Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Is your employer spying on you?

Transcript

Is your employer spying on you? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Don't
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry. How
0:16
Speaker 1: do Jerry? How's he going? I wish I wish we
0:22
Speaker 1: didn't have to pay money for playing music because I
0:25
Speaker 1: really wanted Maxwell's and I always feel like somebody's watching
0:28
Speaker 1: me to be or leading. You don't have to pay
0:29
Speaker 1: for your own rendition coming in at any time. No
0:36
Speaker 1: great song though, Yeah, And it turns out he's right,
0:40
Speaker 1: someone is watching. Well, he was cooked to the gills,
0:43
Speaker 1: which was his thing, was he did you not see
0:45
Speaker 1: the video? No? Oh man, he's like looking out the
0:48
Speaker 1: blinds and everything, dancing his living room. Yeah, he was
0:51
Speaker 1: cooked up. How was a kid? I didn't understand that that.
0:54
Speaker 1: I didn't either. Um, he was right though, that's the
0:58
Speaker 1: point cocaine or know. He was correct? Yeah, especially nowadays,
1:04
Speaker 1: like you don't need drugs to be paranoid. You can
1:07
Speaker 1: just like be paranoid and be totally correct. Uh yeah,
1:11
Speaker 1: you know, especially if you're gainfully employed. Yes, that is
1:15
Speaker 1: true because what I found out from this article, Chuck,
1:19
Speaker 1: is that if it's not the n S a eavesdropping
1:23
Speaker 1: on you or surveiling you. It's your employer. Yeah. And
1:26
Speaker 1: not only that, but you have implicitly agreed to be
1:31
Speaker 1: spied on, because it is no doubt somewhere in your
1:34
Speaker 1: work contract or your work agreement that they can do
1:40
Speaker 1: exactly that that would be explicitly agreed. You're just probably
1:44
Speaker 1: duped into it. What say, yeah, explicit Yeah, but I
1:48
Speaker 1: mean if you don't know that you agreed to it, yeah,
1:51
Speaker 1: because who reads that stuff? I know? It is the thing, like,
1:54
Speaker 1: there's a there's a growing trend among employers to basically
1:57
Speaker 1: slide some claws into your employee handbook that you have
2:01
Speaker 1: to sign, uh, your employment agreement applications sometimes have them
2:06
Speaker 1: now where it basically says I consent to being surveilled
2:09
Speaker 1: electronically in you know, X number of forms or any
2:13
Speaker 1: form you guys can come up with. And like you said,
2:16
Speaker 1: people don't read that and they're not aware of it.
2:19
Speaker 1: And the other devious part of the whole thing about
2:21
Speaker 1: employee surveillance is that they don't buy law. I have
2:25
Speaker 1: to tell you that you're being surveilled. Right. There's two states,
2:28
Speaker 1: Connecticut and Delaware that require employers say, hey, we're watching you,
2:34
Speaker 1: and Delaware barely even counts. I love Delaware. I was kidding. Yeah,
2:42
Speaker 1: it's the screen door capital, isn't it according to the Simpsons.
2:46
Speaker 1: I think, so we're going to Delaware. I've done some
2:49
Speaker 1: camping at the Delaware Water Gap. It's nice. Nice. Actually,
2:52
Speaker 1: I don't even think that's in Delaware though, is it not?
2:55
Speaker 1: To look that up? It might be in New Jersey.
2:56
Speaker 1: It's in the Aegean. That's funny. So I guess we
3:03
Speaker 1: kind of answered the question that this this Um episode asked,
3:08
Speaker 1: was is your employer spying on you? And the answer
3:11
Speaker 1: is almost decidedly yes. So we found from our research
3:15
Speaker 1: that stats are really old. It seems like there was
3:18
Speaker 1: a flurry of research and discussion in like the early
3:23
Speaker 1: to mid to late nineties when the Internet was new,
3:27
Speaker 1: and then it just died off because apparently employers won.
3:31
Speaker 1: Like there was there were ethical questions, there were legal
3:33
Speaker 1: questions like can this happen? And uh, everybody said yeah,
3:37
Speaker 1: Well the court said yeah totally. And if they're in
3:40
Speaker 1: your office and they're working on your computers, and yeah,
3:43
Speaker 1: you sure have the right. I do have some stats
3:45
Speaker 1: from and this is the most recent thing I could
3:47
Speaker 1: find is about three and a half years ago, which
3:50
Speaker 1: is brand new, Yeah, compared to other stuff. Yeah, a
3:53
Speaker 1: lot of these things are citing like surveys done in
3:56
Speaker 1: two thousand and two thousand one. That's a different world
3:58
Speaker 1: back then. I mean even current articles are using that
4:02
Speaker 1: like there's just no data out there, no shame. Well,
4:04
Speaker 1: here's some stuff from a few years ago. UM percent
4:08
Speaker 1: of employers have fired UH workers for email misuse at
4:13
Speaker 1: this point, for UM sixty of those were violating company policies,
4:20
Speaker 1: were inappropriate language. There must be some overlap because they're
4:24
Speaker 1: already over UM excessive personally used confidentiality breaching. Uhtent of
4:33
Speaker 1: employers have fired people for Internet misuse, not email, but internet,
4:38
Speaker 1: and that means surfing inappropriate content was of that, like
4:43
Speaker 1: you know, you're looking at porn at work, get fired
4:46
Speaker 1: for that. UM And then nowadays with social networking, UM
4:51
Speaker 1: they six sixty six percent they estimate or monitoring Internet
4:56
Speaker 1: connections to see what websites your browsing on a day
5:00
Speaker 1: to day basis. I think there's ridiculously low. There's no
5:04
Speaker 1: way that that's it. Well, I mean just because and
5:07
Speaker 1: then in the article points out just because they are
5:09
Speaker 1: set up to do so doesn't mean they are um
5:14
Speaker 1: like generally, the one guy in the article says they
5:18
Speaker 1: would be doing nothing but looking at activity if they
5:22
Speaker 1: were really spying on everyone all the time. They say, generally,
5:25
Speaker 1: it's if there's a problem with an employee or something
5:28
Speaker 1: and someone is flagged that they will probably start paying attention.
