June 17, 2014 • 42 mins
Your employer may be secretly reading your emails, watching what websites you visit and tracking your whereabouts through your phone. And because of how the courts have ruled, there's nothing you can do about it. Learn all about employer spying here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Don't
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry. How
do Jerry? How's he going? I wish I wish we
(00:22):
didn't have to pay money for playing music because I
really wanted Maxwell's and I always feel like somebody's watching
me to be or leading. You don't have to pay
for your own rendition coming in at any time. No
great song though, Yeah, And it turns out he's right,
someone is watching. Well, he was cooked to the gills,
(00:43):
which was his thing, was he did you not see
the video? No? Oh man, he's like looking out the
blinds and everything, dancing his living room. Yeah, he was
cooked up. How was a kid? I didn't understand that that.
I didn't either. Um, he was right though, that's the
point cocaine or know. He was correct? Yeah, especially nowadays,
(01:04):
like you don't need drugs to be paranoid. You can
just like be paranoid and be totally correct. Uh yeah,
you know, especially if you're gainfully employed. Yes, that is
true because what I found out from this article, Chuck,
is that if it's not the n S a eavesdropping
on you or surveiling you. It's your employer. Yeah. And
(01:26):
not only that, but you have implicitly agreed to be
spied on, because it is no doubt somewhere in your
work contract or your work agreement that they can do
exactly that that would be explicitly agreed. You're just probably
duped into it. What say, yeah, explicit Yeah, but I
(01:48):
mean if you don't know that you agreed to it, yeah,
because who reads that stuff? I know? It is the thing, like,
there's a there's a growing trend among employers to basically
slide some claws into your employee handbook that you have
to sign, uh, your employment agreement applications sometimes have them
now where it basically says I consent to being surveilled
(02:09):
electronically in you know, X number of forms or any
form you guys can come up with. And like you said,
people don't read that and they're not aware of it.
And the other devious part of the whole thing about
employee surveillance is that they don't buy law. I have
to tell you that you're being surveilled. Right. There's two states,
Connecticut and Delaware that require employers say, hey, we're watching you,
(02:34):
and Delaware barely even counts. I love Delaware. I was kidding. Yeah,
it's the screen door capital, isn't it according to the Simpsons.
I think, so we're going to Delaware. I've done some
camping at the Delaware Water Gap. It's nice. Nice. Actually,
I don't even think that's in Delaware though, is it not?
(02:55):
To look that up? It might be in New Jersey.
It's in the Aegean. That's funny. So I guess we
kind of answered the question that this this Um episode asked,
was is your employer spying on you? And the answer
is almost decidedly yes. So we found from our research
(03:15):
that stats are really old. It seems like there was
a flurry of research and discussion in like the early
to mid to late nineties when the Internet was new,
and then it just died off because apparently employers won.
Like there was there were ethical questions, there were legal
questions like can this happen? And uh, everybody said yeah,
(03:37):
Well the court said yeah totally. And if they're in
your office and they're working on your computers, and yeah,
you sure have the right. I do have some stats
from and this is the most recent thing I could
find is about three and a half years ago, which
is brand new, Yeah, compared to other stuff. Yeah, a
lot of these things are citing like surveys done in
two thousand and two thousand one. That's a different world
(03:58):
back then. I mean even current articles are using that
like there's just no data out there, no shame. Well,
here's some stuff from a few years ago. UM percent
of employers have fired UH workers for email misuse at
this point, for UM sixty of those were violating company policies,
(04:20):
were inappropriate language. There must be some overlap because they're
already over UM excessive personally used confidentiality breaching. Uhtent of
employers have fired people for Internet misuse, not email, but internet,
and that means surfing inappropriate content was of that, like
(04:43):
you know, you're looking at porn at work, get fired
for that. UM And then nowadays with social networking, UM
they six sixty six percent they estimate or monitoring Internet
connections to see what websites your browsing on a day
to day basis. I think there's ridiculously low. There's no
(05:04):
way that that's it. Well, I mean just because and
then in the article points out just because they are
set up to do so doesn't mean they are um
like generally, the one guy in the article says they
would be doing nothing but looking at activity if they
were really spying on everyone all the time. They say, generally,
(05:25):
it's if there's a problem with an employee or something
and someone is flagged that they will probably start paying attention.
But you know, this is all opinion. No one knows, right,
you know, employees aren't being too terribly forthcoming. Our job
is different though, because we with our research, we can
be looking at virtually anything. You know, this stuff we've
(05:45):
looked at online here. I can't tell you how many
lists we must be on just from the research we've
like the marijuana one alone. Yeah, it was like these
guys do nothing. The research like human trafficking and and
hookers and marijuana and bombmaking. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy
and and we can We're all over social media, so
that's part of our job. So yeah, no, I know,
(06:07):
it's kind of It was different to see like the
other side of it. But at the same time, I
was like, wow, I really feel bad for like, you know,
the average employee. If you go on to Twitter, no
I have If you go onto Twitter or something for
a minute or two, like you can get fired. Yeah,
it's weird. My my chicken software job that I have
before this one, the famous chicken software job. You know,
(06:31):
nothing on the internet is applicable to what you do.
So if the boss walks by and you're just checking
the Brave score from ESPN and you feel like you
have to hide it real quick, sure where now, I'm like,
come on, you know you check a score, No big deal.
And some employers don't care. I saw this one UM
article from UH. It was some sort of a Christian
(06:52):
organization that ended up firing employees, and he said, I
didn't care if they were on Facebook and doing that
other stuff, but when they started to talk some about
the company is when they got riled up and fired people. Supposedly,
there's UM that's what employers are looking for, is there.
They're looking for employees that are, like you said, talking
(07:13):
smack about the company, divulging company's secrets, ye leaking information.
That's probably the biggest one they're looking for. And then
um like grossly misusing time yea, or or like sexually
harassing or something that's that one makes total sense sending
inappropriate jokes around here, like the guy in the office
ending like overt inappropriate emails all around the office. Then yeah,
(07:37):
they're gonna they're gonna tag you. Right, So they aren't
necessarily watching you at all times, but the system is
most likely set up to where they can to where
if you do something that is that tricks triggers a
filter or something that somebody's going to get an email,
they're going to examine it and it's going to get
sent to HR if it fits the criteria. Right, yeah,
(08:00):
pretty much, UM, But like you said, they could, I mean,
they're most companies are set up now with what they
call continuous since systematic surveillance. UM. So if they wanted
to be bored out of their mind, they most companies
could literally look at everything you're doing at all times.
For this system had been for that having to watch
(08:23):
all that exactly. So we said that, UM, employers don't
have to tell you that they're surveilling you. As a
matter of fact, legally speaking, they can lie and tell
you that they're not surveilling you, and then if you
bust them and take them to court, you will lose
as far back as an employee for Pillsbury, you know, right, um. He.
(08:47):
I guess he didn't really like his job that much.
He was known for talking smack and in two different
emails um which he assured were confidential, weren't used for
disciplinary action and just were his own. Um, he said
that they should kill the backstabbing bastards about one group
of people, and he referred to the company Christmas party
(09:09):
as the Jim Jones kool Aid affair. And he got
fired for every company Christmas party, right, He got fired
for that, but he took Pillsbury court. Was like, they
said that they weren't paying attention to these emails and
that they wouldn't use them against me, And the court said,
so what man, It's like you said, the court has
decided that if you were using their device, or you're
(09:30):
using their network on their time that's even off of
their time, especially on their time, then they have a
right to protect their business by monitoring what's going on
with their business devices, on their business network with their employees. Yeah.
I think within reasons, some of that does make sense.
