
Ask HN: Why shouldn’t I use corporate devices for personal use? - rogy
I currently work for a big tech co, I have done so for a few years.<p>At this point I have a Phone, table and Macbook from work. I use all three on my own time, and don’t have any personal equivalents other than a shared desktop with my partner where I store things like films and music library.<p>I’m becoming increasingly conscious of the consequences of this, so HN, why shouldn’t I?
======
davismwfl
The logging, lack of privacy was already mentioned. How about another, if you
discussed a new product idea for a new startup via email, or via a phone call,
or private slack message or anything else while you used one of their devices
they can make a claim for the idea at any point saying you used their
equipment to facilitate it. Even if they don't make a claim, they could just
terminate your employment over it.

Speaking of getting terminated, if you have all your personal contacts,
messages, maybe some photo's and other things on the phone and they decide one
day they are going to terminate you they can require you turn in the devices
with no time to remove any personal information. They can (and will win even
in court if you challenge it) ask you for the passcode to review everything on
the phone, laptop etc. Nothing you do on those devices is private, protected
(for you) or your own property.

I worked for years in charge of a department where we managed all the IT
devices, we would consistently find pictures of peoples naked spouses on their
work devices, find mortgage information, bank accounts, pin numbers, you name
it we saw it. I can't stress it enough, if you are issued a device from a
company it is not yours to use personally. I will say, usually when we found
these things we politely reminded the employee to remove them. If the person
was being terminated or was under investigation we would generally dispose of
these items once the investigation was complete and actions were defined. That
also meant generally a few people would see these things (as few as absolutely
necessary) but the employee rarely ever got them.

I also had an employee who knew he was being laid off one time decide to wipe
his work laptop to prevent us from seeing what he was doing. Frankly we
already knew much of it, but when he wiped his machine he caused monetary
damage to the company because he also wiped a number of keys (and source code)
which he created but had never properly handed off to his managers (or checked
in) and it cost the company months of time and significant sums of money, not
to mention lost productivity, to find and resolve all the issues. Frankly he
could have been charged with a crime and/or sued for damages if the founders
would've pursued him.

*edit: sentence fixed

------
mceachen
You probably signed a clause with your employer that stated that the company
owns all work/inventions/art produced on company hardware.

If you use company hardware to work on your own projects, you're muddying who
now owns those projects.

When I worked on prior versions of PhotoStructure while employed by other
companies, I always did so on my own time, hardware and services. I also made
sure PhotoStructure was in my employment contract, specified as a "prior
invention" owned only by me.

------
koynoyno
Don't forget about cloud. Photos, notes, etc can be seen by anyone who knows
credentials used on corporate devices.

------
rman666
\- get fired

\- get sued

\- have your hard personal work and records that are stored on the devices
deleted or read whenever they want

\- keyloggers so they’ll know your passwords

------
dylz
\- may be against tos

\- everything is logged

\- ALL web traffic, no https - all of it is logged, decrypted and reencrypted

\- anything you type in is liable to be keylogged