5:31
Speaker 1: But you know, this is all opinion. No one knows, right,
5:34
Speaker 1: you know, employees aren't being too terribly forthcoming. Our job
5:38
Speaker 1: is different though, because we with our research, we can
5:42
Speaker 1: be looking at virtually anything. You know, this stuff we've
5:45
Speaker 1: looked at online here. I can't tell you how many
5:47
Speaker 1: lists we must be on just from the research we've
5:50
Speaker 1: like the marijuana one alone. Yeah, it was like these
5:53
Speaker 1: guys do nothing. The research like human trafficking and and
5:57
Speaker 1: hookers and marijuana and bombmaking. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy
6:02
Speaker 1: and and we can We're all over social media, so
6:05
Speaker 1: that's part of our job. So yeah, no, I know,
6:07
Speaker 1: it's kind of It was different to see like the
6:09
Speaker 1: other side of it. But at the same time, I
6:11
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I really feel bad for like, you know,
6:13
Speaker 1: the average employee. If you go on to Twitter, no
6:18
Speaker 1: I have If you go onto Twitter or something for
6:20
Speaker 1: a minute or two, like you can get fired. Yeah,
6:23
Speaker 1: it's weird. My my chicken software job that I have
6:26
Speaker 1: before this one, the famous chicken software job. You know,
6:31
Speaker 1: nothing on the internet is applicable to what you do.
6:34
Speaker 1: So if the boss walks by and you're just checking
6:36
Speaker 1: the Brave score from ESPN and you feel like you
6:39
Speaker 1: have to hide it real quick, sure where now, I'm like,
6:42
Speaker 1: come on, you know you check a score, No big deal.
6:45
Speaker 1: And some employers don't care. I saw this one UM
6:49
Speaker 1: article from UH. It was some sort of a Christian
6:52
Speaker 1: organization that ended up firing employees, and he said, I
6:55
Speaker 1: didn't care if they were on Facebook and doing that
6:57
Speaker 1: other stuff, but when they started to talk some about
7:00
Speaker 1: the company is when they got riled up and fired people. Supposedly,
7:03
Speaker 1: there's UM that's what employers are looking for, is there.
7:10
Speaker 1: They're looking for employees that are, like you said, talking
7:13
Speaker 1: smack about the company, divulging company's secrets, ye leaking information.
7:18
Speaker 1: That's probably the biggest one they're looking for. And then
7:21
Speaker 1: um like grossly misusing time yea, or or like sexually
7:26
Speaker 1: harassing or something that's that one makes total sense sending
7:29
Speaker 1: inappropriate jokes around here, like the guy in the office
7:32
Speaker 1: ending like overt inappropriate emails all around the office. Then yeah,
7:37
Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna tag you. Right, So they aren't
7:40
Speaker 1: necessarily watching you at all times, but the system is
7:45
Speaker 1: most likely set up to where they can to where
7:48
Speaker 1: if you do something that is that tricks triggers a
7:52
Speaker 1: filter or something that somebody's going to get an email,
7:54
Speaker 1: they're going to examine it and it's going to get
7:56
Speaker 1: sent to HR if it fits the criteria. Right, yeah,
8:00
Speaker 1: pretty much, UM, But like you said, they could, I mean,
8:04
Speaker 1: they're most companies are set up now with what they
8:06
Speaker 1: call continuous since systematic surveillance. UM. So if they wanted
8:12
Speaker 1: to be bored out of their mind, they most companies
8:16
Speaker 1: could literally look at everything you're doing at all times.
8:20
Speaker 1: For this system had been for that having to watch
8:23
Speaker 1: all that exactly. So we said that, UM, employers don't
8:26
Speaker 1: have to tell you that they're surveilling you. As a
8:30
Speaker 1: matter of fact, legally speaking, they can lie and tell
8:34
Speaker 1: you that they're not surveilling you, and then if you
8:36
Speaker 1: bust them and take them to court, you will lose
8:39
Speaker 1: as far back as an employee for Pillsbury, you know, right, um. He.
8:47
Speaker 1: I guess he didn't really like his job that much.
8:50
Speaker 1: He was known for talking smack and in two different
8:53
Speaker 1: emails um which he assured were confidential, weren't used for
8:58
Speaker 1: disciplinary action and just were his own. Um, he said
9:03
Speaker 1: that they should kill the backstabbing bastards about one group
9:06
Speaker 1: of people, and he referred to the company Christmas party
9:09
Speaker 1: as the Jim Jones kool Aid affair. And he got
9:12
Speaker 1: fired for every company Christmas party, right, He got fired
9:16
Speaker 1: for that, but he took Pillsbury court. Was like, they
9:19
Speaker 1: said that they weren't paying attention to these emails and
9:21
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't use them against me, And the court said,
9:23
Speaker 1: so what man, It's like you said, the court has
9:26
Speaker 1: decided that if you were using their device, or you're
9:30
Speaker 1: using their network on their time that's even off of
9:34
Speaker 1: their time, especially on their time, then they have a
9:38
Speaker 1: right to protect their business by monitoring what's going on
9:44
Speaker 1: with their business devices, on their business network with their employees. Yeah.
9:48
Speaker 1: I think within reasons, some of that does make sense.
