If they want to install anything on my phone other than apps I choose to install for my own convenience they better give me a work phone.
Exactly this. Any employer trying to put private devices into their MDM is totally unprofessional anyway… Most MDMs allow access to the GPS Data and have a remote wiping function, it would be a privacy mess for the employee AND employer.
Years ago, I worked in the IT department at a university that brought in an MDM for accessing work email on personal devices with a policy of wiping the phone if you got your unlock code wrong 3 times. I refused to use it on my personal device and told the head of the department that it was far too risky as you could accidentally do this with the phone in your pocket. He disagreed, but less than a week later, this exact thing happened to him, got his unlock wrong 3 times, phone wiped, no backup done. He still refused to change the policy even with the inconvenience it caused him. I just laughed.
One of my colleges had MDM enabled for staff and students alike. (I realize this is likely a configuration problem, rather than malice or whatever)
The number of students who, nonetheless, did it… mind boggling.
Remote wipe? Lawl fuck no. Not worth the risk that some asshole has a bad day and wipes them all for fun.
I can understand it for certain things but… frankly there should be some sort of like… laws? About what your employer can require of you. Sure, company phone go for it, idgaf. But if they would need to remote wipe a device, maaaaaaaybe they shouldn’t be allowed to let employees use their own. You want full control, company, you get to pay for that with another phone, phone line, etc. (extra bonus, most people won’t carry the work phone when they are off work, so they are less reachable for unpaid labor :) )
“You need to install this on your phone”
“Oh I don’t have a phone”
“you’re welcome to try”
hands over my brain-dead flip phone with no ‘app’ capability
Virtually all current flip phones run either Android or KaiOS under the hood. The giveaway would be any Google app pre-installed, or any app you already recognize.
The era of “dumb” flip phones is long over. I would be very surprised if any are still being manufactured.
my current one actually does have an older, and very stripped-down, android… but no google anything installed, and no google play. i don’t even have a data plan attached to it–although it does have a mobile browser and can function as a hotspot.
Where do you buy something like that? Everything I’ve ever seen that’s not an iPhone runs Android.
I used to have Teams and Outlook on my phone, so I was accessible for work at almost any time. I know a lot of people think that’s dumb, but I was an hourly employee so I never minded the occasional work ping after hours, since I didn’t mind getting paid to reply with a few sentences from my couch. It worked out well for both me and my company.
Then they decided to make MDM mandatory on your phone to access Teams and Outlook. I declined the install and removed both apps from my phone. Now I can easily miss IMs for weeks at a time if I don’t open a 2nd laptop to check them. I’m more disconnected than I’ve ever been, which is probably better for my mental health. I don’t bill as much as I used to, but that’s fine for me.
I eventually caved and installed stuff on a Pixel 1.
If they wanted a phone with security updates they would have given me one.
The solution for their use should have been standard TOTP and/or yubikey. But apparently some vendor came in with a fancy PowerPoint for their proprietary project.
Mine just gave us all phones.
Too much litigation chance
We have never, and will never, integrate someone’s personal phone into our infrastructure. Everyone gets a company phone. If you want to use the company phone as your personal phone, or the phone you use to cheat on your husband, that’s your call. Just don’t complain to me when video of you pleasuring yourself end up backed up to our cloud storage and discovered by IT when tracking down large files eating up storage. (Yes that happened.)
Yeah the whole thing is kinda dumb on both ends. From the employees perspective it’s ridiculous to allow the company have any level of control over a device they own. From the company’s perspective, why would you want to allow access and/or have information that’s the company’s property on a device the company doesn’t own?
If I have a password for key company infrastructure stored on my personal phone, then the company fires me… well that seems like a problem a company would want to avoid. It could happen in any scenario, but significantly less likely if I have to turn in my company phone when my employment ends.
But hey the company saves a few bucks on buying phones and that helps the quarterly profits I guess.
That’s the whole point of work profiles and company owned devices. This Joelle just has no idea what she’s talking about.