(09:50):
You don't want your employees divulging secrets or sending lured
emails around to everyone and all the all of a sudden,
you're slapt with the lawsuit um, which I think is
what it ultimately boils. And so some of this is understandable,
I get it. The thing is, though, is it's so
slippery of it's already just so draconian. Then it's there's
(10:14):
it's just completely lopsided, like how do you surveil your
own employer? How do you do that? Like shouldn't it
be shouldn't it be more balanced than that? I mean,
the whole thing just let me get on my soapbox
and we'll get down a breast text. But the whole
thing stinks of you just being indebted to your employer
(10:36):
for giving you a job, Like it just kind of
has that whole mentality attached to it, like your employer
can do whatever you want. If you don't like it,
you can go hit the breadline, Rusky. You know, yeah,
I'm done. No, I'm with you, man. That's it's definitely like,
you know, as an employee, to feel like someone has
their foot on your throat. There's fifty people in Anglory
(11:00):
who would kill for your job right now, we could
get them over here, right you know, it just makes
me sad. It is sad. That is the state of things. Uh, So,
I guess we should talk a little bit about how
how they're spying on you. And there are many ways, um,
but there five pretty likely ones that you probably have
(11:20):
in your office, um, and we'll go through them in
more detail. But I had a sixth that added, well
we'll hear in a minute, Okay, packet sniffers, log files,
desktop monitoring programs, phones, and close circuit cameras. And I'm
gonna go ahead and say phones as a two parter
because the company issues cell phones, um as well, So
(11:41):
what's your what's your other one? GPS. GPS was kept
out of this because that was one of the original
means of surveillance in the workplace, Yeah, with the little
trackers that they put on like delivery trucks or whatever
to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do.
But now it's been extended to things like employees cell phones.
About three percent of companies track their employees using GPS
(12:05):
by tracking their cell phone, and then one percent track
their employees by tracking um they're like there keyless entry cards, man. Yeah,
well one percent. Thankfully that's like, I mean, what company
is that, I don't know, but it's probably a pretty
pedantic company. That's not an enjoyable company. I would think
(12:26):
it's like a highly sensitive, like you know, someone who's
making Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Well, they are
the one percent at least. Let's dig in and let's
start with packet sniffers. I love that those two words
together just yeah, they're great packets sniffers. Yes, they've been
around for a while, it's nothing new. Uh. And they
(12:47):
monitor the computer network and they performed tests and diagnostic
tests and troubleshoot all sorts of things. So they're not
inherently they're just too uh root out you know what
you're emailing to your buddy. No, it's like that's how
they sort of spam out from your regular stuff. Yeah.
(13:09):
So it's not nefarious in and of itself, but it
can be when it's set to something called promiscuous mode,
which I thought was pretty funny too. Yeah, std mode,
And that means instead of just looking for certain keywords
that like, they can basically look at all of it.
And a packet is just a piece of information. Well,
(13:29):
it's like if you send me an email saying, hey, Josh,
that might be split up into X number of packets
and then my computer busily recombines it into the full
email and and combines the packets together, and the packets
sniffer to sniffs all those packets to look for Hi, Josh,
I'm gonna bring a gun to work tomorrow and you're
(13:50):
in trouble. That's a bad way to do that. You're
not supposed to send a warning. Yeah, you're not supposed
to do that at all. Yeah. Hell, let's not give
advice to office shooters. I think that's a wise policy.
What you would do is give advice, say Josh, don't
come into work tomorrow because that happens. Oh really Yeah,
with with shooters, they'll they'll say sometimes they'll they will
(14:13):
have warned like the one person they like at work. Okay,
if I were you, I wouldn't come in tomorrow, which
is when you pick up the phone. You have a
moral obligation to protect the lives of us. You don't say, sweet,
I don't have to come in tomorrow, right, you know,
crazy guy gave me the day off. Yeah, called the cops. Um.
So with the packet sniffing, they're filtered, and unfiltered modes
(14:33):
and unfiltered will will capture everything, and filtered is when
they're looking for like keywords or in any sort of
specific data like I would imagine the name of your company. Ye,
like dangerous words like like going, um, drug related words,
(14:54):
that kind of stuff. Kilo, sure in my trunk, right,
that kind of thing at my desk. That's a bad
one with kilo. Oh yeah, Kilo at my desk. Um.
So if something is packet sniffing, they can see what
websites you're visiting, what you're doing there, what you're downloading,
the emails you're sending, what's in those emails, basically any
(15:18):
everything you're doing. And you can set up a packet
sniffer on like say your computer, your systematman can set
it up on your computer, and um it would it
would basically just be able to see what your computer
is doing, what websites is visiting, what emails it's sending.
It's basically just like eaves dropping onto a transmission cable.
(15:39):
Yeah you know. Um. The thing is is that kind
of raises some legal um ramifications, which we'll talk about later.
So there's a certain way you have to do it.
But if you put that packet sniffer on like a
your server for the whole company's network, it can pick
up all all that traffic. Yeah, if it's right there
(16:01):
in the middle of the action. Yeah. Yeah. And by
the way, if you're digging this kind of stuff, if
you like words like packet sniffers and servers and Kilo,
then you should go listen to tech Stuff, which is
like an all tech, very good UM related podcasts here
at how stuff Works dot com. Yeah, from our colleagues
(16:22):
Jonathan and Lauren, and I bet they have covered this. Uh,
I'm better than we are about to, which is why
I'm saying, like, go listen to those guys. If you're
liking this for the less jokey, more informative version, more
pun filled. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Another way, and this
is the one that's really um draconian and common, is
(16:44):
a desktop monitoring software. So if you're sitting at your
computer and you're typing something in, you're sending a signal
throughout your computer. And there are software systems that either
physically installed hard on your laptop hard or remotely installed
the trojan horse, like, hey, install this program because you
(17:06):
need it, but there's also this hidden program in there
that you don't need and you don't even know, and
it's going to track all of your activity on your computer.
I would guess that if you're getting if your employers
tracking you're spying on you, they're not going to use
the troch and horses more like a hacker tactic. But
(17:27):
the result is the same. I mean, there's a program
on there now where whereas like a packet sniffer is
keeping track of like where your computer is going on
the Internet. Remember that old Microsoft commercial where do you
want to go today? The old Windows commercial. So it's
keeping track of where you're going today and who you're
talking to along the way. This um the desktop monitoring programs.
(17:48):
That's like any key stroke you make is logging, and
so you don't you can be writing a note to
yourself that you never save. You just trash afterwards. You
never save it, so it's never saved onto your system.
This desktop monitoring system is keeping track of your key strokes,
so it sees everything that goes on on your on
(18:11):
your desktop. Yeah, and when you get that company issued laptop,
it very likely already has it installed. And again the
system admin can remotely install it because you're on the
same network as them and they have administrative sway over
your computer. They're like Svengali or if the I T
guy comes by and says the new drow leptop for
(18:32):
an hour because they need to install some sort of
program that sounds familiar. Beware of that of that message.
You know that that that impression was dead on. Okay, Um,
there are alert systems that are on some of these programs.
Oh wait, hold on, before we move on to alert systems,
(18:53):
there's a that desktop monitoring thing. So with key strokes,
you know, Um, it's it's picking up all the key
strokes and it's basically redirecting them to whoever's watching your
computer at that moment. And so maybe they have a
text file that's open and it's just seeing what's being
typed as it's going on, or it can be saved
for later as a text file and then like emailed
(19:15):
to the system admin, or it can the same programs
can intersect what's being sent to your video card or
what your video card is sending out to your monitor
and redirected, split and then redirected to your system admin
or whoever spying on you, and they can recreate what
you're seeing on your desktop by intercepting your video cards.
(19:38):
Trans transmission within your operating system. That's that's some serious
spying on you, some serious spying uh in the alert
system I mentioned, that's part of the monitoring software UM.
Where again sort of like keywords are certain alerts or
maybe websites, whereas some companies just block websites altogether. Yeah,
(19:59):
like face booker, you know, and anything they consider to
be a time waster UM or it can be set
up on an alert system where they just know that
you were spending way too much time online gambling if
you had a problem, which would be any time if
your work, you know, I doubt if they allow for
(20:19):
like payoffs you get ten minutes today the homeline online
or otherwise you can play craps at your desk. Right.
Another way, if you think that hey, I delete all
my stuff and I cover my paper trail, my e
paper trail, you were wrong because you have log files
(20:41):
in your computer. That um, even when you've deleted something,
there's a log file somewhere in your computer. Most likely
that that logs exactly what you have just done. Right,
Like when you delete that email, it's not really deleted
at least initially. Yeah, and those log files can be
gotten to remotely if you're on the same network again,
(21:03):
or they can set up, UM, some sort of program
that emails log files to them, especially ones that are
trigger some sort of filter and log files. I mean
those are normal, they're they're part of your operating system.