9:50
Speaker 1: You don't want your employees divulging secrets or sending lured
9:54
Speaker 1: emails around to everyone and all the all of a sudden,
9:56
Speaker 1: you're slapt with the lawsuit um, which I think is
9:59
Speaker 1: what it ultimately boils. And so some of this is understandable,
10:02
Speaker 1: I get it. The thing is, though, is it's so
10:07
Speaker 1: slippery of it's already just so draconian. Then it's there's
10:14
Speaker 1: it's just completely lopsided, like how do you surveil your
10:18
Speaker 1: own employer? How do you do that? Like shouldn't it
10:21
Speaker 1: be shouldn't it be more balanced than that? I mean,
10:25
Speaker 1: the whole thing just let me get on my soapbox
10:28
Speaker 1: and we'll get down a breast text. But the whole
10:31
Speaker 1: thing stinks of you just being indebted to your employer
10:36
Speaker 1: for giving you a job, Like it just kind of
10:39
Speaker 1: has that whole mentality attached to it, like your employer
10:42
Speaker 1: can do whatever you want. If you don't like it,
10:44
Speaker 1: you can go hit the breadline, Rusky. You know, yeah,
10:50
Speaker 1: I'm done. No, I'm with you, man. That's it's definitely like,
10:54
Speaker 1: you know, as an employee, to feel like someone has
10:56
Speaker 1: their foot on your throat. There's fifty people in Anglory
11:00
Speaker 1: who would kill for your job right now, we could
11:02
Speaker 1: get them over here, right you know, it just makes
11:05
Speaker 1: me sad. It is sad. That is the state of things. Uh, So,
11:09
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk a little bit about how
11:11
Speaker 1: how they're spying on you. And there are many ways, um,
11:16
Speaker 1: but there five pretty likely ones that you probably have
11:20
Speaker 1: in your office, um, and we'll go through them in
11:22
Speaker 1: more detail. But I had a sixth that added, well
11:26
Speaker 1: we'll hear in a minute, Okay, packet sniffers, log files,
11:30
Speaker 1: desktop monitoring programs, phones, and close circuit cameras. And I'm
11:35
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say phones as a two parter
11:36
Speaker 1: because the company issues cell phones, um as well, So
11:41
Speaker 1: what's your what's your other one? GPS. GPS was kept
11:45
Speaker 1: out of this because that was one of the original
11:47
Speaker 1: means of surveillance in the workplace, Yeah, with the little
11:51
Speaker 1: trackers that they put on like delivery trucks or whatever
11:53
Speaker 1: to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do.
11:56
Speaker 1: But now it's been extended to things like employees cell phones.
12:00
Speaker 1: About three percent of companies track their employees using GPS
12:05
Speaker 1: by tracking their cell phone, and then one percent track
12:07
Speaker 1: their employees by tracking um they're like there keyless entry cards, man. Yeah,
12:16
Speaker 1: well one percent. Thankfully that's like, I mean, what company
12:20
Speaker 1: is that, I don't know, but it's probably a pretty
12:23
Speaker 1: pedantic company. That's not an enjoyable company. I would think
12:26
Speaker 1: it's like a highly sensitive, like you know, someone who's
12:28
Speaker 1: making Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Well, they are
12:34
Speaker 1: the one percent at least. Let's dig in and let's
12:37
Speaker 1: start with packet sniffers. I love that those two words
12:40
Speaker 1: together just yeah, they're great packets sniffers. Yes, they've been
12:44
Speaker 1: around for a while, it's nothing new. Uh. And they
12:47
Speaker 1: monitor the computer network and they performed tests and diagnostic
12:53
Speaker 1: tests and troubleshoot all sorts of things. So they're not
12:56
Speaker 1: inherently they're just too uh root out you know what
13:01
Speaker 1: you're emailing to your buddy. No, it's like that's how
13:05
Speaker 1: they sort of spam out from your regular stuff. Yeah.
13:09
Speaker 1: So it's not nefarious in and of itself, but it
13:12
Speaker 1: can be when it's set to something called promiscuous mode,
13:15
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty funny too. Yeah, std mode,
13:18
Speaker 1: And that means instead of just looking for certain keywords
13:23
Speaker 1: that like, they can basically look at all of it.
13:25
Speaker 1: And a packet is just a piece of information. Well,
13:29
Speaker 1: it's like if you send me an email saying, hey, Josh,
13:32
Speaker 1: that might be split up into X number of packets
13:35
Speaker 1: and then my computer busily recombines it into the full
13:40
Speaker 1: email and and combines the packets together, and the packets
13:43
Speaker 1: sniffer to sniffs all those packets to look for Hi, Josh,
13:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring a gun to work tomorrow and you're
13:50
Speaker 1: in trouble. That's a bad way to do that. You're
13:53
Speaker 1: not supposed to send a warning. Yeah, you're not supposed
13:57
Speaker 1: to do that at all. Yeah. Hell, let's not give
13:59
Speaker 1: advice to office shooters. I think that's a wise policy.
14:04
Speaker 1: What you would do is give advice, say Josh, don't
14:06
Speaker 1: come into work tomorrow because that happens. Oh really Yeah,
14:09
Speaker 1: with with shooters, they'll they'll say sometimes they'll they will
14:13
Speaker 1: have warned like the one person they like at work. Okay,
14:15
Speaker 1: if I were you, I wouldn't come in tomorrow, which
14:18
Speaker 1: is when you pick up the phone. You have a
14:20
Speaker 1: moral obligation to protect the lives of us. You don't say, sweet,
14:24
Speaker 1: I don't have to come in tomorrow, right, you know,
14:26
Speaker 1: crazy guy gave me the day off. Yeah, called the cops. Um.
14:30
Speaker 1: So with the packet sniffing, they're filtered, and unfiltered modes
14:33
Speaker 1: and unfiltered will will capture everything, and filtered is when
14:37
Speaker 1: they're looking for like keywords or in any sort of
14:40
Speaker 1: specific data like I would imagine the name of your company. Ye,
14:47
Speaker 1: like dangerous words like like going, um, drug related words,
14:54
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Kilo, sure in my trunk, right,
15:00
Speaker 1: that kind of thing at my desk. That's a bad
15:04
Speaker 1: one with kilo. Oh yeah, Kilo at my desk. Um.
15:07
Speaker 1: So if something is packet sniffing, they can see what
15:11
Speaker 1: websites you're visiting, what you're doing there, what you're downloading,
15:14
Speaker 1: the emails you're sending, what's in those emails, basically any
15:18
Speaker 1: everything you're doing. And you can set up a packet
15:20
Speaker 1: sniffer on like say your computer, your systematman can set
15:25
Speaker 1: it up on your computer, and um it would it
15:28
Speaker 1: would basically just be able to see what your computer
15:31
Speaker 1: is doing, what websites is visiting, what emails it's sending.
15:35
Speaker 1: It's basically just like eaves dropping onto a transmission cable.
15:39
Speaker 1: Yeah you know. Um. The thing is is that kind
15:43
Speaker 1: of raises some legal um ramifications, which we'll talk about later.
15:50
Speaker 1: So there's a certain way you have to do it.
