7 ms·

Employers who use software to take screenshots of workers’ computers

• sacks2k 6y ago
  I'm not surprised. I worked at a place a decade ago that used desktop recording software on everyone's computer and our manager would regularly review it. I ended up quitting when I found out.
• uk_programmer 6y ago
  I assume if the PC isn't mine e.g. machine provided by employer, or the box isn't mine (router from ISP) It is probably has telemetry of some sort. I also expect device s like a phone/pager etc from an employer to be monitored in one way or another.
  • bdcravens 6y ago
    Many also use it on computers owned by contractors, requiring its use to bill time.
    • dawnerd 6y ago
      In that case can't you just install it on a tiny vm on a server?
      • uk_programmer 6y ago
        Some places are super locked down when it comes to what software you can install. For example it took me a month to have pandoc, vim and a few other tools (GNU Tree) and a few other pieces of software installed by IT because it had to be approved by 2 layers of management, approved by IT Security and then it was installed on my PC. If you are working remotely they will give you a machine that VPNs into another machine.
• buraksarica 6y ago
  It's not news when employers use software to take screenshots of workers' computers. Come again if you catch a worker use software to take screenshots of employers' computer.
• bdcravens 6y ago
  This software is pretty common in the VA space, and Upwork does the same.
  • czardoz 6y ago
    What's ”VA space”?
    • Chirael 6y ago
      Virtual assistants
  • ericjang 6y ago
    Which software do you have in mind?
    • bdcravens 6y ago
      There's a number of options, one that comes to mind is Time Doctor.
• tanilama 6y ago
  If it is the computer that owned by the employer, then it is their property, they put all kinds of spyware there, nothing news worthy
  • quicklime 6y ago
    I've never really understood why people think this line of reasoning is valid. Prior to the panedemic, I used the bathrooms at the office nearly every day. The toilets are undoubtedly their property, but is it ok for them to put whatever kind of spyware they want in there too?
    • tanilama 6y ago
      It is taking screenshots of your desktop, not turn on the camera and take your photo.
  • krzyk 6y ago
    But they way you do your job is private, think of it as intellectual property, your know-how, your tricks. In EU this would probably be not allowed. E. G. in Poland it is not allowed to record how teachers teach as it is their IP.
    • vyrotek 6y ago
      Definitely not like this in the US. Usually some of paperwork you sign when joining a large company are agreements that the company practically owns anything you do/invent/think while employed. Basically assume it's all their IP unless you have an agreement stating otherwise.
    • fulafel 6y ago
      In most of Europe it's rather rooted in privacy of communications as a basic right, plus regulated labour rights that come from unionization.
      • BuckRogers 6y ago
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  What? Did you think the manager who came to look over your shoulder constantly suddenly became trusting of you when everyone went to remote work?
• ackbar03 6y ago
  Jokes on them, hope they like gay porn
• Cpoll 6y ago
  A lot of people are saying "not news worthy," but I think this is a far more useful article than the majority of articles posted here: - It's applicable to most people on this site - It's actionable: be conscious of what you use your company-issued computer for I'm convinced that most people aren't aware that this is a common practice. I've talked to people who think it's not possible or that their company doesn't do it. On the flip side, I've worked with enough IT departments to know that most of them have the capability, even if they're not actively using it. If your computer has any sort of remote management software on it (typically used for pushing mandatory updates), IT can probably also surreptitiously access your filesystem or observe your screen.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Guest42 6y ago
    What I wonder is the best way to determine whether this is going on and if so what it is doing exactly (or in broad terms)
    • geofft 6y ago
      If it's on a computer built for you by work / owned by work, all bets are off. Even if they're not taking screenshots, they can be logging keystrokes or web traffic or anything. If it's on a device you own: - Do not install software from your employer that requires admin permissions (i.e., requires typing your password). - If you're on recent versions of Windows or macOS, various powerful actions like taking screenshots are restricted by default and should at least trigger a permission prompt. You can go to Settings or System Preferences and see which apps have been given permission. If you can, try to install apps only from the OS's app store (because those apps are sandboxed more tightly than traditional desktop apps) or apps from reputable publishers (e.g., it's fine to install Word or Photoshop or whatever, but don't install MyCompany Productivity Helper For Employees). - Try to get work to give you a corporate device, or a way to work via a web browser or via remote-desktop to a computer on your desk in the closed office or something (and make sure that way doesn't involve installing custom software...). - If you have to install custom apps, make a separate non-admin user account and don't type your admin password when you're logged into it. Then your company can watch your company work but not your personal stuff. - If you're installing on a mobile OS, installing apps is generally fine but be very careful about installing a mobile device management (MDM) profile. When you install one, you'll be prompted about what sort of access you're giving your company; make sure you're comfortable with it. BTW, the same goes for schools - for instance, if your school wants you to install some sort of app for taking remote exams, the purpose of the app is almost certainly to intentionally take screenshots so they know you're not looking at Wikipedia. See if you can install it in a non-admin account, or if your school is issuing laptops, use that (and don't use that laptop for personal stuff). (Shameless plug: a friend and I run a personal security newsletter and we talked about this a bit last issue: https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/newsletter-2020-04-05.html https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/newsletter-2020-04-05... and we also have a guide to checking up on MDM on your phone: https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/newsletter-2019-12-07.html https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/newsletter-2019-12-07...)