But um, they can be gotten to. In other words,
they can be used against you. That's true. Yeah, and
(21:25):
normally they're used for bugs, or originally they were used
for bugs. Yeah. It's like the the computer tracked its
own activity and then if something happened, somebody who could
read that kind of code could go back and say, oh, well,
here's here's the problem, this is why it crashed, and
then fix that bug. I bet desktop monitoring software is
(21:48):
the bulk of how they're getting this information. Uh. Yeah,
I would imagine that like a company that's involved in
this does um desktop monitoring and packet sniffing, packets sniffing. UM.
I guess we can talk about how about this after
this message break, we'll talk about old school eavesdropping, the
(22:10):
wire style. All right, you don't necessarily even have to
be on your laptop to get spied on because your
phone might be bugged. That's true. I guess the simplest
(22:30):
way to say right. Well, yeah, especially if you have
a work issued phone or iPad or whatever. You're um like,
they can just totally eavesdrop on that. But if it's
like your phone at your desk, there's almost a hundred
percent chances being eaves dropped on. Well, it's just twelve
in here. Well. So, another very very old statistic that
(22:55):
I still see sighted today is that companies eaves dropped
on like four million calls a year. But that was
from nine seven, number right right, which I find it
sad that the a c l U hasn't done any
report on workplace surveillance, workplace spying, anything like that since
the late nineties. It's two thousand, fourteen a c l U.
(23:19):
Let's get on the ball. Yeah, I mean it's a
it's not all Naziason clansman, you know, like there are
other issues to be addressed. You just did jazz hands
to Nazeason klansmen. Um. Here's the thing though, with wire tapping,
supposedly federal losses, you can't wire tap because you need
consent from the party, But the Privacy Electronic Communication Privacy
(23:43):
Act of nineteen six said they can eavesdrop on job
related talk. And how do you know if it's job
related unless you listen in for a few minutes first, right,
so they're protected, it's all. It's a loophole. They can
listen to all your calls. Yeah all don't know how
how long they can listen, but long enough to determine
(24:03):
if you're going to be talking about work. So that's
that's a pretty wide margin. I think a couple of
minutes is is UM routinely argued for in cases like that,
and the UM Electronic Protection Act UM, the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act says there's two types of communication and once
(24:24):
protected and one's not stored, communication is not UM. Communication
that's simultaneously transmitted and received is protected. And they were
staying like they were basically protecting a phone call because
we could possibly come in the future to supplant the
phone covers exactly. So phone calls are very much protected
(24:47):
again except for that work around with with business where
they can't tell if it's personel or business and for
for a couple of minutes. But then emails fall into
this weird category because emails are transmitted there in motion UM,
so apparently you can't you can't scoop up people's emails
when they're being transmitted. But emails also have the characteristic
(25:09):
of sitting on an outgoing server for a minute, right, well,
not a minute, but for however long it takes before
it's sent. It could be a second, and that still
counts even less. While it's sitting on that server, it
can be copied and analyzed and all sorts of stuff
can be totally within the law. Yeah, and I love
the analogy. And here if that doesn't quite make sense, um,
they drop the analogy of It's like if your standard
(25:31):
mail that your mail carrier delivers to your house. While
they're delivering it, you can't, you know, you can't go
open your neighbor's mail. But once it sits in that mailbox,
then you can go read your neighbor's mail. But you
can't do that though, that's insane. No, you can't. You
can't do that with your neighbor's mail. You can't with
email exactly. And you have said quite accurately that the
(25:55):
court generally sides with well, they side with citizens when
it comes to privacy in general, But once you become
an employee, the employer has most of the almost exclusively
they've ruled in favor of the employer, because the network
belongs to the employer. UM, and the devices often belong
(26:19):
to the employer, And we should say that's a trend
that may be going away. There's a UM there's something
called bring your own device movement. Yeah, where companies are
starting to basically say, you need to supply your own computer,
You definitely need to supply your own phone. Maybe you
need to supply your own iPad. Perhaps we'll give you
(26:41):
a little bit of a stipend to offset the cost
of using your own phone. But UM, that raises a
lot of questions about the legality then of snooping on
you while you're not on your company's network. That's me.
I bought my own laptop right because I wanted to Mac. Yeah,
(27:04):
they wouldn't give me one, so I was like, all right,
I'll go buy one and that's what I use exclusively.
And then as long as you're not on the company network,
you're not you should not be subject to any kind
of snooping or spying. Well, they can't, but if they do,
you would have a pretty good lawsuit on your hands.
But if they had bought that Mac for you, or
(27:24):
if your Mac is on the company network, they are
virtually free to do to look at whatever they want.
You know. Yeah, but when I am not at work,
I'm not on the company network. That's good. So there
it is impossible for them to know what I'm doing, right,
But I think I would guess. Also, I'm not a lawyer,
(27:46):
but if you opened up, say your personal email account
on the company network, if they had software, and I'm
I fully believe that this exists, um, that could just
basically go in and like copy all the files in
your personal email while you're on the company network. That
(28:07):
that would be legal. Yeah, And don't and don't be
fooled by that htt P S in front of your
Facebook account, because that is not protecting you like you
think it is, right if you're at work and it's
supposed to the hyper hypertext Transfer protocols secure, it's not
secure when you're at work on the work network. So
(28:28):
we'll talk about what you can do about all this
in a minute. We've got another message break, So chuck um,
if you if you six, if your employer doesn't tell
you that you are being surveiled, and you want to know, like,
how could you possibly find out that kind of thing? Well,
(28:49):
I would recommend reading the article how to Tell if
your boss is spying on you in Forbes from about
a year and a half ago. Um, but that's current
for this topic. It is. I'm gonna summary right some
of it here though, because it's a great article. Uh.
They said, whether or not you can tell it depends
a lot on where it's being done. If it's um,
they said, if it's upstream at the firewall, it's gonna
(29:09):
be hard for you to know. But at that point
in the stream, they're probably just gonna be able to tell,
like what websites you're going to. If they want to
get more granular and like poke into your emails and
see what you're doing, then um, they're gonna have to
be using some sort of monitoring software. And if you
want to check and see if that is running on
your computer. Um, if you have a PC, you can
(29:32):
go hit control all delete, pull up your task Manager
and go to the processes tab and then look at
all your process On a Mac. Um, I just typed
in activity monitor and that's where you want to end up.
And so like it's gonna bring up these really weirdly
named dot e x E file like everything that your
computer is doing that you don't even know what's doing
(29:54):
and look at the names they say, you can compare yours.
If you're at work, just put your laptop and I
to your cubicle buddy and see if the same processes
are running. If they're the same, that doesn't help you much.
But if you have something running that they don't, then
that might be a red flag. Well, it could help you,
and that like you're both employees and you're both being
surveilled at the same time. True, but it won't help
you really know necessarily. Yeah, but you can also like
(30:18):
search for those names on on the internet, right, Yeah,
you can. If anything stands out as something you've never
heard of, just google it and UM see if it's
spyware and then go check it out. UM. One of
the funny things though, is they point out in this
article is that spyware programs are flagged by anti virus
(30:39):
and malware programs is malicious. So UM companies are making
as what they call white lists, so the I T
Department knows uh to say, no, this isn't bad, and
so I need to put it on a separate list.
And they said in many cases those lists public Okay,
(31:02):
So apparently you can tell that way. I'm not really
sure how that works though, but it is in the
article that I mentioned in Forbes. I mean that I
bet tech stuff has a better step by step guide.
But um, yeah, I mean look at your processes, see
what's running. Yeah, and then once you find out that
your company is surveiling you, you have zero recourse against it. Yeah,
(31:23):
and we were talking earlier. If you do look at
your processes, it might have an obvious name like what
what did you say? Like we are watching you dot
e xc. Yeah, but it might not because a lot
of these are disguised. So um, like everything's cool dot
ex um. And there's, like I said, very little you
(31:45):
can do if not nothing. But luckily, the courts are
starting to rule or have on one specific thing in
favor of employees or people seeking employment. Um. There was
a growing trend among companies where they were demanding the
social media passwords and log in for like Facebook pages
(32:07):
and stuff like that when the applicants Facebook page wasn't
publicly visible. But yeah, and people would hand that over yeah,
and they were ye yes of the as a condition
of even being considered. Um. And so some states started
to outlaw that pretty quick, which is good. Yeah, that's terrible.