15:52
Speaker 1: But if you put that packet sniffer on like a
15:56
Speaker 1: your server for the whole company's network, it can pick
15:59
Speaker 1: up all all that traffic. Yeah, if it's right there
16:01
Speaker 1: in the middle of the action. Yeah. Yeah. And by
16:03
Speaker 1: the way, if you're digging this kind of stuff, if
16:05
Speaker 1: you like words like packet sniffers and servers and Kilo,
16:10
Speaker 1: then you should go listen to tech Stuff, which is
16:14
Speaker 1: like an all tech, very good UM related podcasts here
16:18
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Yeah, from our colleagues
16:22
Speaker 1: Jonathan and Lauren, and I bet they have covered this. Uh,
16:25
Speaker 1: I'm better than we are about to, which is why
16:28
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, go listen to those guys. If you're
16:30
Speaker 1: liking this for the less jokey, more informative version, more
16:34
Speaker 1: pun filled. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Another way, and this
16:38
Speaker 1: is the one that's really um draconian and common, is
16:44
Speaker 1: a desktop monitoring software. So if you're sitting at your
16:48
Speaker 1: computer and you're typing something in, you're sending a signal
16:51
Speaker 1: throughout your computer. And there are software systems that either
16:56
Speaker 1: physically installed hard on your laptop hard or remotely installed
17:02
Speaker 1: the trojan horse, like, hey, install this program because you
17:06
Speaker 1: need it, but there's also this hidden program in there
17:10
Speaker 1: that you don't need and you don't even know, and
17:12
Speaker 1: it's going to track all of your activity on your computer.
17:16
Speaker 1: I would guess that if you're getting if your employers
17:21
Speaker 1: tracking you're spying on you, they're not going to use
17:24
Speaker 1: the troch and horses more like a hacker tactic. But
17:27
Speaker 1: the result is the same. I mean, there's a program
17:29
Speaker 1: on there now where whereas like a packet sniffer is
17:33
Speaker 1: keeping track of like where your computer is going on
17:36
Speaker 1: the Internet. Remember that old Microsoft commercial where do you
17:38
Speaker 1: want to go today? The old Windows commercial. So it's
17:41
Speaker 1: keeping track of where you're going today and who you're
17:43
Speaker 1: talking to along the way. This um the desktop monitoring programs.
17:48
Speaker 1: That's like any key stroke you make is logging, and
17:53
Speaker 1: so you don't you can be writing a note to
17:56
Speaker 1: yourself that you never save. You just trash afterwards. You
18:00
Speaker 1: never save it, so it's never saved onto your system.
18:03
Speaker 1: This desktop monitoring system is keeping track of your key strokes,
18:08
Speaker 1: so it sees everything that goes on on your on
18:11
Speaker 1: your desktop. Yeah, and when you get that company issued laptop,
18:14
Speaker 1: it very likely already has it installed. And again the
18:19
Speaker 1: system admin can remotely install it because you're on the
18:22
Speaker 1: same network as them and they have administrative sway over
18:27
Speaker 1: your computer. They're like Svengali or if the I T
18:30
Speaker 1: guy comes by and says the new drow leptop for
18:32
Speaker 1: an hour because they need to install some sort of
18:34
Speaker 1: program that sounds familiar. Beware of that of that message.
18:40
Speaker 1: You know that that that impression was dead on. Okay, Um,
18:46
Speaker 1: there are alert systems that are on some of these programs.
18:50
Speaker 1: Oh wait, hold on, before we move on to alert systems,
18:53
Speaker 1: there's a that desktop monitoring thing. So with key strokes,
18:57
Speaker 1: you know, Um, it's it's picking up all the key
19:00
Speaker 1: strokes and it's basically redirecting them to whoever's watching your
19:04
Speaker 1: computer at that moment. And so maybe they have a
19:07
Speaker 1: text file that's open and it's just seeing what's being
19:10
Speaker 1: typed as it's going on, or it can be saved
19:13
Speaker 1: for later as a text file and then like emailed
19:15
Speaker 1: to the system admin, or it can the same programs
19:21
Speaker 1: can intersect what's being sent to your video card or
19:24
Speaker 1: what your video card is sending out to your monitor
19:27
Speaker 1: and redirected, split and then redirected to your system admin
19:31
Speaker 1: or whoever spying on you, and they can recreate what
19:34
Speaker 1: you're seeing on your desktop by intercepting your video cards.
19:38
Speaker 1: Trans transmission within your operating system. That's that's some serious
19:44
Speaker 1: spying on you, some serious spying uh in the alert
19:47
Speaker 1: system I mentioned, that's part of the monitoring software UM.
19:51
Speaker 1: Where again sort of like keywords are certain alerts or
19:54
Speaker 1: maybe websites, whereas some companies just block websites altogether. Yeah,
19:59
Speaker 1: like face booker, you know, and anything they consider to
20:02
Speaker 1: be a time waster UM or it can be set
20:06
Speaker 1: up on an alert system where they just know that
20:09
Speaker 1: you were spending way too much time online gambling if
20:14
Speaker 1: you had a problem, which would be any time if
20:16
Speaker 1: your work, you know, I doubt if they allow for
20:19
Speaker 1: like payoffs you get ten minutes today the homeline online
20:24
Speaker 1: or otherwise you can play craps at your desk. Right.
20:29
Speaker 1: Another way, if you think that hey, I delete all
20:33
Speaker 1: my stuff and I cover my paper trail, my e
20:37
Speaker 1: paper trail, you were wrong because you have log files
20:41
Speaker 1: in your computer. That um, even when you've deleted something,
20:45
Speaker 1: there's a log file somewhere in your computer. Most likely
20:49
Speaker 1: that that logs exactly what you have just done. Right,
20:53
Speaker 1: Like when you delete that email, it's not really deleted
20:56
Speaker 1: at least initially. Yeah, and those log files can be
21:00
Speaker 1: gotten to remotely if you're on the same network again,
21:03
Speaker 1: or they can set up, UM, some sort of program
21:07
Speaker 1: that emails log files to them, especially ones that are
21:11
Speaker 1: trigger some sort of filter and log files. I mean
21:14
Speaker 1: those are normal, they're they're part of your operating system.