• bobbydreamer 6y ago
  Mostly all issues happen at the top of the hierarchy which is enough to dissolve the company like insider trading, giving a hint to client but those people will never be logged. Mostly I feel it's ok. If a employer is doing it basically means couple of things 1. He is helping a startup and loading them test cases. 2. Well he has some computing power but nothing big to process or analyse so he is throwing it away. Just asking would anyone be okay if a banking app asks for a selfie or takes a photo of you when you are performing a transaction via mobile, just to know that transaction is valid.
• dessant 6y ago
  This [1] is a good read on what you can expect as remote work becomes widespread in a competitive job market. [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/upwork-freelancers-work-diary-keystrokes-screenshot https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/upwork...
  • codesuela 6y ago
    This seems pretty easy to game for a software engineer: 1. Write code for the project and record mouse clicks and keystrokes 2. Replay keystrokes at .5 speed inside a mirrored VM a more sophisticated tool could also vary speed and add typos.
    • jdc 6y ago
      Goodhart's law in action
    • humaniania 6y ago
      Or just play a full screen slide show of various spreadsheets and documents. Will they really study the screenshots that closely to see the repetition?
      • SilasX 6y ago
        Sure, spot-check and scrutize a small fraction. (Not to say I endorse this means of tracking employees' time, I just don't think that's a big impediment to this method.)
        • elliekelly 6y ago
          In my experience employers only tend to look back at things like this once they have a “reason” and are trying to document/justify performance issues. Although I agree it doesn’t seem too far off to have a system that proactively analyzes the screenshots and alerts a manager when Facebook or gmail seems to be open a disproportionate amount of time.
    • 6y ago
• benjohnson 6y ago
  As a company owner, I've resisted the temptation to do this. We did make it easy for our employees to behave themselves by making it very easy to 'clock in' and 'clock out.' I told everybody that this is a time to be close to family - if your child wants to play ball in the middle of the day, then go ahead! Just clock out before you do. Get your 8 hours in and document your work. Thankfully everybody has responded well - I have one employee than needs me to randomly call them to keep then honest, but he's a good guy and I think is struggling with a bit of depression. He likes to be called and he likes our chats.
  • dkersten 6y ago
    Why is it tied to time, instead of deliverables? I mean, if I work extra hard to get the days work done in 4 hours, why can’t I leave early compared to a co-worker who is working less focused and more slowly? I get that it’s not easy to set good milestones, and to keep it fair in terms of making sure everyone has approximately equal work, but I feel the same problems exist with required work “time” especially since it doesn’t encourage working more efficiently, effectively or smarter, because you gotta get those 8 hours in regardless. Unless they’re contractors/consultants who bill by the hour, of course.
    • crashedsnow 6y ago
      +1. Outside hourly contractors, if you have a clear sense of what impact/outcome you're seeking, time of day or number of hours shouldn't matter. Often I suspect it's a proxy for NOT having a clear idea of the desired outcomes. Removing a requirement for "8 hours a day" can even be a good forcing function to ensure you DO have a clear and well-communicated set of goals and outcomes. Indexing on time (IMHO) can also have unwanted side effects like people just filling in the time "because they have to", which is pointless for everyone involved.
      • WalterBright 6y ago
        Consider the practice of "work to rule". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule Precisely defining what at employee is to do is not really practical. At some point it's always going to be "do what I mean, not what I say."
• libpcap 6y ago
  Can someone list the names (and/or process names) of these softwares, so that we can kill the process if we have access to do so? Thanks.
• dep_b 6y ago
  I'm working on a product that logs everything you do on your computer super accurately, but when it comes down to submitting those activities the user can (actually often really needs to) clean them up first. The raw logged data doesn't leave the computer, the boss or client gets a version that might or might not be an accurate reflection of what the worker did. The most important thing is that you're able to "remember" what you did two weeks back, how much time you spent on it and for what project. Because that takes a lot of time and is always very inaccurate if you need to do it from memory. There is no way I want the end user to feel spied on by the tool, that would totally kill the acceptation in the market.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    This is scary from an acquisition standpoint. Every single employer that signs up would want the raw data/unclean data, so if you sell the company the absolute first thing the buyer will do to extract value is to give their customers what they want.