I mean I don't do anything on Facebook that anyone
(32:29):
would care about, but a lot of people do. So
if you're looking for a job, if you have a job,
especially if you suspect your company is more straight laced
than you are, you just want to post everything with
the idea, send every email, is it, every website with
the idea that you're being watched and you have zero
(32:54):
expectation of privacy. The courts have found when you are
on a company network, on a company device, and then
even beyond that, there have been instances where people have
been fired and lost lawsuits as a result um for
stuff they did that was maybe related to work, that
was not on the company device, that was not on
company time or on a company network, but it was
(33:16):
like they were blogging about, you know, making fun of
their coworkers. Still got fired. So basically, you just have
to I don't know what you have to do, but
it's sad. It's a sad state of affairs when even
your own personal stuff, your own personal opinions done on
your personal blog like can get you fired legally. Oh
and we didn't even mention cameras. Oh yeah, most offices
(33:39):
have cameras in their office. Um, I know we do.
We do. Yeah, well, you know the little bubble and
the ceilings. As I thought they were rain collectors, not
rank collectors. Um. Yeah, companies have camera set up to
uh for fitzcreepers and like, um, theft. Yeah, but they
(34:04):
can also see you know, if you're having a liaison
in a coffee room. Well they can, like if you're
that dumb, they can watch what you're doing on your computer.
They can surveil your computer, your desktop, just from watching
your pointed towards your screen. This is where Josh said,
you haven't You've got like four of those above your desk. Shoot.
(34:25):
Uh and did you read the IKEA story that I
sent you? I did. It seemed above and beyond the
um the realm of acceptability. Yeah. A woman, a twelve
year employee. UM, sort of high level. She was deputy
director of Communications and Merchandizing for all of France. I'd
call it fairly high level for stores and France is
their third biggest market. Really. Her name was Virginie Pauline.
(34:50):
I'm sure there's a weal better French way to say that,
but she got hepotetic c and had to take a
year off of work. And IKEA thought, well, I don't
I think she's as sick as she says, And so
we're gonna hire a private investigator. We're going to give
them their her social Security number, her personal cell phone number,
her bank account details, and whatever else they need and
(35:11):
you go find out how sick she is. And a
lot of those things were ill gotten to from corrupt
like public workers, cops and stuff. So people were rightfully outraged.
And I think it's in court still because this was
late last year, uh, seeing if they broke the law
by doing this. But apparently IKEA has been doing this,
like said the hundreds of employees of course, of the
(35:33):
last decade. So when you get that crappy furniture that
you don't know how to put together, or the lamp
ad if you like that ad, someone posted that it's
really good, it's great. Yeah, the lamp doesn't move apparently, No,
I think I said it was computer animated. It's just
a lamp. What towns Spike Jones that made it seem
(35:53):
real with his Oh it was a Spike Jones joint. Yeah.
Nice talented dude, he really is. And her was great, Um,
and I want to point out one thing you said.
If you said, if you think your company is more
straight laced, I would even say, like, if you think
your company like, no way would they do this, don't
be fooled. You know, if you think it's just some
(36:13):
super cool, hip, hipster young company, they might be spine
on you as well. Yeah, I mean if they want
you out, like you're just giving them dirt. Pretty much,
in any tech type company or anything that has any
sort of trade secrets, I'm sure you're being heavily, heavily monitored.
So I guess go forth and relax everybody. Yeah, I
(36:36):
feel good about everything. Uh. If you want to know
more about being surveiled at work again, go check out
tech Stuff. You'll like it. Uh. And you can type
the keywords employers spying in the search part how stuff
works dot Com. It will likely bring up this article.
And since I said search parts, time for a listener mail.
(36:59):
I'm gonna call this Norbert the Hungarian. Hi guys, this
is Norbert. I live in a small town in Hungary,
about forty miles away from the capitol. I always listened
to the podcast while commuting and love the show. I
work for an I t company, Hey, how about that?
Think about that? Giving email, chat and phone support for
(37:19):
American users, mostly from New Jersey, North Carolina, and Illinois.
And here's the thing. I'm not sure whether it is
due to cultural differences, but what I have noticed is
that almost none of the users greet us he said, great, us,
sweet norber when we answer their calls or when receiving
(37:39):
emails from them, neither a simple hey nor a good morning. Nothing.
The conversation usually starts off from their side with a
long yeah. Is there a reason why this is so? Guys?
I also need to add talking to you who norbert us? No,
I'm saying like who people who go Yeah, New Jersey,
(38:00):
North Carolina and Illinois. But it's like the boss from
office space. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I
also need to add to this that here we are
talking about educated people and not end users, street people.
That's what he's over here. In Europe, this is unacceptable.
It is a sign of disrespect and ignorance as this
normal practice in US. Should I worry about it? You
(38:22):
guys could answer? That would be amazing. Yeah, norm, Here's
my deal is you can sniff out sales calls and things,
and I'm never friendly to those. In fact, most of
those aren't even a person. Now it's just a recording. Yeah, right,
you know, but um, if you are offering I T support,
(38:43):
if it's unsolicited cold calls, I am not surprised that
there there he's getting that. But if like this is
the company, Yeah, he said he's giving email, chat and
phone support. So he's trying to So I guess he's
responding to a request. I would guess then, right, I guess.
The only thing I can think of, Norbert, is that
maybe there you're supporting them because something's not working and
(39:06):
so they're ticked off. Maybe. Yeah, Americans get stressed out
when computer's malfunction. Yeah, and there's a tendency to shoot
the messenger in all cultures. I think. Yeah. I think
we've said yeah to start every sentence in the last
like thirty seconds. Anyway, Norbert, I apologize on behalf of Americans.
And if you ever call me buddy, I'm gonna say, hey, Norbert,
how are you doing, buddy? Good morning Norbert, and then
(39:28):
we'll just get going from there. That's a T shirt.
Get what good morning, Norbert? Yeah? Yeah? Have you ever
been hungry? I have you have to. Yeah, you mean
I went to Budapest. It's beautiful. That's where I went.
I thought it was beautiful, to one of the most
beautiful cities around. Yeah, and it was inexpensive and um,
the people were beautiful and nice, museums were great. Did
(39:49):
you go to the hospital in the rock? Uh? Now,
what's up? It's this cavern system underneath Budapest that was
converted in the thirty into a secret bunker and hospital
and like power plant to where the city could hide
under the city. And it came in Handy and World
(40:11):
War two and during the Cold War, and it was
a secret up until like the sixties, seventies, maybe eighties,
maybe like until the end of communism in Hungary. Um,
it was in the pest side, I believe. Yeah, but
it's it's this amazing museum now filled with um mannequins,
(40:32):
dummies who are like being having surgery performed upon them.
Some are like bleeding. It's supposed to take place in
the context of war. There's a mannequins screaming. I didn't
even know they made those things. But it's really awesome.
Like they have old timey medical equipment and if you
go on a tour of this museum. The last tour
of the night is a flashlight tour, so they turn
(40:54):
all the lights out and you're walking around with flashlights
and like coming like face to face with these like
dumb means when you come around the corner, it is
really neat. I need to go back to Budapest. Yeah,
I want to go back as well. When I was
I was younger, so I didn't you know, I do
your differently if at this age for sure? Oh yeah, sure?
Were you like backpack in here? Yeah? Yeah, And we
did some museums, but it was also a lot of
(41:16):
just walking around and people watching and getting drunk on
schnops in Budapest. Actually we had the bulls Blood wine
there because it was like a dollar a bottle, right, Yeah,
I didn't find it anywhere. No, No, I don't believe
I had any like the Apricot stops for good beautiful
all right. So that's hungry everybody. Uh. If you want
(41:38):
to get in touch with me and Chuck like Norbert did,
you can tweet to us s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff
you should know, hang out with us on Pinterest, or Instagram.
It's Instagram slash s y s K podcast right, and
look up pinterest dot com slash Josh and Chuck great uh.