21:18
Speaker 1: But um, they can be gotten to. In other words,
21:21
Speaker 1: they can be used against you. That's true. Yeah, and
21:25
Speaker 1: normally they're used for bugs, or originally they were used
21:29
Speaker 1: for bugs. Yeah. It's like the the computer tracked its
21:32
Speaker 1: own activity and then if something happened, somebody who could
21:37
Speaker 1: read that kind of code could go back and say, oh, well,
21:41
Speaker 1: here's here's the problem, this is why it crashed, and
21:43
Speaker 1: then fix that bug. I bet desktop monitoring software is
21:48
Speaker 1: the bulk of how they're getting this information. Uh. Yeah,
21:53
Speaker 1: I would imagine that like a company that's involved in
21:56
Speaker 1: this does um desktop monitoring and packet sniffing, packets sniffing. UM.
22:04
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk about how about this after
22:06
Speaker 1: this message break, we'll talk about old school eavesdropping, the
22:10
Speaker 1: wire style. All right, you don't necessarily even have to
22:24
Speaker 1: be on your laptop to get spied on because your
22:26
Speaker 1: phone might be bugged. That's true. I guess the simplest
22:30
Speaker 1: way to say right. Well, yeah, especially if you have
22:33
Speaker 1: a work issued phone or iPad or whatever. You're um like,
22:39
Speaker 1: they can just totally eavesdrop on that. But if it's
22:41
Speaker 1: like your phone at your desk, there's almost a hundred
22:46
Speaker 1: percent chances being eaves dropped on. Well, it's just twelve
22:49
Speaker 1: in here. Well. So, another very very old statistic that
22:55
Speaker 1: I still see sighted today is that companies eaves dropped
22:59
Speaker 1: on like four million calls a year. But that was
23:02
Speaker 1: from nine seven, number right right, which I find it
23:07
Speaker 1: sad that the a c l U hasn't done any
23:10
Speaker 1: report on workplace surveillance, workplace spying, anything like that since
23:15
Speaker 1: the late nineties. It's two thousand, fourteen a c l U.
23:19
Speaker 1: Let's get on the ball. Yeah, I mean it's a
23:22
Speaker 1: it's not all Naziason clansman, you know, like there are
23:24
Speaker 1: other issues to be addressed. You just did jazz hands
23:28
Speaker 1: to Nazeason klansmen. Um. Here's the thing though, with wire tapping,
23:34
Speaker 1: supposedly federal losses, you can't wire tap because you need
23:38
Speaker 1: consent from the party, But the Privacy Electronic Communication Privacy
23:43
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen six said they can eavesdrop on job
23:48
Speaker 1: related talk. And how do you know if it's job
23:50
Speaker 1: related unless you listen in for a few minutes first, right,
23:54
Speaker 1: so they're protected, it's all. It's a loophole. They can
23:56
Speaker 1: listen to all your calls. Yeah all don't know how
24:00
Speaker 1: how long they can listen, but long enough to determine
24:03
Speaker 1: if you're going to be talking about work. So that's
24:05
Speaker 1: that's a pretty wide margin. I think a couple of
24:07
Speaker 1: minutes is is UM routinely argued for in cases like that,
24:13
Speaker 1: and the UM Electronic Protection Act UM, the Electronic Communications
24:20
Speaker 1: Privacy Act says there's two types of communication and once
24:24
Speaker 1: protected and one's not stored, communication is not UM. Communication
24:30
Speaker 1: that's simultaneously transmitted and received is protected. And they were
24:36
Speaker 1: staying like they were basically protecting a phone call because
24:40
Speaker 1: we could possibly come in the future to supplant the
24:43
Speaker 1: phone covers exactly. So phone calls are very much protected
24:47
Speaker 1: again except for that work around with with business where
24:50
Speaker 1: they can't tell if it's personel or business and for
24:53
Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes. But then emails fall into
24:56
Speaker 1: this weird category because emails are transmitted there in motion UM,
25:01
Speaker 1: so apparently you can't you can't scoop up people's emails
25:06
Speaker 1: when they're being transmitted. But emails also have the characteristic
25:09
Speaker 1: of sitting on an outgoing server for a minute, right, well,
25:12
Speaker 1: not a minute, but for however long it takes before
25:15
Speaker 1: it's sent. It could be a second, and that still
25:17
Speaker 1: counts even less. While it's sitting on that server, it
25:19
Speaker 1: can be copied and analyzed and all sorts of stuff
25:23
Speaker 1: can be totally within the law. Yeah, and I love
25:25
Speaker 1: the analogy. And here if that doesn't quite make sense, um,
25:29
Speaker 1: they drop the analogy of It's like if your standard
25:31
Speaker 1: mail that your mail carrier delivers to your house. While
25:34
Speaker 1: they're delivering it, you can't, you know, you can't go
25:38
Speaker 1: open your neighbor's mail. But once it sits in that mailbox,
25:41
Speaker 1: then you can go read your neighbor's mail. But you
25:44
Speaker 1: can't do that though, that's insane. No, you can't. You
25:47
Speaker 1: can't do that with your neighbor's mail. You can't with
25:49
Speaker 1: email exactly. And you have said quite accurately that the
25:55
Speaker 1: court generally sides with well, they side with citizens when
26:01
Speaker 1: it comes to privacy in general, But once you become
26:04
Speaker 1: an employee, the employer has most of the almost exclusively
26:10
Speaker 1: they've ruled in favor of the employer, because the network
26:14
Speaker 1: belongs to the employer. UM, and the devices often belong
26:19
Speaker 1: to the employer, And we should say that's a trend
26:22
Speaker 1: that may be going away. There's a UM there's something
26:25
Speaker 1: called bring your own device movement. Yeah, where companies are
26:31
Speaker 1: starting to basically say, you need to supply your own computer,
26:35
Speaker 1: You definitely need to supply your own phone. Maybe you
26:38
Speaker 1: need to supply your own iPad. Perhaps we'll give you
26:41
Speaker 1: a little bit of a stipend to offset the cost
26:45
Speaker 1: of using your own phone. But UM, that raises a
26:50
Speaker 1: lot of questions about the legality then of snooping on
26:56
Speaker 1: you while you're not on your company's network. That's me.
27:00
Speaker 1: I bought my own laptop right because I wanted to Mac. Yeah,
27:04
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give me one, so I was like, all right,
27:06
Speaker 1: I'll go buy one and that's what I use exclusively.
