For the past few years, my smart phone has been provided by my company. When they issued them to us, they were perfectly happy and even encouraged us to use them personally. Cool beans. I got very attached to my iphone.
Then out of the blue yesterday they announced that they had changed proxy servers and would be monitoring every single bit of internet activity. Including data usage on the smart phones. Ordinarily I wouldn't be concerned with this as I am not an abuser of privileges. However, the Big Brother aspect of it creeped me out. And it irritated me too --- they want me to have that work cell phone with me at all times, but want to monitor what I do with it when I'm not at work? If I was doing anything creepy it would be one thing, but keeping up with two cell phones is a pain in the butt so mostly I just carried the work one with me after hours and never caved to having a personal smart phone.
However, I still want my private life to be private. I don't want them viewing what I say to whom on my own time -- whether its the Princess texting about grades or whatever. So, on my lunch yesterday, I went to the Tmobile store to check out smart phones. I had some research in hand about the $400 - $600 phones, but once I talked to the clerk, I ended up going with one that was $240. It should fit my needs just fine --- once I get used to it. I must say I got way frustrated with it at first as it didn't "do" stuff the way the iPhone does. But honestly, I'm probably smart enough to figure out how to work another phone. And a savings of $160 - $360 makes that a LOT easier to do!
Plus, Tmobile now lets you add the payments for the phone to your cell phone bill, interest free. If you end service with them before you've paid for the phone, then you have to pay off the balance, but that's workable. Main thing is that I didn't raid my savings for it. And that makes me happy. The additional $10 for phone payment and $10 for data plan doesn't make me so happy though. Time to start crunching numbers again.
That is quite frustrating. Are you someone who is on-call all the time? If not, then I don't think they can monitor as much as you think. At least not on a legal standpoint. Call/data volumes, minutes, etc, especially if they pay for the data, they can see (sort of what you'd see on your telephone bill). But tracking where you spend your time on the net, I am quite certain that is a violation of some sort to the ECPA/EPIC act. Hopefully at the very least they gave you something to sign saying you consent to this... otherwise, I'd hate to be their HR department!
ReplyDeleteWith the newer, pricier phones, they can see where you go with GPS. So, they may not get any data on you, but they will see where you hang out. Oh, hey, I am up in Cullman.
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