  • Hamuko 6y ago
    Reminds me of Timely's Memory, which does upload the raw data onto a server, but says that it's only accessible by you. https://memory.ai/timely/features/automatic-time-tracking https://memory.ai/timely/features/automatic-time-tracking
  • Ididntdothis 6y ago
    “ There is no way I want the end user to feel spied on by the tool, that would totally kill the acceptation in the market.” Are you selling to the actual user? Usually stuff like this gets bought by the employer.
• caseysoftware 6y ago
  When they say "workers' computers" do they mean company-owned machines issued to staff to do their jobs or personally-owned machines that people use for work? If it's the first, as ugly as it is, it makes sense. Don't do anything on a work computer that you don't want your boss, their boss, and the corp IT/lawyers to know about. If it's the second, that's wholly unacceptable and ridiculous. I refuse to install company-anything on personal devices with the exception of a push-app for MFA on my phone. Everything else, forget it.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    This is referenced during the pandemic, so most likely personal computers. Many employers either sent their employees a desktop or have asked them to use their work laptops, but I would guess the majority allow and encourage employees to use personal computers instead (of which they would require the spyware installation).
• mschuster91 6y ago
  This would be super illegal in Germany and I believe also in the rest of Europe. Sure, most corporate IT depts could do this - but if caught, they'd face real penalties. The brazen-ness of US employers regarding surveillance of their employees is something that continues to (negatively) amaze me, even after years on HN and Reddit.
• amiga_500 6y ago
  I remote into my PC at work with citrix. When I want to surf the web I use my local browser. I would be surprised if citrix can screenshot other active windows, perhaps I'm naive.
• Hamuko 6y ago
  This makes me really glad that our company policy thus far has been giving employees new machines and have them set them up themselves. I know my work laptop has no spyware because I didn't install any.
  • spodek 6y ago
    That's what they want you to think.
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      It still had the original Apple plastic wrap on it.
    • Insanity 6y ago
      I was given a laptop and told to put any linux distro on it that I wanted. So I'm pretty sure ;-)
  • reaperducer 6y ago
    I guessed my company's admin password and erased their partition. If I get laid off (they're cutting 20% of the workforce next week), then I consider the computer my severance pay. If they press the issue, they can come to my house and collect the machine. But I'll lick every part of it before I hand it over. Childish? Oh, heck yeah. But when I see my own company screwing over its employees and customers to protect the CEO's pay (none of the C-levels took a cut), I just don't care.
    • amylene 6y ago
      I wouldn’t so much consider this childish, as I would consider it criminal. You may feel justified in doing it, but don’t fool yourself: this would be theft.
    • mlvljr 6y ago
      Why lick? Got COVID signs?
    • 6y ago
• pcurve 6y ago
  This has been a thing for at least 15+ years. In fact, when computers were a bit slower, I would notice a perceptible lag in my mouse movement when this happened. Honestly, there are better ways to measure productivity based on other parameters, taking screenshots is just silly.
• papermachete 6y ago
  Paywalled article, please post the full version.
• askafriend 6y ago
  I would quit the moment I found out something like this was being instituted. I think most companies that need to hire top talent know that these kinds of things drive away talent. So these practices tend to be relegated to a lower tier of companies/employers.
  • whitehouse3 6y ago
    Conversely, those employers can’t hire top-tier people. The ones they do hire probably don’t have the FU money to walk away from spyware like this. So they live with it instead. This is truer in a recession. And the effect can justify calls to unionize.
  • gjs278 6y ago
    no you wouldn’t
  • bdavis__ 6y ago
    if only i could be top tier talent, and my employer would let me do only the work i am explicitly given. when an individual task is complete, there is always someone that could use help, or an idea to document, or one of a million things you want the 'top tier' to be involved in. there is an infinite amount of work to be done. seriously. 40 hours a week is a way to meter it. monitoring it, not very effective or valuable. weigh the contribution people make, not the hours they put in. but 40 hours a week is the expected amount of work focus today.
  • adultSwim 6y ago
    Most people don't have this luxury
• bmn__ 6y ago
  Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728971 (19d ago)
• WalterBright 6y ago
  The trouble with taking screenshots is then you have to employ people to spend their day examining and evaluating the screenshots. Before computers could transcribe voice, the limiting factor of wiretapping is needing some poor schmuck who had to listen to all those utterly banal conversations, which has to be one of the worst jobs ever.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • kqr 6y ago
    > The trouble with taking screenshots is then you have to employ people to spend their day examining and evaluating the screenshots. What I don't understand is how they explain that to their customers. "Yeah, you're not quite getting what you paid for because we spent a portion of it hiring a couple of guys to look at screenshots of our employees computers. Sorry. You can get free screenshots?" And customers accept this waste of money?