You literally can’t “just install an MDM” to your phone in the way that allows a company complete access to your device. Both iOS and Android require that either the device is new or the device is factory reset. Then and only then can the device have MDM enabled as a “Company Owned Device” e.g. complete access.
The other way, is through “Work Profiles”, it’s an isolated and sandboxed partition. The “Work side” has no access to anything on the personal side and the personal side has no access to anything on the work side. On Android the work side has its own Play Store, its own Chrome, its own apps. (In fact, if you’re rooted you can hijack the work profiles feature for yourself if you want to install apps you’d rather keep isolated, like TikTok).
If I issue a wipe command to a phone with a work profile, only the work profile gets wiped and the personal side is untouched. An employer utilizing work profiles only has visibility and control within the work profile, the rest of the phone might as well not exist
Hell, Android even gives you the ability to restrict the Work Profiles to work hours so all the work apps go dormant after 5
So with MDM, the company can essentially wipe that device remotely in the case that something like that occurs. Not that it’s the best option. Still think companies should just provide the hardware. But that’s the protection in that case.
Wtf how? Was someone cybering over vid chat and checked the record option?
She was recording herself, sending the video file, then deleting the file from the phone. Our phones are configured to immediately back up, so (I am assuming) that while she put together the e-mail or text, our phone was dutifully doing its job.
Oh man how embarassing. I imagine you make it pretty clear that the company phone comes with this capability after that incident lol
You have to sign a document before you get equipment. Part of that document is you acknowledging that you read another document that outlines what you can and cannot do with company equipment and what the capabilities of said equipment are. We even tell people to close the physical camera shutter on the laptop whenever they aren’t on a video call if they want to ensure privacy. There is also a code of conduct document they need to read and sign. Using company property for lewd acts and to conceal adultery broke a number of agreements.
Well you tried
My previous employer was acquired and the new owner required jumping through these kinds of hoops to use company email or Teams on our phones.
As an end result, everybody stopped using those on their phones. Once the laptop lid was shut, work wouldn’t be bothering you until you open it the next day. Sometimes stupid things can lead to good outcomes.
Yup, to get email on your phone my employer makes you download something or other that in the fine print says they reserve the right to wipe your phone, if necessary. I saw that and now I don’t have email on my phone. It’s great.
May want to double check with your IT department. There’s another comment in this thread going into more detail but your IT department could have it setup to install to and only wipe a sandboxed partition of your phone in a work profile not the entire device. I think my company docs or the app say full remote wipe but people confirmed it’s just the sandboxed portion. That being said I personally didn’t install the apps on my device.
Yeah this exact scenario happened where I used to work. The only time it’s an inconvenience is if we’re all in person for a tech summit or something, but having the personal contacts of a few co-workers let’s me check in on any plans I might have missed.
Nowadays my phone is too old to even run slack, so I’d require work to buy me a new, separate work phone anyway.
But truth be told, it’s amazing being unreachable. I logged on to the work slack today Monday morning, and found out that the company had an all hands on deck show stopper bug last Friday ~1730 lol not for me it wasn’t. I was walking my dog enjoying the brisk winter air, completely oblivious until I logged back on this morning to read the postmortem. 😌
These people really don’t know how MDM solutions work.
… actually they aren’t wrong. MDMs are given special permissions including but not limited to reading your SMSes and phone records, restricting and monitoring your installed apps and even wiping your device.
I’m not sure what MDM you’re subjected to but I’ve been an MDM engineer for 7 years using Intune and JAMF and no, no SMS or phone records. Even the phone # is blanked out minus the last 4 digits. Yes we can wipe the devices if it’s lost\compromised but personal versus corporate owned devices are limited. I can’t see what apps you have that were personally installed. And the only info I can get are the device stats (SN, IMEI, storage, battery, memory, etc).
Intune and JAMF are not the only MDMs on the market. There are others that do offer these capabilities, at least on Android.
