[c0achmcguirk]

This person chose to have their free phone from the company as their personal phone too. This is completely optional at Google, a really nice perk, and it's made very clear that anything under your work profile will be wiped if you leave.

They will not wipe your personal phone or your personal profile on your phone. This is completely avoidable and shouldn't come as a surprise.

[missosoup]

It's not a perk, it's a liability. This was an option at pretty much every company I worked at and I never understood what moron would choose to put their personal data/life on a corporate device (or connect their personal device to the corporate network and its management policy) with typical policies dictating that not only can the device be remotely wiped, it can also be remotely snooped.

The only brief moment of this being acceptable was Samsung phones being able to have completely split personal/corporate profiles across 2 sims in a single phone and have 2 copies of each app, but that seems to have died.

If your employer is managing the device you're choosing to also use for personal data, it's 100% your fault and 0% surprise when it backfires on you.

If you work in tech and don't have a separate work phone+laptop and personal phone+laptop, you're either a founder or an idiot.

[endtime]

Moron here. I work for Google and use my work phone as my personal phone, via Android work profile, so the work stuff is siloed. This means I have less than full access to company resources, but I don't really want to read code or respond to bugs on my phone anyway.

My understanding is that Google can't see the personal stuff. But it doesn't matter that much to me, personally, if they can (I'm not doing any exciting corporate activism, anything illegal, etc.). At least, it doesn't matter more than a couple grand a year plus the inconvenience of two phones. I'm not saying everyone should feel this way, and obviously some people value privacy more than I do, but that's the trade-off that makes sense for this idiot.

[bitcurious]

I hope it also doesn’t matter to any of your friends. I would be pretty annoyed if I had a conversation with you and it ended up as property of google.

[Hello71]

if you're willing to assume that Google is willing to violate their presumably legally-enforceable policy that they will not view the items in the "personal profile", then one could assume that they would probably also be willing to read data from any Android device. so better tell all of your friends to never use Android or any other Google service.

[gcbw3]

You guys are insane.

You signed something at work that "all data in google owned devices are property of google". Period.

This is the same as using your company-provided computer for something else.

[freeone3000]

Yes. This. Exactly.

[michaelbuckbee]

fwiw - Apple is also working on a similar setup to sandbox corporate apps from personal (with restrictions in between)

[gcbw3]

> Android work profile, so the work stuff is siloed.

> My understanding is that Google can't see the personal stuff.

You are completely wrong.

First they have access to all your text and calls, since they own the mobile plan you are connecting trhu.

Second, the "device administrator", keyword: device, can wipe out the entire device, not just one account.

> But it doesn't matter that much to me, personally

So why comment on a thread where this is the topic?

[endtime]

Because the commenter I responded to said he couldn't understand why anyone would do what I do. There's an implicit question there that I was attempting to answer.

Good point about also owning the phone plan. But since I use Google Voice for everything (personal account) I'm not sure how much of that they can see (in their capacity as owners of my phone service), and like I said, I'm not doing anything interesting. If Google really wants to see my call logs of wife, wife, friend, mother in law, wife, wife, wife, dad, friend, etc. it's not worth thousands of dollars a year and an extra phone in my pocket to prevent it.

[gcbw3]

so, you have nothing to hide. cool. Just remember to not use your google voice or google meet for those union talks ;)

[endtime]

If I were involved in such things, of course I wouldn't use a corp device.

[0xEFF]

Over half of Google's workforce are contractors. Google does not provide a mobile device to contractors. The options for TVC's are to let Google control a personal device or take a significant productivity hit and opt-out of mobile email, chat, and docs.

[mekane8]

That's a really crappy policy if I'm understanding it right - not provide a mobile device but insist on completely managing one if they choose to use it for company business? What a shitty way to treat people working for you.

[CoolGuySteve]

It should be illegal. How much is your employer allowed to know about you or who you contact outside of work?

The answer should be nothing but there's a moral hazard wherein employees can't do much about it without limiting their career.

[tssva]

They are contractors. They don't work for Google. They either work for themselves and have a contract directly with Google, are an employee of a company which has a contract with Google or are a sub-contractor to a company with a contract with Google.

If they are directly contracted with Google or a sub-contractor through another company they should purchase an additional phone for this purpose. Both the phone and the service would be considered a business expense for tax purposes.

If they are a direct employee of another company then that company should be providing a phone for this purpose. If Google or their employer won't provide a phone for this purpose than neither considers it a requirement for the job and they should not worry about it.

[zaroth]

How else could corporate IT possibly do it?

A contractor can deduct work expenses from income, a phone is just one item on a long list of things that will be deducted.

If there is corporate information on a device, it would be a breach of their fiduciary responsibility not to manage that device and have the ability to remotely wipe that data.

[chipotle_coyote]

> If there is corporate information on a device, it would be a breach of their fiduciary responsibility not to manage that device and have the ability to remotely wipe that data.