  • downerending 6y ago
    In general, the screenshot trace will only actually be looked at when someone decides that they want your ass for other reasons.
  • curryst 6y ago
    Not necessarily. You could probably catch 90% of people just by using some simple matching. The top social media sites have a pretty distinctive layout you could match on; and you can diff screenshots to catch people who are constantly AFK. It's not going to catch someone who has put some thought into how to circumvent these, but it's enough to catch a lot of the non-HN people.
• Ididntdothis 6y ago
  Is there a way to figure out if your machine does this? Is there a list of process names to look for or similar?
  • droopyEyelids 6y ago
    In MacOS, the software probably requires screen recording permission in System Preferences.
• s09dfhks 6y ago
  For those of you with macbooks, you can easily remove the Jamf management software by running `sudo jamf removeFramework` (note the capital F)
• invalidOrTaken 6y ago
  Gross.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  Not just Windows. It's also fairly common for corporate Macs to transmit usage logs, for example using Jamf (Self Service). I'm fine with this, but willing to bet most people aren't fully aware. 1.http://archive.today/tfYtO http://archive.today/tfYtO 2.http://archive.today/MkBKE http://archive.today/MkBKE
• loteck 6y ago
  Certainly would feel creepy, if I knew it was happening. But, I would ask, beyond a gut feeling of being creepy, what particular objections does anyone have to this? Do you believe employers are not entitled, either legally or ethically, to do this on their own equipment?
  • ryall 6y ago
    I think the main objection is that these companies are treating their employees as an enemy rather than part of a team. Seems to me to be a very strong indicator of a toxic workplace
    • loteck 6y ago
      I disagree with the characterization of "enemy," but I understand your point. Do we not regularly discuss here amongst ourselves the internal security of our organizations? Are inside threats not a growing part of that concern? [0] Do we expect orgs not to respond to insider threats, or is it just this particular response that is especially distasteful? [0] https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/executivebriefs/insider-threat-report-executive-summary.pdf https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/executivebriefs/ins...
• ericjang 6y ago
  Hypothetical question: if your employer offered you the option of extra compensation to install keyloggers/screen capture software on your work computer, and you know that the logs are only being used for aggregate productivity statistics of the firm (de-anonymized), how much do you think would be a fair price? Assumption: you use a separate computer for your personal computing needs not related to work.
  • downerending 6y ago
    If it's aggregate stats (assume you meant anonymized), I wouldn't care very much. If someone was watching me without my knowledge, I'd like quit when I found out. (Or perhaps make their life hell.) Employers should just fess up and state clearly that they are doing this. It's the coverup that's the problem.
  • slipheen 6y ago
    I would decline, if it doubled my salary. that is invasive, and they don't need the information. if it was required, I would leave the company.
  • mititelu 6y ago
    accept, reverse engineer, if data is aggregated - send spoofed randomised data, if not - just play back time I actually worked on slower speed and use a VM. As for price, let them make an offer and see how valuable the data is for them.
• siva7 6y ago
  I am seriously baffled at how normal it seems for americans to put up with this. This is illegal in germany. If i would find out about this behaviour i would instantly quit, warn my colleagues, turn to press and the police. Otherwise such things would be considered only a small offense at privacy if you act like this is normal.
• neonate 6y ago
  https://archive.md/rArpa https://archive.md/rArpa
• ryall 6y ago
  I understand that managers have a need to keep track of how their team members are performing, and that their job is a lot harder when their team is working remotely. But I think It's possible to collect productivity metrics without obliterating employee trust. I'm working on a tool to do this but I’ve stalled in the project because I’m having a hard time reconciling whether it benefits companies enough to pay for it (It seems geared towards employees more than companies)
  • tspike 6y ago
    If you have good domain knowledge and regular 1:1s, remote or not, it should be pretty darn easy to know if your team is being productive. Why is this so difficult?
    • ryall 6y ago
      I completely agree, but then why do these tools exist in the first place? I think it comes down to a few things. 1. There are managers that do not have good domain knowledge. 2. They don't have regular 1 on 1's, or anything else that good managers do. Essentially you're assuming that all managers are good, or even competent when most of us have had experience to contradict this. Which is essentially my conundrum: good managers won't need my service, and bad managers won't even be looking for it
• BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  This would be completely illegal in France. Beside the fact that an individual tracking requires the employee to be informed of the fact and that the company must jump through hoops to have this registered - you coukd end up screenshooting private activities. They are allowed on company devices and company time, and they are protected.
• SecurityMinded 6y ago
  And this is news how ? You are using a computer furnished by your employer and said emplyor has every right to monitor what uis being done on it in any way they can and want. My company uses ObserveIT and one of the features is to take screen captures, to be used in any way that company sees fit, now or later. If anyone has a problem, they can quit