And then you can send us an email to Stuff
(42:01):
Podcast at how stuff works dot com and you can
hang out with us at our home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Don't
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry. How
do Jerry? How's he going? I wish I wish we
(00:22):
didn't have to pay money for playing music because I
really wanted Maxwell's and I always feel like somebody's watching
me to be or leading. You don't have to pay
for your own rendition coming in at any time. No
great song though, Yeah, And it turns out he's right,
someone is watching. Well, he was cooked to the gills,
(00:43):
which was his thing, was he did you not see
the video? No? Oh man, he's like looking out the
blinds and everything, dancing his living room. Yeah, he was
cooked up. How was a kid? I didn't understand that that.
I didn't either. Um, he was right though, that's the
point cocaine or know. He was correct? Yeah, especially nowadays,
(01:04):
like you don't need drugs to be paranoid. You can
just like be paranoid and be totally correct. Uh yeah,
you know, especially if you're gainfully employed. Yes, that is
true because what I found out from this article, Chuck,
is that if it's not the n S a eavesdropping
on you or surveiling you. It's your employer. Yeah. And
(01:26):
not only that, but you have implicitly agreed to be
spied on, because it is no doubt somewhere in your
work contract or your work agreement that they can do
exactly that that would be explicitly agreed. You're just probably
duped into it. What say, yeah, explicit Yeah, but I
(01:48):
mean if you don't know that you agreed to it, yeah,
because who reads that stuff? I know? It is the thing, like,
there's a there's a growing trend among employers to basically
slide some claws into your employee handbook that you have
to sign, uh, your employment agreement applications sometimes have them
now where it basically says I consent to being surveilled
(02:09):
electronically in you know, X number of forms or any
form you guys can come up with. And like you said,
people don't read that and they're not aware of it.
And the other devious part of the whole thing about
employee surveillance is that they don't buy law. I have
to tell you that you're being surveilled. Right. There's two states,
Connecticut and Delaware that require employers say, hey, we're watching you,
(02:34):
and Delaware barely even counts. I love Delaware. I was kidding. Yeah,
it's the screen door capital, isn't it according to the Simpsons.
I think, so we're going to Delaware. I've done some
camping at the Delaware Water Gap. It's nice. Nice. Actually,
I don't even think that's in Delaware though, is it not?
(02:55):
To look that up? It might be in New Jersey.
It's in the Aegean. That's funny. So I guess we
kind of answered the question that this this Um episode asked,
was is your employer spying on you? And the answer
is almost decidedly yes. So we found from our research
(03:15):
that stats are really old. It seems like there was
a flurry of research and discussion in like the early
to mid to late nineties when the Internet was new,
and then it just died off because apparently employers won.
Like there was there were ethical questions, there were legal
questions like can this happen? And uh, everybody said yeah,
(03:37):
Well the court said yeah totally. And if they're in
your office and they're working on your computers, and yeah,
you sure have the right. I do have some stats
from and this is the most recent thing I could
find is about three and a half years ago, which
is brand new, Yeah, compared to other stuff. Yeah, a
lot of these things are citing like surveys done in
two thousand and two thousand one. That's a different world
(03:58):
back then. I mean even current articles are using that
like there's just no data out there, no shame. Well,
here's some stuff from a few years ago. UM percent
of employers have fired UH workers for email misuse at
this point, for UM sixty of those were violating company policies,
(04:20):
were inappropriate language. There must be some overlap because they're
already over UM excessive personally used confidentiality breaching. Uhtent of
employers have fired people for Internet misuse, not email, but internet,
and that means surfing inappropriate content was of that, like
(04:43):
you know, you're looking at porn at work, get fired
for that. UM And then nowadays with social networking, UM
they six sixty six percent they estimate or monitoring Internet
connections to see what websites your browsing on a day
to day basis. I think there's ridiculously low. There's no
(05:04):
way that that's it. Well, I mean just because and
then in the article points out just because they are
set up to do so doesn't mean they are um
like generally, the one guy in the article says they
would be doing nothing but looking at activity if they
were really spying on everyone all the time. They say, generally,
(05:25):
it's if there's a problem with an employee or something
and someone is flagged that they will probably start paying attention.
But you know, this is all opinion. No one knows, right,
you know, employees aren't being too terribly forthcoming. Our job
is different though, because we with our research, we can
be looking at virtually anything. You know, this stuff we've
(05:45):
looked at online here. I can't tell you how many
lists we must be on just from the research we've
like the marijuana one alone. Yeah, it was like these
guys do nothing. The research like human trafficking and and
hookers and marijuana and bombmaking. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy
and and we can We're all over social media, so
that's part of our job. So yeah, no, I know,
(06:07):
it's kind of It was different to see like the
other side of it. But at the same time, I
was like, wow, I really feel bad for like, you know,
the average employee. If you go on to Twitter, no
I have If you go onto Twitter or something for
a minute or two, like you can get fired. Yeah,
it's weird. My my chicken software job that I have
before this one, the famous chicken software job. You know,
(06:31):
nothing on the internet is applicable to what you do.
So if the boss walks by and you're just checking
the Brave score from ESPN and you feel like you
have to hide it real quick, sure where now, I'm like,
come on, you know you check a score, No big deal.
And some employers don't care. I saw this one UM
article from UH. It was some sort of a Christian
(06:52):
organization that ended up firing employees, and he said, I
didn't care if they were on Facebook and doing that
other stuff, but when they started to talk some about
the company is when they got riled up and fired people. Supposedly,
there's UM that's what employers are looking for, is there.
They're looking for employees that are, like you said, talking
(07:13):
smack about the company, divulging company's secrets, ye leaking information.
That's probably the biggest one they're looking for. And then
um like grossly misusing time yea, or or like sexually
harassing or something that's that one makes total sense sending
inappropriate jokes around here, like the guy in the office
ending like overt inappropriate emails all around the office. Then yeah,
(07:37):
they're gonna they're gonna tag you. Right, So they aren't
necessarily watching you at all times, but the system is
most likely set up to where they can to where
if you do something that is that tricks triggers a
filter or something that somebody's going to get an email,
they're going to examine it and it's going to get
sent to HR if it fits the criteria. Right, yeah,
(08:00):
pretty much, UM, But like you said, they could, I mean,
they're most companies are set up now with what they
call continuous since systematic surveillance. UM. So if they wanted
to be bored out of their mind, they most companies
could literally look at everything you're doing at all times.
For this system had been for that having to watch
(08:23):
all that exactly. So we said that, UM, employers don't
have to tell you that they're surveilling you. As a
matter of fact, legally speaking, they can lie and tell
you that they're not surveilling you, and then if you
bust them and take them to court, you will lose
as far back as an employee for Pillsbury, you know, right, um. He.
(08:47):
I guess he didn't really like his job that much.
He was known for talking smack and in two different
emails um which he assured were confidential, weren't used for
disciplinary action and just were his own. Um, he said
that they should kill the backstabbing bastards about one group
of people, and he referred to the company Christmas party
(09:09):
as the Jim Jones kool Aid affair. And he got
fired for every company Christmas party, right, He got fired
for that, but he took Pillsbury court. Was like, they
said that they weren't paying attention to these emails and
that they wouldn't use them against me, And the court said,
so what man, It's like you said, the court has
decided that if you were using their device, or you're
(09:30):
using their network on their time that's even off of
their time, especially on their time, then they have a
right to protect their business by monitoring what's going on
with their business devices, on their business network with their employees. Yeah.
I think within reasons, some of that does make sense.
