[qwerty456127]

No person on Earth (except a very reasonably suspected terrorist perhaps, because he could use that for an attack trigger) should be ever denied privacy. What if I worked at a bank and had to text something urgent to my dear? I would find it asolutely unacceptable for anybody to ever read that, no matter how innocent and banal our conversatioun would be. To me that would be equivalent to tapping into my brain and eavesdropping on my very thoughts.

[richbell]

As per the article, the issue is that employees were using encrypted messaging apps for work purposes. This is strictly forbidden by regulations, or at least failing to preserve your communications is.

[qwerty456127]

I see... This sounds reasonable for some environments. But I doubt the banks are going to differentiate these, they will probably just ban private messengers altogether.

[1MachineElf]

As someone who currently performs information risk management for a financial institution, I'll say that private messaging doesn't need to be banned per-se. It's just that all company business is the responsibility of the leadership, so ultimately, business communications needed to be reserved for business communication platforms over which leadership can enforce policy. Privacy is a component of this.

These banks needed processes and controls to ensure their requirements are being met: Records of electronic communication, technical security controls to ensure the privacy of protected communication, approved communication mediums/channels for different classifications of information, periodic reviews on the adequacy of these controls, etc.

Sometimes the restriction of things like WhatsApp, Signal, etc. are seen as an affront to individual privacy. That's not what this is about. This is about preventing a lot of dangerous scenarios, like:

1. Employees at your bank do something evil that's also against the law, but because they used Signal/WhatsApp, no records of the communication can be used as evidence in court.

2. The bank has invested millions upon millions into an information security program. Someone decides to use Signal/WhatsApp to share sensitive account numbers. Signal/WhatsApp ends up with a vulnerability that exposes the information, rendering the InfoSec program protections ineffective.

3. Like #2, but the information in WhatsApp/Signal is super important. The employees who kept it there all leave and/or get into fatal accidents. How will that impact the bank?

4. Your manager starts a group chat for the team via text message and conversations about work occur. Turns out someone in the conversation is involved with a scandal. Because you talked about work stuff outside of the approved comms channels, your personal phone can now be taken and used as evidence in a court (even if they can't pull the encrypted messages from it!)

It's just better for everyone to keep work communications in one place that the company has control over, and your personal device/apps totally separate from it.

[developer93]

To add to that, there is a difference between personal and professional freedoms. So at work (in some professions) people should have less right to privacy than in personal life. In addition to the examples above: police body cams, communications from politicians, drug tests for pilots or people working heavy machinery... Those things would be an affront to the average private citizen but are reasonable in some professional contexts.

[mulmen]

You should really re-post this as a top-level comment because it essentially addresses everything in the comment section.

[ska]

A baseline typical scenario when you have high compliance requirements etc. is a very strict separate of "personal devices" and "work devices", so these things don't really come up in the way described.

[mulmen]

Why would you use work communication or devices for personal messaging? It is still entirely possible to use WhatsApp as a banker, you just can't use it while acting as a banker.

[ghaff]

If that is such a concern, it seems as if you should use a personal device for personal matters. Personally I don't care and use devices for both personal and work matters, but it I did, I'd air gap the two uses.

[pasc1878]

Your phone calls would be recorded. SO what is the difference.