SMS reading:
https://support.sophos.com/support/s/article/KB-000034436?language=en_US
Call log reading:
And app lists:
https://help.ivanti.com/mi/help/en_us/cld/admin/ivanti/91/all/en-us/App_Inventory.htm
Yeah I have looked at those solutions and one not on your list (MobileIron, not sure if they’re still around). I don’t know why anyone would choose those solutions but good call.
I also don’t know why anyone would use these either FWIW
Can you support your claims? I’ve worked with Intune, Jamf, MaaS360, Citrix, and Workspace ONE and none of them could read texts, emails or browser history.
I’d be very interested to learn more about how they can access this information through MDM. We always did it through either the mobile carrier or the admin console for whatever the office/mail suite that was deployed.
SMS reading:
https://support.sophos.com/support/s/article/KB-000034436?language=en_US
Call log reading:
app lists:
https://help.ivanti.com/mi/help/en_us/cld/admin/ivanti/91/all/en-us/App_Inventory.htm
I looked through your links. I don’t see anywhere that SMS can be read. The permission kind of makes sense as there is a security component to filter spam/phishing type texts. Sophos themselves claim they don’t store any of that data.
I hadn’t ever seen the call log one and I’m not sure what that would even be used for. It was interesting though.
App lists is common across all MDMs. It’s used to ensure apps are being updated and on fully owned corporate devices some apps will be blocked.
It seems like many don’t really understand how this technology works. That said, it’s better to be overly careful and I agree with others in the comments. If you want me to use a mobile device for work you can provide it, I don’t put MDM on my personal device*.
*the exception being our own MDM we have setup to manage our personal devices more easily.
I looked through your links. I don’t see anywhere that SMS can be read.
From the link, emphasis mine. SMC is the MDM in question
Read SMS or MMS
Allows an application to read SMS messages stored on your device or SIM card.
Malicious applications may read your confidential messages.
SMC usage:- Read the initial configuration and further server notifications.
2. Read all SMS for Backup.
Yep, it’s part of their message filtering that I mentioned.
This link provides more information and explicitly states the following:
Sophos Mobile does not track privacy data such as contacts, SMS and call history, browser history, bookmarks, or emails. Sophos Mobile does not access any data outside of the Sophos container.
and
Sophos Mobile does not track privacy data such as contacts, SMS and call history, browser history, bookmarks, emails, or data on the SD card.
Sophos has a strong cybersecurity focus which, I’d imagine, is why they have the message filtering option that they do.
…why would they need to backup all SMS messages for a filtering option? That just plain does not compute.
- Read the initial configuration and further server notifications.
Please cite any one of your sources. I’ve managed MDM for over a decade and you’re spreading misinformation.
Absolutely none of the MDM products on the market allow for the reading of personal e-mail, SMS, phone records, etc. On the contrary, almost every single one provides an information screen during the enrollment that makes it abundantly clear that they do not (and can not) access that data. Moreover, the “wipe” of data is the removal of company data. It doesn’t wipe your phone, it just removes the work profile (Android) or deprovisions the work profile and associated apps (Apple). All of your non-work-related data is untouched.
Quick Sources for Intune and JAMF – do your own googling for others:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/protect/privacy-data-collect
https://www.jamf.com/blog/apple-mobile-device-management-faq/Absolutely none of the MDM products on the market allow for the reading of personal e-mail, SMS, phone records, etc.
So you’re not aware of Sophos’s MDM offering? That explicitly states they can make copies of all SMS messages?
https://support.sophos.com/support/s/article/KB-000034436?language=en_US
How about call logs, with SureMDM?
Also I said nothing about personal emails.
Moreover, the “wipe” of data is the removal of company data. It doesn’t wipe your phone, it just removes the work profile (Android) or deprovisions the work profile and associated apps (Apple). All of your non-work-related data is untouched.