(09:50):
You don't want your employees divulging secrets or sending lured
emails around to everyone and all the all of a sudden,
you're slapt with the lawsuit um, which I think is
what it ultimately boils. And so some of this is understandable,
I get it. The thing is, though, is it's so
slippery of it's already just so draconian. Then it's there's
(10:14):
it's just completely lopsided, like how do you surveil your
own employer? How do you do that? Like shouldn't it
be shouldn't it be more balanced than that? I mean,
the whole thing just let me get on my soapbox
and we'll get down a breast text. But the whole
thing stinks of you just being indebted to your employer
(10:36):
for giving you a job, Like it just kind of
has that whole mentality attached to it, like your employer
can do whatever you want. If you don't like it,
you can go hit the breadline, Rusky. You know, yeah,
I'm done. No, I'm with you, man. That's it's definitely like,
you know, as an employee, to feel like someone has
their foot on your throat. There's fifty people in Anglory
(11:00):
who would kill for your job right now, we could
get them over here, right you know, it just makes
me sad. It is sad. That is the state of things. Uh, So,
I guess we should talk a little bit about how
how they're spying on you. And there are many ways, um,
but there five pretty likely ones that you probably have
(11:20):
in your office, um, and we'll go through them in
more detail. But I had a sixth that added, well
we'll hear in a minute, Okay, packet sniffers, log files,
desktop monitoring programs, phones, and close circuit cameras. And I'm
gonna go ahead and say phones as a two parter
because the company issues cell phones, um as well, So
(11:41):
what's your what's your other one? GPS. GPS was kept
out of this because that was one of the original
means of surveillance in the workplace, Yeah, with the little
trackers that they put on like delivery trucks or whatever
to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do.
But now it's been extended to things like employees cell phones.
About three percent of companies track their employees using GPS
(12:05):
by tracking their cell phone, and then one percent track
their employees by tracking um they're like there keyless entry cards, man. Yeah,
well one percent. Thankfully that's like, I mean, what company
is that, I don't know, but it's probably a pretty
pedantic company. That's not an enjoyable company. I would think
(12:26):
it's like a highly sensitive, like you know, someone who's
making Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Well, they are
the one percent at least. Let's dig in and let's
start with packet sniffers. I love that those two words
together just yeah, they're great packets sniffers. Yes, they've been
around for a while, it's nothing new. Uh. And they
(12:47):
monitor the computer network and they performed tests and diagnostic
tests and troubleshoot all sorts of things. So they're not
inherently they're just too uh root out you know what
you're emailing to your buddy. No, it's like that's how
they sort of spam out from your regular stuff. Yeah.
(13:09):
So it's not nefarious in and of itself, but it
can be when it's set to something called promiscuous mode,
which I thought was pretty funny too. Yeah, std mode,
And that means instead of just looking for certain keywords
that like, they can basically look at all of it.
And a packet is just a piece of information. Well,
(13:29):
it's like if you send me an email saying, hey, Josh,
that might be split up into X number of packets
and then my computer busily recombines it into the full
email and and combines the packets together, and the packets
sniffer to sniffs all those packets to look for Hi, Josh,
I'm gonna bring a gun to work tomorrow and you're
(13:50):
in trouble. That's a bad way to do that. You're
not supposed to send a warning. Yeah, you're not supposed
to do that at all. Yeah. Hell, let's not give
advice to office shooters. I think that's a wise policy.
What you would do is give advice, say Josh, don't
come into work tomorrow because that happens. Oh really Yeah,
with with shooters, they'll they'll say sometimes they'll they will
(14:13):
have warned like the one person they like at work. Okay,
if I were you, I wouldn't come in tomorrow, which
is when you pick up the phone. You have a
moral obligation to protect the lives of us. You don't say, sweet,
I don't have to come in tomorrow, right, you know,
crazy guy gave me the day off. Yeah, called the cops. Um.
So with the packet sniffing, they're filtered, and unfiltered modes
(14:33):
and unfiltered will will capture everything, and filtered is when
they're looking for like keywords or in any sort of
specific data like I would imagine the name of your company. Ye,
like dangerous words like like going, um, drug related words,
(14:54):
that kind of stuff. Kilo, sure in my trunk, right,
that kind of thing at my desk. That's a bad
one with kilo. Oh yeah, Kilo at my desk. Um.
So if something is packet sniffing, they can see what
websites you're visiting, what you're doing there, what you're downloading,
the emails you're sending, what's in those emails, basically any
(15:18):
everything you're doing. And you can set up a packet
sniffer on like say your computer, your systematman can set
it up on your computer, and um it would it
would basically just be able to see what your computer
is doing, what websites is visiting, what emails it's sending.
It's basically just like eaves dropping onto a transmission cable.
(15:39):
Yeah you know. Um. The thing is is that kind
of raises some legal um ramifications, which we'll talk about later.
So there's a certain way you have to do it.
But if you put that packet sniffer on like a
your server for the whole company's network, it can pick
up all all that traffic. Yeah, if it's right there
(16:01):
in the middle of the action. Yeah. Yeah. And by
the way, if you're digging this kind of stuff, if
you like words like packet sniffers and servers and Kilo,
then you should go listen to tech Stuff, which is
like an all tech, very good UM related podcasts here
at how stuff Works dot com. Yeah, from our colleagues
(16:22):
Jonathan and Lauren, and I bet they have covered this. Uh,
I'm better than we are about to, which is why
I'm saying, like, go listen to those guys. If you're
liking this for the less jokey, more informative version, more
pun filled. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Another way, and this
is the one that's really um draconian and common, is
(16:44):
a desktop monitoring software. So if you're sitting at your
computer and you're typing something in, you're sending a signal
throughout your computer. And there are software systems that either
physically installed hard on your laptop hard or remotely installed
the trojan horse, like, hey, install this program because you
(17:06):
need it, but there's also this hidden program in there
that you don't need and you don't even know, and
it's going to track all of your activity on your computer.
I would guess that if you're getting if your employers
tracking you're spying on you, they're not going to use
the troch and horses more like a hacker tactic. But
(17:27):
the result is the same. I mean, there's a program
on there now where whereas like a packet sniffer is
keeping track of like where your computer is going on
the Internet. Remember that old Microsoft commercial where do you
want to go today? The old Windows commercial. So it's
keeping track of where you're going today and who you're
talking to along the way. This um the desktop monitoring programs.
(17:48):
That's like any key stroke you make is logging, and
so you don't you can be writing a note to
yourself that you never save. You just trash afterwards. You
never save it, so it's never saved onto your system.
This desktop monitoring system is keeping track of your key strokes,
so it sees everything that goes on on your on
(18:11):
your desktop. Yeah, and when you get that company issued laptop,
it very likely already has it installed. And again the
system admin can remotely install it because you're on the
same network as them and they have administrative sway over
your computer. They're like Svengali or if the I T
guy comes by and says the new drow leptop for
(18:32):
an hour because they need to install some sort of
program that sounds familiar. Beware of that of that message.
You know that that that impression was dead on. Okay, Um,
there are alert systems that are on some of these programs.
Oh wait, hold on, before we move on to alert systems,
(18:53):
there's a that desktop monitoring thing. So with key strokes,
you know, Um, it's it's picking up all the key
strokes and it's basically redirecting them to whoever's watching your
computer at that moment. And so maybe they have a
text file that's open and it's just seeing what's being
typed as it's going on, or it can be saved
for later as a text file and then like emailed
(19:15):
to the system admin, or it can the same programs
can intersect what's being sent to your video card or
what your video card is sending out to your monitor
and redirected, split and then redirected to your system admin
or whoever spying on you, and they can recreate what
you're seeing on your desktop by intercepting your video cards.
(19:38):
Trans transmission within your operating system. That's that's some serious
spying on you, some serious spying uh in the alert
system I mentioned, that's part of the monitoring software UM.
Where again sort of like keywords are certain alerts or
maybe websites, whereas some companies just block websites altogether. Yeah,
(19:59):
like face booker, you know, and anything they consider to
be a time waster UM or it can be set
up on an alert system where they just know that
you were spending way too much time online gambling if
you had a problem, which would be any time if
your work, you know, I doubt if they allow for
(20:19):
like payoffs you get ten minutes today the homeline online
or otherwise you can play craps at your desk. Right.
Another way, if you think that hey, I delete all
my stuff and I cover my paper trail, my e
paper trail, you were wrong because you have log files
(20:41):
in your computer. That um, even when you've deleted something,
there's a log file somewhere in your computer. Most likely
that that logs exactly what you have just done. Right,
Like when you delete that email, it's not really deleted
at least initially. Yeah, and those log files can be
gotten to remotely if you're on the same network again,
(21:03):
or they can set up, UM, some sort of program
that emails log files to them, especially ones that are
trigger some sort of filter and log files. I mean
those are normal, they're they're part of your operating system.
