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Comment by schnitzelstoat

3 hours ago

Yeah, many companies don't want the liability issues. Like what happens if I open my bank account on my work computer? You could argue I can expect someone to be watching but I have no warning that someone is? Here in the EU that would probably be an easy lawsuit.

Why would you ever login to a sensitive account on a device you don't own and have root on? Like I trust my employer not to do anything shifty with my banking info, if I were to use it, but I'm not going to take that chance for a dozen reasons.

Can’t speak for the EU, but the companies I’ve worked for in the US explicitly state what they do not track in their privacy/use policy when giving out laptops/phones/tablets.

E.g. their anti-virus or firewall system may ignore URLs related to banking, medical, or political affiliation and chose not to log or decrypt that traffic

  • Once I was trying to find a scene from a TV show at work for a joke with colleagues, and the quote I used ended up triggering a very NSFW search. Did not get fired, not even talked to. Thank goodness!

A lot is tolerated, until they want to get rid of you. But in the EU i'm pretty sure they can't use regular non-compliance stuff (general browsing, etc) in evidence. In DE you can't even identify an individual.

Moreover: what is the upside?

Spying on employees is not free. If you want to spend serious resources doing it, there has to be an upside.

How do you expect an employee to prove their banking actions on the company computer were spied on? I imagine this impossible to prove.