27:08
Speaker 1: And then as long as you're not on the company network,
27:12
Speaker 1: you're not you should not be subject to any kind
27:15
Speaker 1: of snooping or spying. Well, they can't, but if they do,
27:19
Speaker 1: you would have a pretty good lawsuit on your hands.
27:21
Speaker 1: But if they had bought that Mac for you, or
27:24
Speaker 1: if your Mac is on the company network, they are
27:29
Speaker 1: virtually free to do to look at whatever they want.
27:32
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, but when I am not at work,
27:34
Speaker 1: I'm not on the company network. That's good. So there
27:38
Speaker 1: it is impossible for them to know what I'm doing, right,
27:41
Speaker 1: But I think I would guess. Also, I'm not a lawyer,
27:46
Speaker 1: but if you opened up, say your personal email account
27:51
Speaker 1: on the company network, if they had software, and I'm
27:55
Speaker 1: I fully believe that this exists, um, that could just
28:00
Speaker 1: basically go in and like copy all the files in
28:03
Speaker 1: your personal email while you're on the company network. That
28:07
Speaker 1: that would be legal. Yeah, And don't and don't be
28:10
Speaker 1: fooled by that htt P S in front of your
28:13
Speaker 1: Facebook account, because that is not protecting you like you
28:16
Speaker 1: think it is, right if you're at work and it's
28:19
Speaker 1: supposed to the hyper hypertext Transfer protocols secure, it's not
28:24
Speaker 1: secure when you're at work on the work network. So
28:28
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what you can do about all this
28:31
Speaker 1: in a minute. We've got another message break, So chuck um,
28:39
Speaker 1: if you if you six, if your employer doesn't tell
28:42
Speaker 1: you that you are being surveiled, and you want to know, like,
28:46
Speaker 1: how could you possibly find out that kind of thing? Well,
28:49
Speaker 1: I would recommend reading the article how to Tell if
28:52
Speaker 1: your boss is spying on you in Forbes from about
28:55
Speaker 1: a year and a half ago. Um, but that's current
28:58
Speaker 1: for this topic. It is. I'm gonna summary right some
29:00
Speaker 1: of it here though, because it's a great article. Uh.
29:02
Speaker 1: They said, whether or not you can tell it depends
29:04
Speaker 1: a lot on where it's being done. If it's um,
29:07
Speaker 1: they said, if it's upstream at the firewall, it's gonna
29:09
Speaker 1: be hard for you to know. But at that point
29:13
Speaker 1: in the stream, they're probably just gonna be able to tell,
29:15
Speaker 1: like what websites you're going to. If they want to
29:17
Speaker 1: get more granular and like poke into your emails and
29:20
Speaker 1: see what you're doing, then um, they're gonna have to
29:24
Speaker 1: be using some sort of monitoring software. And if you
29:28
Speaker 1: want to check and see if that is running on
29:29
Speaker 1: your computer. Um, if you have a PC, you can
29:32
Speaker 1: go hit control all delete, pull up your task Manager
29:35
Speaker 1: and go to the processes tab and then look at
29:38
Speaker 1: all your process On a Mac. Um, I just typed
29:41
Speaker 1: in activity monitor and that's where you want to end up.
29:45
Speaker 1: And so like it's gonna bring up these really weirdly
29:48
Speaker 1: named dot e x E file like everything that your
29:51
Speaker 1: computer is doing that you don't even know what's doing
29:54
Speaker 1: and look at the names they say, you can compare yours.
29:58
Speaker 1: If you're at work, just put your laptop and I
30:00
Speaker 1: to your cubicle buddy and see if the same processes
30:03
Speaker 1: are running. If they're the same, that doesn't help you much.
30:05
Speaker 1: But if you have something running that they don't, then
30:08
Speaker 1: that might be a red flag. Well, it could help you,
30:10
Speaker 1: and that like you're both employees and you're both being
30:12
Speaker 1: surveilled at the same time. True, but it won't help
30:14
Speaker 1: you really know necessarily. Yeah, but you can also like
30:18
Speaker 1: search for those names on on the internet, right, Yeah,
30:22
Speaker 1: you can. If anything stands out as something you've never
30:24
Speaker 1: heard of, just google it and UM see if it's
30:28
Speaker 1: spyware and then go check it out. UM. One of
30:31
Speaker 1: the funny things though, is they point out in this
30:33
Speaker 1: article is that spyware programs are flagged by anti virus
30:39
Speaker 1: and malware programs is malicious. So UM companies are making
30:45
Speaker 1: as what they call white lists, so the I T
30:49
Speaker 1: Department knows uh to say, no, this isn't bad, and
30:55
Speaker 1: so I need to put it on a separate list.
30:58
Speaker 1: And they said in many cases those lists public Okay,
31:02
Speaker 1: So apparently you can tell that way. I'm not really
31:04
Speaker 1: sure how that works though, but it is in the
31:07
Speaker 1: article that I mentioned in Forbes. I mean that I
31:10
Speaker 1: bet tech stuff has a better step by step guide.
31:13
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I mean look at your processes, see
31:16
Speaker 1: what's running. Yeah, and then once you find out that
31:18
Speaker 1: your company is surveiling you, you have zero recourse against it. Yeah,
31:23
Speaker 1: and we were talking earlier. If you do look at
31:25
Speaker 1: your processes, it might have an obvious name like what
31:28
Speaker 1: what did you say? Like we are watching you dot
31:30
Speaker 1: e xc. Yeah, but it might not because a lot
31:33
Speaker 1: of these are disguised. So um, like everything's cool dot
31:37
Speaker 1: ex um. And there's, like I said, very little you
31:45
Speaker 1: can do if not nothing. But luckily, the courts are
31:49
Speaker 1: starting to rule or have on one specific thing in
31:53
Speaker 1: favor of employees or people seeking employment. Um. There was
31:57
Speaker 1: a growing trend among companies where they were demanding the
32:01
Speaker 1: social media passwords and log in for like Facebook pages
32:07
Speaker 1: and stuff like that when the applicants Facebook page wasn't
32:10
Speaker 1: publicly visible. But yeah, and people would hand that over yeah,
32:14
Speaker 1: and they were ye yes of the as a condition
32:18
Speaker 1: of even being considered. Um. And so some states started
32:22
Speaker 1: to outlaw that pretty quick, which is good. Yeah, that's terrible.
