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
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.)
Yeah the whole thing is kinda dumb on both ends. From the employees perspective it’s ridiculous to allow the company have any level of control over a device they own. From the company’s perspective, why would you want to allow access and/or have information that’s the company’s property on a device the company doesn’t own?
If I have a password for key company infrastructure stored on my personal phone, then the company fires me… well that seems like a problem a company would want to avoid. It could happen in any scenario, but significantly less likely if I have to turn in my company phone when my employment ends.
But hey the company saves a few bucks on buying phones and that helps the quarterly profits I guess.
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.
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.
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. 😌
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.
Separate profile and container. Idiot meme.