But um, they can be gotten to. In other words,
they can be used against you. That's true. Yeah, and
(21:25):
normally they're used for bugs, or originally they were used
for bugs. Yeah. It's like the the computer tracked its
own activity and then if something happened, somebody who could
read that kind of code could go back and say, oh, well,
here's here's the problem, this is why it crashed, and
then fix that bug. I bet desktop monitoring software is
(21:48):
the bulk of how they're getting this information. Uh. Yeah,
I would imagine that like a company that's involved in
this does um desktop monitoring and packet sniffing, packets sniffing. UM.
I guess we can talk about how about this after
this message break, we'll talk about old school eavesdropping, the
(22:10):
wire style. All right, you don't necessarily even have to
be on your laptop to get spied on because your
phone might be bugged. That's true. I guess the simplest
(22:30):
way to say right. Well, yeah, especially if you have
a work issued phone or iPad or whatever. You're um like,
they can just totally eavesdrop on that. But if it's
like your phone at your desk, there's almost a hundred
percent chances being eaves dropped on. Well, it's just twelve
in here. Well. So, another very very old statistic that
(22:55):
I still see sighted today is that companies eaves dropped
on like four million calls a year. But that was
from nine seven, number right right, which I find it
sad that the a c l U hasn't done any
report on workplace surveillance, workplace spying, anything like that since
the late nineties. It's two thousand, fourteen a c l U.
(23:19):
Let's get on the ball. Yeah, I mean it's a
it's not all Naziason clansman, you know, like there are
other issues to be addressed. You just did jazz hands
to Nazeason klansmen. Um. Here's the thing though, with wire tapping,
supposedly federal losses, you can't wire tap because you need
consent from the party, But the Privacy Electronic Communication Privacy
(23:43):
Act of nineteen six said they can eavesdrop on job
related talk. And how do you know if it's job
related unless you listen in for a few minutes first, right,
so they're protected, it's all. It's a loophole. They can
listen to all your calls. Yeah all don't know how
how long they can listen, but long enough to determine
(24:03):
if you're going to be talking about work. So that's
that's a pretty wide margin. I think a couple of
minutes is is UM routinely argued for in cases like that,
and the UM Electronic Protection Act UM, the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act says there's two types of communication and once
(24:24):
protected and one's not stored, communication is not UM. Communication
that's simultaneously transmitted and received is protected. And they were
staying like they were basically protecting a phone call because
we could possibly come in the future to supplant the
phone covers exactly. So phone calls are very much protected
(24:47):
again except for that work around with with business where
they can't tell if it's personel or business and for
for a couple of minutes. But then emails fall into
this weird category because emails are transmitted there in motion UM,
so apparently you can't you can't scoop up people's emails
when they're being transmitted. But emails also have the characteristic
(25:09):
of sitting on an outgoing server for a minute, right, well,
not a minute, but for however long it takes before
it's sent. It could be a second, and that still
counts even less. While it's sitting on that server, it
can be copied and analyzed and all sorts of stuff
can be totally within the law. Yeah, and I love
the analogy. And here if that doesn't quite make sense, um,
they drop the analogy of It's like if your standard
(25:31):
mail that your mail carrier delivers to your house. While
they're delivering it, you can't, you know, you can't go
open your neighbor's mail. But once it sits in that mailbox,
then you can go read your neighbor's mail. But you
can't do that though, that's insane. No, you can't. You
can't do that with your neighbor's mail. You can't with
email exactly. And you have said quite accurately that the
(25:55):
court generally sides with well, they side with citizens when
it comes to privacy in general, But once you become
an employee, the employer has most of the almost exclusively
they've ruled in favor of the employer, because the network
belongs to the employer. UM, and the devices often belong
(26:19):
to the employer, And we should say that's a trend
that may be going away. There's a UM there's something
called bring your own device movement. Yeah, where companies are
starting to basically say, you need to supply your own computer,
You definitely need to supply your own phone. Maybe you
need to supply your own iPad. Perhaps we'll give you
(26:41):
a little bit of a stipend to offset the cost
of using your own phone. But UM, that raises a
lot of questions about the legality then of snooping on
you while you're not on your company's network. That's me.
I bought my own laptop right because I wanted to Mac. Yeah,
(27:04):
they wouldn't give me one, so I was like, all right,
I'll go buy one and that's what I use exclusively.
And then as long as you're not on the company network,
you're not you should not be subject to any kind
of snooping or spying. Well, they can't, but if they do,
you would have a pretty good lawsuit on your hands.
But if they had bought that Mac for you, or
(27:24):
if your Mac is on the company network, they are
virtually free to do to look at whatever they want.
You know. Yeah, but when I am not at work,
I'm not on the company network. That's good. So there
it is impossible for them to know what I'm doing, right,
But I think I would guess. Also, I'm not a lawyer,
(27:46):
but if you opened up, say your personal email account
on the company network, if they had software, and I'm
I fully believe that this exists, um, that could just
basically go in and like copy all the files in
your personal email while you're on the company network. That
(28:07):
that would be legal. Yeah, And don't and don't be
fooled by that htt P S in front of your
Facebook account, because that is not protecting you like you
think it is, right if you're at work and it's
supposed to the hyper hypertext Transfer protocols secure, it's not
secure when you're at work on the work network. So
(28:28):
we'll talk about what you can do about all this
in a minute. We've got another message break, So chuck um,
if you if you six, if your employer doesn't tell
you that you are being surveiled, and you want to know, like,
how could you possibly find out that kind of thing? Well,
(28:49):
I would recommend reading the article how to Tell if
your boss is spying on you in Forbes from about
a year and a half ago. Um, but that's current
for this topic. It is. I'm gonna summary right some
of it here though, because it's a great article. Uh.
They said, whether or not you can tell it depends
a lot on where it's being done. If it's um,
they said, if it's upstream at the firewall, it's gonna
(29:09):
be hard for you to know. But at that point
in the stream, they're probably just gonna be able to tell,
like what websites you're going to. If they want to
get more granular and like poke into your emails and
see what you're doing, then um, they're gonna have to
be using some sort of monitoring software. And if you
want to check and see if that is running on
your computer. Um, if you have a PC, you can
(29:32):
go hit control all delete, pull up your task Manager
and go to the processes tab and then look at
all your process On a Mac. Um, I just typed
in activity monitor and that's where you want to end up.
And so like it's gonna bring up these really weirdly
named dot e x E file like everything that your
computer is doing that you don't even know what's doing
(29:54):
and look at the names they say, you can compare yours.
If you're at work, just put your laptop and I
to your cubicle buddy and see if the same processes
are running. If they're the same, that doesn't help you much.
But if you have something running that they don't, then
that might be a red flag. Well, it could help you,
and that like you're both employees and you're both being
surveilled at the same time. True, but it won't help
you really know necessarily. Yeah, but you can also like
(30:18):
search for those names on on the internet, right, Yeah,
you can. If anything stands out as something you've never
heard of, just google it and UM see if it's
spyware and then go check it out. UM. One of
the funny things though, is they point out in this
article is that spyware programs are flagged by anti virus
(30:39):
and malware programs is malicious. So UM companies are making
as what they call white lists, so the I T
Department knows uh to say, no, this isn't bad, and
so I need to put it on a separate list.
And they said in many cases those lists public Okay,
(31:02):
So apparently you can tell that way. I'm not really
sure how that works though, but it is in the
article that I mentioned in Forbes. I mean that I
bet tech stuff has a better step by step guide.
But um, yeah, I mean look at your processes, see
what's running. Yeah, and then once you find out that
your company is surveiling you, you have zero recourse against it. Yeah,
(31:23):
and we were talking earlier. If you do look at
your processes, it might have an obvious name like what
what did you say? Like we are watching you dot
e xc. Yeah, but it might not because a lot
of these are disguised. So um, like everything's cool dot
ex um. And there's, like I said, very little you
(31:45):
can do if not nothing. But luckily, the courts are
starting to rule or have on one specific thing in
favor of employees or people seeking employment. Um. There was
a growing trend among companies where they were demanding the
social media passwords and log in for like Facebook pages
(32:07):
and stuff like that when the applicants Facebook page wasn't
publicly visible. But yeah, and people would hand that over yeah,
and they were ye yes of the as a condition
of even being considered. Um. And so some states started
to outlaw that pretty quick, which is good. Yeah, that's terrible.