No, the ‘wipe’ can be a full factory reset.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/remote-actions/devices-wipe
Edit: typo
Can you elaborate? I have simple mdm on my work phone and would like to know exactly what they see and can do
Not that I am hiding anything. It’s more curiosity at this point
Posted from my personal phone
This depends on the configuration of the MDM and the MDM vendor. For example, most MDM deployments to Android for instance conform to Android For Work, which functions in practice to a virtual machine from a user’s perspective, and doesn’t have access to a non workspace content. iOS has a similar functionality which, while less commonly used, is there specifically for use on personal devices to sandbox off ‘work’ content where pervasive features like factory resets and access to phone logs and sms records don’t function, and you can’t access the more advanced features without having purchased the device via a corporate account.
SimpleMDM has a credit card-less trial which you could set up to see what features exist and how they work from the vendor side. You won’t have access to some of the ‘supervised’ features without being a business,but you can see the buttons offered when you aren’t a corporate-purchased device readily enough.
For corporate owned devices, the rules are very different though.
I have a little experience with Microsoft’s intune and there are different ways to register devices. Someone feel free to correct me because I don’t feel like logging in to double check. Company owned devices have more control and can restrict apps, lock, full wipe, etc. Personal or “bring your own” devices are much less restricted. I can’t lock, wipe, or restrict apps. For the personal devices, it’s more about giving secure access to the companies resources and not really controlling the device. I work for a small business and only use this to setup access to non important documents for employees in the field so I know just enough to be dangerous.
I can’t read your emails, text messages, I can’t remote into your phone without your permission. The info we have is very limited. You know how we can see that information? If you gave us your phone and password :-)
So if the info it provides is very limited, why are companies pushing for it? Why should I install it on my personal phone so I can access Teams and Outlook?
Protection from liability and often a requirement of insurance.
Because if you are accessing company data, the company needs to ensure it’s safe. If you don’t want outlook or Teams access, you don’t have to enroll your device. In some cases companies will purchase a corporate owned device for you. An MDM allows companies to restrict copying data from work to personal and vice versa. If your device gets stolen and is compromised, it allows the company to wipe it. It can also locate the decide if it’s lost.
An MDM allows companies to restrict copying data from work to personal and vice versa.
So is having MDM useless if you also have corporate webmail? Because not having MDM on my phone means I just go to my webmail site on my phone for email, and I can copy there if I need to.
If your device gets stolen and is compromised, it allows the company to wipe it. It can also locate the decide if it’s lost.
Google’s “Find Device” allows for finding and wiping a device by default on Android.
So it’s really just those two features? Doesn’t really seem worth the hassle unless there’s something else they’re getting out of it.
The data is valuable and it provides some amount of data security. Any MDM worth a shit will wall off your Android with a work profile and that’s the only part that’s actually controlled by the MDM. They can also mandate a minimum level of security before accessing the work profile.
Webmail can be used as a workaround, but allowing it is more of a convenience issue than a security consideration. Depending on your security team it could be a major hole or not an issue. Authentication requirements can offset the vulnerabilities somewhat, such as short timeouts, MFA, etc.
In my experience, users like you are what make MDM a requirement in any environment. People that refuse to participate in any security processes because they think they know better than the people whose job is literally cybersecurity are almost always the cause of major incidents. That’s how my current employer got a huge ransomware attack and why I’m not allowed to install anything on my phone or laptop without spending several hours on hold with the help desk.
Gotta love getting down voted for trying to learn more about a topic. Looks like Reddit culture is seeping in here.
Anyway, when you say:
They can also mandate a minimum level of security before accessing the work profile.
What does that mean? I thought MDM was just making it so I couldn’t copy data and that my employer could wipe/locate my phone. But it sounds like you’re saying it’s actually doing something more like creating a separate environment, almost like a VM, on my phone? Or is it different than that? My work MDM said they want to look at applications that you have installed. That was too much of a privacy invasion for me, so I chose not to use work apps on my phone.
In my experience, users like you are what make MDM a requirement in any environment. People that refuse to participate in any security processes because they think they know better than the people whose job is literally cybersecurity are almost always the cause of major incidents.
Yeah, our IT systems would be exponentially more secure if we didn’t have users too. One can dream, I suppose.