32:26
Speaker 1: I mean I don't do anything on Facebook that anyone
32:29
Speaker 1: would care about, but a lot of people do. So
32:33
Speaker 1: if you're looking for a job, if you have a job,
32:38
Speaker 1: especially if you suspect your company is more straight laced
32:40
Speaker 1: than you are, you just want to post everything with
32:45
Speaker 1: the idea, send every email, is it, every website with
32:49
Speaker 1: the idea that you're being watched and you have zero
32:54
Speaker 1: expectation of privacy. The courts have found when you are
32:57
Speaker 1: on a company network, on a company device, and then
33:00
Speaker 1: even beyond that, there have been instances where people have
33:04
Speaker 1: been fired and lost lawsuits as a result um for
33:08
Speaker 1: stuff they did that was maybe related to work, that
33:11
Speaker 1: was not on the company device, that was not on
33:13
Speaker 1: company time or on a company network, but it was
33:16
Speaker 1: like they were blogging about, you know, making fun of
33:18
Speaker 1: their coworkers. Still got fired. So basically, you just have
33:22
Speaker 1: to I don't know what you have to do, but
33:25
Speaker 1: it's sad. It's a sad state of affairs when even
33:27
Speaker 1: your own personal stuff, your own personal opinions done on
33:31
Speaker 1: your personal blog like can get you fired legally. Oh
33:35
Speaker 1: and we didn't even mention cameras. Oh yeah, most offices
33:39
Speaker 1: have cameras in their office. Um, I know we do.
33:44
Speaker 1: We do. Yeah, well, you know the little bubble and
33:48
Speaker 1: the ceilings. As I thought they were rain collectors, not
33:55
Speaker 1: rank collectors. Um. Yeah, companies have camera set up to
33:58
Speaker 1: uh for fitzcreepers and like, um, theft. Yeah, but they
34:04
Speaker 1: can also see you know, if you're having a liaison
34:07
Speaker 1: in a coffee room. Well they can, like if you're
34:10
Speaker 1: that dumb, they can watch what you're doing on your computer.
34:14
Speaker 1: They can surveil your computer, your desktop, just from watching
34:17
Speaker 1: your pointed towards your screen. This is where Josh said,
34:21
Speaker 1: you haven't You've got like four of those above your desk. Shoot.
34:25
Speaker 1: Uh and did you read the IKEA story that I
34:28
Speaker 1: sent you? I did. It seemed above and beyond the
34:31
Speaker 1: um the realm of acceptability. Yeah. A woman, a twelve
34:35
Speaker 1: year employee. UM, sort of high level. She was deputy
34:38
Speaker 1: director of Communications and Merchandizing for all of France. I'd
34:41
Speaker 1: call it fairly high level for stores and France is
34:44
Speaker 1: their third biggest market. Really. Her name was Virginie Pauline.
34:50
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a weal better French way to say that,
34:53
Speaker 1: but she got hepotetic c and had to take a
34:56
Speaker 1: year off of work. And IKEA thought, well, I don't
35:00
Speaker 1: I think she's as sick as she says, And so
35:02
Speaker 1: we're gonna hire a private investigator. We're going to give
35:04
Speaker 1: them their her social Security number, her personal cell phone number,
35:08
Speaker 1: her bank account details, and whatever else they need and
35:11
Speaker 1: you go find out how sick she is. And a
35:13
Speaker 1: lot of those things were ill gotten to from corrupt
35:16
Speaker 1: like public workers, cops and stuff. So people were rightfully outraged.
35:22
Speaker 1: And I think it's in court still because this was
35:24
Speaker 1: late last year, uh, seeing if they broke the law
35:27
Speaker 1: by doing this. But apparently IKEA has been doing this,
35:31
Speaker 1: like said the hundreds of employees of course, of the
35:33
Speaker 1: last decade. So when you get that crappy furniture that
35:37
Speaker 1: you don't know how to put together, or the lamp
35:39
Speaker 1: ad if you like that ad, someone posted that it's
35:42
Speaker 1: really good, it's great. Yeah, the lamp doesn't move apparently, No,
35:47
Speaker 1: I think I said it was computer animated. It's just
35:49
Speaker 1: a lamp. What towns Spike Jones that made it seem
35:53
Speaker 1: real with his Oh it was a Spike Jones joint. Yeah.
35:57
Speaker 1: Nice talented dude, he really is. And her was great, Um,
36:01
Speaker 1: and I want to point out one thing you said.
36:03
Speaker 1: If you said, if you think your company is more
36:05
Speaker 1: straight laced, I would even say, like, if you think
36:07
Speaker 1: your company like, no way would they do this, don't
36:10
Speaker 1: be fooled. You know, if you think it's just some
36:13
Speaker 1: super cool, hip, hipster young company, they might be spine
36:17
Speaker 1: on you as well. Yeah, I mean if they want
36:19
Speaker 1: you out, like you're just giving them dirt. Pretty much,
36:24
Speaker 1: in any tech type company or anything that has any
36:27
Speaker 1: sort of trade secrets, I'm sure you're being heavily, heavily monitored.
36:33
Speaker 1: So I guess go forth and relax everybody. Yeah, I
36:36
Speaker 1: feel good about everything. Uh. If you want to know
36:39
Speaker 1: more about being surveiled at work again, go check out
36:42
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. You'll like it. Uh. And you can type
36:45
Speaker 1: the keywords employers spying in the search part how stuff
36:52
Speaker 1: works dot Com. It will likely bring up this article.
36:55
Speaker 1: And since I said search parts, time for a listener mail.
36:59
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Norbert the Hungarian. Hi guys, this
37:04
Speaker 1: is Norbert. I live in a small town in Hungary,
37:07
Speaker 1: about forty miles away from the capitol. I always listened
37:10
Speaker 1: to the podcast while commuting and love the show. I
37:12
Speaker 1: work for an I t company, Hey, how about that?
37:16
Speaker 1: Think about that? Giving email, chat and phone support for
37:19
Speaker 1: American users, mostly from New Jersey, North Carolina, and Illinois.