I don't think, in a legal sense, that's true. It feels like it comes from the same mindset that corporations have a "fiduciary responsibility" to their shareholders to always put profits above all else; in fact, there's nothing in corporate law or financial regulations that requires that at all.

The IT department has responsibility for network and systems policies and company-owned equipment, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to have the ability to wipe data on that equipment or set policies that disallow personal devices on company networks at all. But they have no requirement -- and I would argue no business -- to wipe a non-company device just because someone added a corporate email account to it.

Does that make it marginally more likely that someone could keep corporate email that they weren't supposed to? Sure. But there are other legal ways of handling that which aren't destructive to non-company property. No one would argue that a policy of "if you take physical work home, upon termination the company can set fire to your house to ensure all copies are destroyed" is enforceable.

[zaroth]

I’m pretty sure GDPR protection of “personal data” applies to employees and not just customers.

If my personal calendar and work emails are being copied onto your device, you better believe the GDPR data protection regulations apply.

The house example is ridiculous. The point is if you commingle the data in ways such that the endpoint protection software no longer supports delineating the corporate data, then the user (employee/contractor) has opted into that situation with eyes wide open.

> Computing devices need to be protected from loss or theft through mobile device management capabilities, such as remote wipe and kill. A lost device could be the weak link in the data protection chain, leading to a data breach based on information stored on the device or accessible through still active user credentials. Enforcing certain settings in order for a device to connect to the network at all – such as local encryption, password complexity, the presence and currency of security software, and the removal of the local administrator account – will be an essential part of protecting the organization within the GDPR framework.

[1] - https://www.actiance.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WP-GDPR-...

[mcguire]

"But they have no requirement -- and I would argue no business -- to wipe a non-company device just because someone added a corporate email account to it."

Personal devices are excellent attack vectors if allowed on the internal network unmanaged. The alternative is not accessing internal resources, email, etc., unless the employee is given a company-owned device.

[EpicEng]

>or take a significant productivity hit and opt-out of mobile email, chat, and docs.

I'd call that a quality of life improvement. Why are contractors required to be available 24/7? I've never experienced that as a contractor, nor would I agree to it.

[dleslie]

And this is why I do not have any access to work accounts on my phone.

If it's so important that it must be done during my personal time then my manager can call me and request as much.

Remember pager duty and overtime pay? Doesn't that seem quaint now that many people seem to have accepted that they must make themselves available at all times?

[Joe-Z]

>Remember pager duty and overtime pay? Doesn't that seem quaint now that many people seem to have accepted that they must make themselves available at all times?

I'm too young to remember, but I have a few years of working experience under my belt now. The amount of people that greenlight everything a supposed authority demands of them just baffles my mind. I'm not even mad if a company tries to maximize their gain on the expertise that I bring to the table. That's just the game: You work for what's in your best interest, I work for mine. But when you push back against a perceived worsening of workplace conditions and the people not supporting you are your colleagues, because they somehow see themselves as being on the same side as the boss... I'm kind of sad about the social achievements people are willfully throwing away in the hopes that they themselves will 'make it' one day

And by the way, this is coming from someone who loves his job and has a good relationship with his boss. Doesn't mean I have to be delusional about what's going to happen when push comes to shove

[oncalleng]

Google does pay employees for time spent on-call outside of normal work hours. On-callers for services with tighter SLOs get payed more.

[PopeDotNinja]

I put work Slack on my phone, but that's it. Maybe 2FA stuff as needed.

[bussierem]

>I put work Slack on my phone

This instantly qualifies you as "available 24/7"

[neves]

They can freely choose to stay unemployed

[EpicEng]

Incredibly insightful, thank you. We all know how hard it is to find a programming gig these days.

I'm not convinced you have any knowledge of how things actually work in Google, but my point is that you can give me a ring if something requires immediate attention. If you don't provide a company phone I'm not using mine instead.

[hvidgaard]

Buy a "Google phone" and use it for that, keeping your private phone, well private. It's just the cost of doing business with them.

[d1zzy]

Unless your job requires work email/calendar while at home I really don't see how having corp access on mobile can be a justification for productivity.

The moment my company announced a requirement for having to install a corp policy enforcement application on my personal phone if I wanted to have access to the corp account (a reasonable request, in terms of company policy/security) was the moment I stopped having corp account on my phone (or any phone for that matter). It's been working fine for years.

[cloudwalking]

Contractors are not expected to work after hours. This is a reasonable stance for the company to take.

[m-p-3]

Seems like Google isn't leveraging their own tools properly then.

They can make a non-corporate device have a work profile with Google Apps Device Policy, and only that profile will be purged if the device is wiped by a Google Admin.

[52-6F-62]

Even simpler for corps as large as Google is simply having a supply of contractor devices they completely wipe upon the termination of the contract. That's what my last company did.

They didn't require contractors to bring their own computers and phones to the office if they were needed for their work.