I mean I don't do anything on Facebook that anyone
(32:29):
would care about, but a lot of people do. So
if you're looking for a job, if you have a job,
especially if you suspect your company is more straight laced
than you are, you just want to post everything with
the idea, send every email, is it, every website with
the idea that you're being watched and you have zero
(32:54):
expectation of privacy. The courts have found when you are
on a company network, on a company device, and then
even beyond that, there have been instances where people have
been fired and lost lawsuits as a result um for
stuff they did that was maybe related to work, that
was not on the company device, that was not on
company time or on a company network, but it was
(33:16):
like they were blogging about, you know, making fun of
their coworkers. Still got fired. So basically, you just have
to I don't know what you have to do, but
it's sad. It's a sad state of affairs when even
your own personal stuff, your own personal opinions done on
your personal blog like can get you fired legally. Oh
and we didn't even mention cameras. Oh yeah, most offices
(33:39):
have cameras in their office. Um, I know we do.
We do. Yeah, well, you know the little bubble and
the ceilings. As I thought they were rain collectors, not
rank collectors. Um. Yeah, companies have camera set up to
uh for fitzcreepers and like, um, theft. Yeah, but they
(34:04):
can also see you know, if you're having a liaison
in a coffee room. Well they can, like if you're
that dumb, they can watch what you're doing on your computer.
They can surveil your computer, your desktop, just from watching
your pointed towards your screen. This is where Josh said,
you haven't You've got like four of those above your desk. Shoot.
(34:25):
Uh and did you read the IKEA story that I
sent you? I did. It seemed above and beyond the
um the realm of acceptability. Yeah. A woman, a twelve
year employee. UM, sort of high level. She was deputy
director of Communications and Merchandizing for all of France. I'd
call it fairly high level for stores and France is
their third biggest market. Really. Her name was Virginie Pauline.
(34:50):
I'm sure there's a weal better French way to say that,
but she got hepotetic c and had to take a
year off of work. And IKEA thought, well, I don't
I think she's as sick as she says, And so
we're gonna hire a private investigator. We're going to give
them their her social Security number, her personal cell phone number,
her bank account details, and whatever else they need and
(35:11):
you go find out how sick she is. And a
lot of those things were ill gotten to from corrupt
like public workers, cops and stuff. So people were rightfully outraged.
And I think it's in court still because this was
late last year, uh, seeing if they broke the law
by doing this. But apparently IKEA has been doing this,
like said the hundreds of employees of course, of the
(35:33):
last decade. So when you get that crappy furniture that
you don't know how to put together, or the lamp
ad if you like that ad, someone posted that it's
really good, it's great. Yeah, the lamp doesn't move apparently, No,
I think I said it was computer animated. It's just
a lamp. What towns Spike Jones that made it seem
(35:53):
real with his Oh it was a Spike Jones joint. Yeah.
Nice talented dude, he really is. And her was great, Um,
and I want to point out one thing you said.
If you said, if you think your company is more
straight laced, I would even say, like, if you think
your company like, no way would they do this, don't
be fooled. You know, if you think it's just some
(36:13):
super cool, hip, hipster young company, they might be spine
on you as well. Yeah, I mean if they want
you out, like you're just giving them dirt. Pretty much,
in any tech type company or anything that has any
sort of trade secrets, I'm sure you're being heavily, heavily monitored.
So I guess go forth and relax everybody. Yeah, I
(36:36):
feel good about everything. Uh. If you want to know
more about being surveiled at work again, go check out
tech Stuff. You'll like it. Uh. And you can type
the keywords employers spying in the search part how stuff
works dot Com. It will likely bring up this article.
And since I said search parts, time for a listener mail.
(36:59):
I'm gonna call this Norbert the Hungarian. Hi guys, this
is Norbert. I live in a small town in Hungary,
about forty miles away from the capitol. I always listened
to the podcast while commuting and love the show. I
work for an I t company, Hey, how about that?
Think about that? Giving email, chat and phone support for
(37:19):
American users, mostly from New Jersey, North Carolina, and Illinois.
And here's the thing. I'm not sure whether it is
due to cultural differences, but what I have noticed is
that almost none of the users greet us he said, great, us,
sweet norber when we answer their calls or when receiving
(37:39):
emails from them, neither a simple hey nor a good morning. Nothing.
The conversation usually starts off from their side with a
long yeah. Is there a reason why this is so? Guys?
I also need to add talking to you who norbert us? No,
I'm saying like who people who go Yeah, New Jersey,
(38:00):
North Carolina and Illinois. But it's like the boss from
office space. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I
also need to add to this that here we are
talking about educated people and not end users, street people.
That's what he's over here. In Europe, this is unacceptable.
It is a sign of disrespect and ignorance as this
normal practice in US. Should I worry about it? You
(38:22):
guys could answer? That would be amazing. Yeah, norm, Here's
my deal is you can sniff out sales calls and things,
and I'm never friendly to those. In fact, most of
those aren't even a person. Now it's just a recording. Yeah, right,
you know, but um, if you are offering I T support,
(38:43):
if it's unsolicited cold calls, I am not surprised that
there there he's getting that. But if like this is
the company, Yeah, he said he's giving email, chat and
phone support. So he's trying to So I guess he's
responding to a request. I would guess then, right, I guess.
The only thing I can think of, Norbert, is that
maybe there you're supporting them because something's not working and
(39:06):
so they're ticked off. Maybe. Yeah, Americans get stressed out
when computer's malfunction. Yeah, and there's a tendency to shoot
the messenger in all cultures. I think. Yeah. I think
we've said yeah to start every sentence in the last
like thirty seconds. Anyway, Norbert, I apologize on behalf of Americans.
And if you ever call me buddy, I'm gonna say, hey, Norbert,
how are you doing, buddy? Good morning Norbert, and then
(39:28):
we'll just get going from there. That's a T shirt.
Get what good morning, Norbert? Yeah? Yeah? Have you ever
been hungry? I have you have to. Yeah, you mean
I went to Budapest. It's beautiful. That's where I went.
I thought it was beautiful, to one of the most
beautiful cities around. Yeah, and it was inexpensive and um,
the people were beautiful and nice, museums were great. Did
(39:49):
you go to the hospital in the rock? Uh? Now,
what's up? It's this cavern system underneath Budapest that was
converted in the thirty into a secret bunker and hospital
and like power plant to where the city could hide
under the city. And it came in Handy and World
(40:11):
War two and during the Cold War, and it was
a secret up until like the sixties, seventies, maybe eighties,
maybe like until the end of communism in Hungary. Um,
it was in the pest side, I believe. Yeah, but
it's it's this amazing museum now filled with um mannequins,
(40:32):
dummies who are like being having surgery performed upon them.
Some are like bleeding. It's supposed to take place in
the context of war. There's a mannequins screaming. I didn't
even know they made those things. But it's really awesome.
Like they have old timey medical equipment and if you
go on a tour of this museum. The last tour
of the night is a flashlight tour, so they turn
(40:54):
all the lights out and you're walking around with flashlights
and like coming like face to face with these like
dumb means when you come around the corner, it is
really neat. I need to go back to Budapest. Yeah,
I want to go back as well. When I was
I was younger, so I didn't you know, I do
your differently if at this age for sure? Oh yeah, sure?
Were you like backpack in here? Yeah? Yeah, And we
did some museums, but it was also a lot of
(41:16):
just walking around and people watching and getting drunk on
schnops in Budapest. Actually we had the bulls Blood wine
there because it was like a dollar a bottle, right, Yeah,
I didn't find it anywhere. No, No, I don't believe
I had any like the Apricot stops for good beautiful
all right. So that's hungry everybody. Uh. If you want
(41:38):
to get in touch with me and Chuck like Norbert did,
you can tweet to us s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff
you should know, hang out with us on Pinterest, or Instagram.
It's Instagram slash s y s K podcast right, and
look up pinterest dot com slash Josh and Chuck great uh.
And then you can send us an email to Stuff
(42:01):
Podcast at how stuff works dot com and you can
hang out with us at our home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
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