37:23
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. I'm not sure whether it is
37:25
Speaker 1: due to cultural differences, but what I have noticed is
37:29
Speaker 1: that almost none of the users greet us he said, great, us,
37:35
Speaker 1: sweet norber when we answer their calls or when receiving
37:39
Speaker 1: emails from them, neither a simple hey nor a good morning. Nothing.
37:44
Speaker 1: The conversation usually starts off from their side with a
37:47
Speaker 1: long yeah. Is there a reason why this is so? Guys?
37:52
Speaker 1: I also need to add talking to you who norbert us? No,
37:57
Speaker 1: I'm saying like who people who go Yeah, New Jersey,
38:00
Speaker 1: North Carolina and Illinois. But it's like the boss from
38:03
Speaker 1: office space. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I
38:06
Speaker 1: also need to add to this that here we are
38:09
Speaker 1: talking about educated people and not end users, street people.
38:14
Speaker 1: That's what he's over here. In Europe, this is unacceptable.
38:18
Speaker 1: It is a sign of disrespect and ignorance as this
38:20
Speaker 1: normal practice in US. Should I worry about it? You
38:22
Speaker 1: guys could answer? That would be amazing. Yeah, norm, Here's
38:28
Speaker 1: my deal is you can sniff out sales calls and things,
38:32
Speaker 1: and I'm never friendly to those. In fact, most of
38:35
Speaker 1: those aren't even a person. Now it's just a recording. Yeah, right,
38:39
Speaker 1: you know, but um, if you are offering I T support,
38:43
Speaker 1: if it's unsolicited cold calls, I am not surprised that
38:47
Speaker 1: there there he's getting that. But if like this is
38:50
Speaker 1: the company, Yeah, he said he's giving email, chat and
38:53
Speaker 1: phone support. So he's trying to So I guess he's
38:57
Speaker 1: responding to a request. I would guess then, right, I guess.
39:00
Speaker 1: The only thing I can think of, Norbert, is that
39:02
Speaker 1: maybe there you're supporting them because something's not working and
39:06
Speaker 1: so they're ticked off. Maybe. Yeah, Americans get stressed out
39:09
Speaker 1: when computer's malfunction. Yeah, and there's a tendency to shoot
39:12
Speaker 1: the messenger in all cultures. I think. Yeah. I think
39:16
Speaker 1: we've said yeah to start every sentence in the last
39:19
Speaker 1: like thirty seconds. Anyway, Norbert, I apologize on behalf of Americans.
39:22
Speaker 1: And if you ever call me buddy, I'm gonna say, hey, Norbert,
39:25
Speaker 1: how are you doing, buddy? Good morning Norbert, and then
39:28
Speaker 1: we'll just get going from there. That's a T shirt.
39:31
Speaker 1: Get what good morning, Norbert? Yeah? Yeah? Have you ever
39:35
Speaker 1: been hungry? I have you have to. Yeah, you mean
39:38
Speaker 1: I went to Budapest. It's beautiful. That's where I went.
39:40
Speaker 1: I thought it was beautiful, to one of the most
39:42
Speaker 1: beautiful cities around. Yeah, and it was inexpensive and um,
39:46
Speaker 1: the people were beautiful and nice, museums were great. Did
39:49
Speaker 1: you go to the hospital in the rock? Uh? Now,
39:52
Speaker 1: what's up? It's this cavern system underneath Budapest that was
39:58
Speaker 1: converted in the thirty into a secret bunker and hospital
40:04
Speaker 1: and like power plant to where the city could hide
40:08
Speaker 1: under the city. And it came in Handy and World
40:11
Speaker 1: War two and during the Cold War, and it was
40:13
Speaker 1: a secret up until like the sixties, seventies, maybe eighties,
40:17
Speaker 1: maybe like until the end of communism in Hungary. Um,
40:21
Speaker 1: it was in the pest side, I believe. Yeah, but
40:27
Speaker 1: it's it's this amazing museum now filled with um mannequins,
40:32
Speaker 1: dummies who are like being having surgery performed upon them.
40:36
Speaker 1: Some are like bleeding. It's supposed to take place in
40:39
Speaker 1: the context of war. There's a mannequins screaming. I didn't
40:42
Speaker 1: even know they made those things. But it's really awesome.
40:45
Speaker 1: Like they have old timey medical equipment and if you
40:48
Speaker 1: go on a tour of this museum. The last tour
40:51
Speaker 1: of the night is a flashlight tour, so they turn
40:54
Speaker 1: all the lights out and you're walking around with flashlights
40:57
Speaker 1: and like coming like face to face with these like
40:59
Speaker 1: dumb means when you come around the corner, it is
41:02
Speaker 1: really neat. I need to go back to Budapest. Yeah,
41:04
Speaker 1: I want to go back as well. When I was
41:06
Speaker 1: I was younger, so I didn't you know, I do
41:08
Speaker 1: your differently if at this age for sure? Oh yeah, sure?
41:11
Speaker 1: Were you like backpack in here? Yeah? Yeah, And we
41:14
Speaker 1: did some museums, but it was also a lot of
41:16
Speaker 1: just walking around and people watching and getting drunk on
41:21
Speaker 1: schnops in Budapest. Actually we had the bulls Blood wine
41:25
Speaker 1: there because it was like a dollar a bottle, right, Yeah,
41:27
Speaker 1: I didn't find it anywhere. No, No, I don't believe
41:30
Speaker 1: I had any like the Apricot stops for good beautiful
41:35
Speaker 1: all right. So that's hungry everybody. Uh. If you want
41:38
Speaker 1: to get in touch with me and Chuck like Norbert did,
41:41
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us s Y s K podcast.
41:44
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff
41:46
Speaker 1: you should know, hang out with us on Pinterest, or Instagram.
41:50
Speaker 1: It's Instagram slash s y s K podcast right, and
41:54
Speaker 1: look up pinterest dot com slash Josh and Chuck great uh.
41:58
Speaker 1: And then you can send us an email to Stuff
42:01
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com and you can
42:04
Speaker 1: hang out with us at our home on the web.
42:06
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
42:13
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
42:16
Speaker 1: dot com