That’s something that I never understood, is the claim that default OS is just not secure… well then put all your dev hours into fixing that…
If your employer expects you to access corporate resources or be available to respond / on-call out of hours, then they should issue you a corporate device to do so.
Hey, let’s make more e-waste!
Really, Work Profiles and a stipend are the way to go. I don’t give a damn what you have on your phone - couldn’t access it if I did, which I don’t. If you opt to get your work email, cool - I’d like you to use the work profile, we can and would like to help you set it up. We’d really like you to have our emergency notification app due to our industry. It’ll help in an active shooter situation. But you don’t have to.
My company gives you the option to do either. I don’t want to carry two phones like a drug dealer though. Id take a beeper if that was an option lol.
While it has not yet been enforced, my employer has an MDM. Because I do not want to violate this policy or install something that gives my employer access to my device, I do not use my personal device for work and I do not have a work device other than my laptop.
This has given me some interesting perspectives.
- I do not need to be connected at all times.
- I can walk away.
- They pay me for work hours, not for my free time.
- I can easily disconnect every night and weekend, even emergencies in my area can wait.
Seems people think things are much more urgent than they should be or actually are.
I wish I could get my partner to see it this way… they work in IT and manage the MDM tho, and the other person with access has been partner’s friend and colleague for over 10 years, so partner is confident it’ll all be fine.
Such a dumb mindset for someone who constantly complains of being burnt out… like no shit you are burned out, you check work emails all day/night, and handle them regardless of time…
It depends how the MDM is implemented. If it allows locking and wiping the entire device, no. If it makes a sandbox for the work stuff, and it only grant them access to control, lock and wipe that sandbox then I don’t mind.
That’s what we do for personal devices, corporate devices are fully managed/supervised.
Yeah my work MDM is setup this way with Android Enterprise. Everything work-related is isolated to that area and there is no other access to the full device. I can even have all those apps shut off after-hours or when on vacation so I don’t get notifications during personal time. My boss knows to text/call me if there is something urgent that comes up.
Software is imperfect and you shouldn’t trust that future updates will not add that ability.
Typically, the app needs to ask for permissions like that, though. On Android, they need to ask to become a “Device admin”, and they need to specify what specifically they’ll use that access for. I imagine (though I’m unsure since it’s never happened to me) they need to ask to update those permissions if they want their uses to change.
Agreed, but its not perfect. I recall but couldn’t recover a link to a story about some application bypassing android or iPhone permissions.
Another big recent flaw allowed apps without the permission to draw over other apps.
https://blog.checkpoint.com/research/android-permission-security-flaw/
Which companies are requiring that employees install apps on personal devices? Feels like it should be illegal coercion if true.
Don’t pay attention to this Joelle person, she has no idea what she’s talking about (Or does and is spreading misinformation intentionally)
You literally can’t “just install an MDM” to your phone in the way that allows a company complete access to your device. Both iOS and Android require that either the device is new or the device is factory reset. Then and only then can the device have MDM enabled as a “Company Owned Device” e.g. complete access.
The other way, is through “Work Profiles”, it’s an isolated and sandboxed partition. The “Work side” has no access to anything on the personal side and the personal side has no access to anything on the work side. On Android the work side has its own Play Store, its own Chrome, its own apps. (In fact, if you’re rooted you can hijack work profiles for yourself if you want to install apps you’d rather keep isolated, like TikTok).
If I issue a wipe command to a phone with a work profile, only the work profile gets wiped and the personal side is untouched.
Hell, Android even gives you the ability to restrict the Work Profiles to work hours so all the work apps go dormant after 5
In fact, if you’re rooted you can hijack work profiles for yourself if you want to install apps you’d rather keep isolated, like TikTok
You can use Shelter to enable this functionality without root.
Even if she is factually wrong about everything isn’t it a good idea to get people to think more about what they put on their phones?
Yes, but not with lies.
Thank you for summing this up. Such a dumb post.
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Exactly.
These services are containerised on personal devices so that its services can only be administered within the app container.
