Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

Re:Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US ... by jefftk on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @05:10PM (#25282380)

You aren't required to have any phone. If you have a phone and want it to have access to corp resources, you need to agree to some conditions.

I have coworkers who choose to keep their phone personal only, and others who choose to have the company pay for them to have a separate work phone.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

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Re:Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US ... by mleonhard on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @07:09PM (#25283585)

I did that. I had a company laptop and phone. I usually left them at the office.

For extra privacy, I stopped my personal phone from connecting to the company WiFi. Then Google bought my home ISP (WebPass). Now I use a router-based VPN.

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Re:Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US ... by astrange on Thursday December 03, 2020 @01:44AM (#25286200)

> For extra privacy, I stopped my personal phone from connecting to the company WiFi.

In a large enough campus, wouldn't the company also operate the cell tower? (I feel like I should know this, but I don't.)

> Now I use a router-based VPN.

This is not really useful except as a way to make your internet really slow. VPN providers are a lot less trustworthy than ISPs, that's why they can afford all those podcast ads.

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Re:Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US ... by mleonhard on Thursday December 03, 2020 @02:08AM (#25286355)

I use a VPN provider [0] located in my state. They claim not to spy and I believe them. My state (California) which has some privacy laws and consumer protection functions which would make things very difficult for the VPN provider if they were caught spying. I picked this VPN provider because they finance WireGuard development.

AT&T, Verizon, and other ISPs spy and sell the data they collect. They also spend large amounts of money influencing lawmakers to keep spying allowed.

[0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com

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Re:Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US ... by GoblinSlayer on Thursday December 03, 2020 @08:06AM (#25288429)

Isn't laptop enough? What the phone does?

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Re:Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US ... by jefftk on Thursday December 03, 2020 @11:30AM (#25290607)

Some things I use corporate access on my phone for:

* Receiving pages when on call

* Team chat notifications

* Meetings while walking around the neighborhood

* Filing android bug reports

* Testing unreleased software

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