff on non-work hardware. | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you are asking ChatGPT a coding question does it matter if it is done on a work machine or a personal machine? A company that monitors every keystroke using Zscaler can be presumed to have restrictions on stuff that they care about, such as apps that should only be accessed from the corporate network. | | |
| ▲ | freeone3000 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It does. For precisely those reasons. Your personal machine isn’t monitored. | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Your personal machine isn’t monitored. And that's precisely the benefit of using the personal machine! Nobody wants every keystroke they make to be monitored. If you do that then it is going to backfire because people will find work arounds. Find another way. | | |
| ▲ | sippingabonedry 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Can you come back and do a Show HN once you get fired for wildly reckless handling of your employer's data? | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Or you can do a Show HN once you get fired for not understanding what most people are willing to put up with, thereby risking your employer's data that way! |
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | dannyw 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is terrible advice. Do all your work activity on work devices. Do all your personal activity on personal devices. | | |
| ▲ | flowerlad 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not when a company monitors every keystroke. There need to be a balance between personal privacy and employer's needs to prevent data exfiltration. | | |
| ▲ | jjav 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > > Do all your work activity on work devices. Do all your personal activity on personal devices. > Not when a company monitors every keystroke. That is precisely why you do work activity on work devices and anything personal on things you own. I used to mix all the time but in these days of completely monitoring of work devices, I do strictly all work activity on work devices. Then I don't really care about the monitoring because anything I type on a work devices is strictly work stuff, nothing that is personal to me. |
|
| |
| ▲ | ButlerianJihad 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You may be surprised to discover that many WFH/remote jobs are BYOD! I held a WFH and BYOD job in various roles for over 4 years. It began less than a month into the pandemic lockdowns. It would not have been WFH if not for COVID-19. In that regard, I was highly blessed. The recruiting process was notably vague. I was asked if I had a computer that I could run software on. It turned out that they really wanted us to be running Windows (Apple Silicon was incompatible) but I was running Ubuntu and nobody really batted an eye, because I ensured it was interoperable. We were never required to install MDM or any corporate software. They never spied on us or collected any data from our BYOD. Any metrics were collected server-side at their web apps. I felt highly trusted. But there was indeed no "work laptop" and we could either BYOD, or forget having a job at all. This was also during a period of rapid, widespread MFA adoption. Our managers were keeping us in the loop whenever MFA was implemented for corporate systems. Late in the game, our 3rd-party payroll implemented MFA very poorly. I informed the management that they were on thin ice, because they had irrevocably encroached onto a device which was reserved for personal use only. I told them, it is unacceptable to require a smartphone for a role that neither provides a smartphone, nor notified us in advance that it's required for keeping our jobs. I kept scrupulous separation of work-related data and activities. I had separate accounts on each device. For work, I logged out of my personal account and logged into a work-only account. Unix permissions handled the rest. Sometimes, it was darned inconvenient. I came to understand that if my employer were ever sued or involved in criminal prosecution, my devices could've been subject to subpoena and confiscation. This was the really crazy part. I had often used personal devices, and accounts, and my phone, for volunteering at church. We had no choice there, either. But you can easily imagine church, or a publicly-traded company, to become embroiled in some legal action. And if my devices were deemed evidence, I'd forfeit them, possibly for good! Thankfully, this has not come to pass. There is probably no guarantee, even if you're 100% using employer-dedicated hardware at home, that your personal devices wouldn't be swept up in a subpoena or search-and-seizure. But you should always consider long and hard, with any BYOD situation, that mingling your personal stuff with your employer's stuff is playing with fire. Don't get burned. | | |
| ▲ | themadturk an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | When COVID-19 hit, the only prep my employer had was that everyone had laptops and we had basic VPN infrastructure. The first week or two were chaotic. Everyone had to provide their own high-speed Internet. Eventually they let us come in small groups to the office to bring home monitors, keyboards, and mice. Our company was never BYOD, but they were pretty loose about personal hardware. They didn't provide or require phones, but to get office mail, documents, etc. you had to have management software on your phone or tablet. You couldn't connect your own computer to the VPN. We came back to work in mid-2021. In early 2022 we had a ransomware breach on a Sunday evening. If you happened to have your laptop with you (I did), you could eventually do some WFH stuff, after certain servers were certified clean (they never told us, but indications were someone succumbed to a phishing attack). Otherwise you were SOL until they either certified your machine had been turned off or was otherwise certified clean, or you got a brand new laptop. Once we were back in the office (again), things were stricter...no USB drives allowed, for instance, and software installs were more tightly controlled. But the phone/tablet policy was the same -- even if you were on call, you had to provide your own phone. MFA could be on your phone or software on your laptop, and again you weren't required to have company software on your phone. | |
| ▲ | userbinator 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Fortunately all my employment contracts thus far have been "the company shall provide all necessary equipment for work" and prohibition of using personal devices, which I have cited a few times when asked to do otherwise. Few people seem to understand the legal implications or downplay them, but IMHO it's best to keep a strict "firewall" between company and personal. | |
| ▲ | jen20 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The timing seems a little off - Apple Silicon was only announced 6 months after the COVID lockdowns started. Overall the point stands: the separation of personal vs work devices must be absolute. | | |
| ▲ | ButlerianJihad an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Overall the point stands As I just got done writing, in many BYOD jobs, you can either use your personal device for work, or you can file for unemployment. > The timing seems a little off I shouldn't have to explain myself to people who get suspicious that I'm lying, but here's how it went down: our students were 100% required to have an x86 notebook that ran Windows, and we were explicit about that in the enrollment and onboarding phases. Some of the staff used MacOS and this was not an obstacle, until Apple Silicon became available, at which point we discovered that our virtualization software was incompatible, and that couldn't be changed. We had been at the forefront of testing and vetting this platform on its release. Therefore, the department instituted a ban on the Apple Silicon devices. My use of Ubuntu and Fedora, however, flew under the radar for all four years, because none of the software was incompatible. There were instances of staff, and also students, who purchased Apples specifically, and they were real disappointed, to say the least. Ultimately, the staff in my role and department were relieved of the requirement to install any software locally, at which point anyone running Apple Silicon could've also flown under the radar. But our students were prohibited, due to the unresolved technical barriers. |
|
| |
| ▲ | gamblor956 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Never, ever, ever ever use your personal laptop for work. Never use your personal mobile for work unless you have MDM software. No employer with a functional legal department would ever be okay with an employee using their personal devices for work (unless they have MDM software on the devices partition the work data). Using your personal device(s) work for make them fair game for discovery in lawsuits, even after you have left the company. It is also generally a violation of state and federal laws and/or procurement contracts in multiple fields if you work in finance, health, or anything defense-related. If an employer ever mandates that you use your own device for mandatory work-related functions, find a new job. It's the number one red flag that the company is a shit-show and indicates that there are a lot of other rules/regulations/etc that the company doesn't care about either. | | |
| ▲ | jjav 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree with most of your points but: > No employer with a functional legal department would ever be okay with an employee using their personal devices for work (unless they have MDM software on the devices partition the work data). This works the other way as well. While I (as an individual) have no legal departement, there is no way I'd ever be ok allowing work to touch anything on my devices, MDM or not. My devices are mine, they will contain zero work stuff. Any device that workplace wants me to use for work, will be provided by the company, not me. I'll never allow any overlap. (20 years ago I was at 100% overlap, no boundaries at all, but times have changed.) | |
| ▲ | supertrope 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Microsoft Authenticator | | |
| ▲ | gamblor956 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's an MFA not an MDM. If you don't know the difference you're absolutely in the population of people who should not be using their personal laptop for work. |
|
|
|
|
|