I'm sure Google could afford that as well as to manage it...

[c0achmcguirk]

Google does do that. Lot of misinformation in this thread.

[threatofrain]

It is a net perk because phone calling or mobile messaging is inevitably part of work and you don't want to buy your own separate phone. It's only awkward for anyone who isn't used to having two phones.

[LadyCailin]

Calling and messaging are paid for by my company, and I can also sign in to my email. They have a program where I can get full access to all work resources, but it’s optional, and I will never sign up for that program, because exactly what’s being discussed here. But I still only have one phone, and they still pay for it, so.

[thrwy20191203]

Is the contract in your name and you pay the bill yourself and then expense it? Or is the contract in company's name they get full itemized bill from the carrier? If it is the latter, it sucks.

[LadyCailin]

They get the bill directly, but I'm not sure they can have access to the messaging or call data directly. I live in Europe, so I feel like the GDPR addresses this, but now that you mention it, I don't know this for sure.

[tyingq]

Android does support a work profile and "two copies of each app", with some limitations. https://developer.android.com/work/managed-profiles

[mcguire]

"...or connect their personal device to the corporate network and its management policy..."

I've done this.

You are absolutely right.

[sumeno]

It reads to me like she was using her personal phone to access corp, not a corp phone to access personal stuff. They absolutely will wipe your personal phone in that scenario

[shadowgovt]

If the user had the phone configured as a corp phone and was taking photos and did not have Cloud backup enabled to automatically shunt those photos to their personal account, then when the phone is forcefully de-corped, it will try to purge local photo cache (because there's no way to know if photos in local cache were corp-sensitive or not, so the conservative solution is "Burn it all down").

Of course, if the user does have their Cloud backup enabled to automatically shunt photos, they're at risk of using the phone in a work environment and accidentally storing proprietary info in their personal account.

The fact the camera UI doesn't really allow you to choose what account you're snapping photos under makes the whole arrangement lose-lose, and this is a really easy failure mode for a user to find themselves in if they don't see it coming.

[52-6F-62]

And if they did have their cloud backup enabled and it copied over some photos taken for work then wouldn't they immediately be likely in breach of whatever NDA they signed?

Sounds like a lose-lose and I'm a strong believer in that if a company the size and as wealthy as big G wants a contractor to make use of a device to accomplish a task for them, they can provide the device and do what they will to it afterward and then re-purpose it for the next round of business. This isn't a new operational pattern, and I've never experienced otherwise. They don't need to buy new, just keep a supply of devices for contractors.

[dawnerd]

This happened to me before too, but the phone was wiped by accident by IT. Never again will I trust any corp junk on a personal device.

[avocado4]

The device policy is simple. If you add a Corp account to any phone it's subject to device policy, including wipeout after you get fired. It's very obvious when you enroll.

[m-p-3]

Not so simple, it depends how the MDM/EMM is set-up.

If it's set up to entirely manage the device, then yes it will get fully wiped (we do this for corporate-owned device).

A personal device can access our environment if requested (they have to sign an agreement form, explaining what we can or cannot do) and a work sandbox will be created, in which only the apps installed in this sandbox will have access to corporate data (ex: you'll have a copy of Gmail, Hangouts, Drive, etc in the sandbox).

In the situation of a personal device, a wipe will only remove that sandbox, leaving the personal data untouched.

[papito]

A girl I used to date had a company phone. She was getting these racy random messages that, what appeared to be, were lewd conversations between two other employees, or two random someones, presumably on the same system. I found that hilarious.

[michaelt]

So if you take a photo with the default camera app, is that put into the area that gets wiped, or the area that doesn't?

If photos would be put in the area that doesn't get wiped, any idea what the quote is about?

[lnanek2]

She likely wasn't using separate work and personal profiles. That's a fairly new innovation. I've been using Android since the first public device was sold and only started doing it with the Samsung S10 5G. Most people just accept company MDM on their personal profiles and install everything in the same place.

[gregd]

This isn't that hard to understand. In order to access corporate email systems, you have two choices generally. Either you use a Corporate Owned device or you use a Personal Device but allow Corporate to do what they want to it.

In either situation, the corp has the ability to remotely wipe the device and enforce other policies on said device.

This should be abundantly clear to anyone who works in Tech.

[zaroth]

And to anyone who believes that corporations have a responsibility to protect the data they collect (and should be held civilly, if not even criminally liable for breaches), anything less than having complete control over devices holding corporate data is corporate malfeasance.

[saiya-jin]

Then I wouldn't call it personal phone, strange description from OP/quote. That term indicates to me a phone I own completely, hardware, software and all data like photos.

Same with laptops - if one decides to use work laptop for personal use its their choice at their own risk, but it doesn't become their personal laptop in any meaningful way. Even if hardware would stay after employment ends, every reasonable company would wipe it clean with some deep format & clean image of OS.