It has limited to no control over the phone itself or apps outside of its MDM container in the context of personal devices.
There’s also the option for MAM apps as well which I quite like as light touch management option for ios and android. Essentially limits control to select apps and even then just the company data in those apps.
How do you schedule your work profile? I searched my settings for work profile related settings and don’t see anything like that. Pixel 7A
This is nice thanks
We’re required to use a MFA app, but it has minimal access to the system. It literally just prompts for an “Is this you?” with a fallback to codes if the network connection goes down.
I also have Teams and Slack installed for team communication, but that’s optional and also has minimal access. Teams has an login helper thing installed as well, and I’m not really sure what it does, but it didn’t require any special permissions.
I suppose I could refuse, but that would just be a pain for everyone since I’d either need to use someone else’s device or they’d need to get one just for me. Seems kinda silly imo.
My last company wanted my phone to be connected to the Google Apps thing, but it allowed my boss to remote wipe, so I refused. It wasn’t required, and most people said no, but it was a thing they recommended fairly strongly.
So curious, did your job listing mention you needed to own a smartphone as a requirement? Feels like they are probably riding a line where this is made to “feel” required, but legally they are careful of their wording or they may have some issues with your local labor board.
No, but I’m in a technical role where pretty much everyone has one anyway. Our company culture is such that they’d find a workaround (e.g. provide a phone if needed).
My last role required a smartphone, and we got ~$50/month on our paycheck to pay for it. My current job doesn’t “require” anything, it’s just strongly recommended.
I think in that scenario, you could separately open an account with a cheap provider that includes a free, cheap phone and dedicate its use to only work. So yes, pain in the ass worth extra steps, but not a requirement to use your own phone.
I think it’s garage regardless, if they need you to have a phone, they should fully provide, but just pointing out that it’s legal fuckery on their part as it’s meant to confuse/scare people into thinking they don’t have a choice.
I worked in a place that required this, it was basically a time clock app, but it detected automatically if your phone supported work mode which allowed it to be basically sandboxed in it’s own virtual space., I’ve also run into school apps that do this
But there was no alternative clock in option if you refused or didn’t have a phone?
No we were contract workers, we traveled to different job sites so our clock in also had to be mobile. I mean you COULD do a clock in sheet if you downloaded it from the depths of their website and then filled it out and mailed it in weekly by snail mail buuuut
This is a woefully misinformed post…
You want me to check email outside of work hours …. Better provide me a phone and money for that.
“So what’s the charge code you want me to use on that last email?” normally gets the point across.
Your bosses make you do this? For me I just installed Teams and Outlook, and even that was voluntary.
SUPER depends on the platform. If you own an iOS device and enroll it in MDM through the settings app, MDM ONLY has access to whatever it puts on the device
Similar on Android. It creates a work profile and only has control over that.
Setting aside the issue of whether this post is overstating the risk of MDM software on a personal phone, I had a tangentially related experience that might provide a tip for anyone who’s in a similar situation.
I like to have the convenience of checking my work messages and chats on my personal phone, so I have Teams and Outlook installed and using my work account.
When I first went to sign in to my work account on Outlook, I got this message like “Outlook needs to run with administrator privileges in order to provide the necessary security for this account” and shunted me off to some system settings to approve the permissions. Big nope.
So I tried Outlook Lite, and it made no such demands and works perfectly. So for anyone else who’s run into this, try Outlook Lite! I hope this helps somebody.
I just use the web version… Outlook kept killing my battery.
Thanks for the tip.
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If you have work stuff on your personal device, any legal proceedings against the company might mean your personal device is taken as evidence, all of the data in it will get examined and you might only get it back years later.
So even if only for legal reasons, never have company stuff in a personal device, quite independently of there being some fancy tech or other to virtually partition it.
I wouldn’t do this. Sandbox sounds good, but that kind of access is just to shady to want anywhere near my device.
I’ve never had to download an app for work. But I wouldn’t deal with an MDM at all without a gun pointed at me.
