why do I always feel like somebody’s WATCHING MEEEEEEE esp my boss
Hey guys Julia here for DNews
In January 2015, Science magazine declared “the end of Privacy”.
From medical records, to location tracking apps, to your shopping history, your online
life is no longer just your business.
In fact, it can become your employer's business too, according to a recent ruling from the
The European Court of Human Rights.
They declared a firm was well within their rights to take a peek at an employee’s Yahoo
Messenger chats that he sent during work hours.
Apparently the firm banned all employees from using the internet for sending personal messages
during work hours.
The company suspected that one employee was talking about work related matters to people
outside the company, so they read his messages and fired him.
And the court ruled they had every right to do that.
In response multiple groups across Europe issued warnings to bosses, saying things like
"staff who are being snooped on are less productive and less healthy".
Which is true.
Increased monitoring and supervision stresses employees out, according to a study published
in the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction.
So you probably shouldn’t be watching this video at work.
Because odds are, they’re watching you.
According to a 2007 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute
two thirds of employers monitor internet connections and use software to block connections to inappropriate
websites.
And 43 percent of employers read workers' e-mail and even fire people over it.
And it’s perfectly legal in Europe and even here in the U.S. too.
Though legislation is spotty and is mostly on a state-by-state basis.
Basically if your employer tells you ahead of time that your activity will be monitored
on work equipment, they can do it.
In 2010 the Supreme court ruled that’s especially true for government employees.
But the judges left wiggle room because they knew technology is changing.
So a future decision might finally decide the right to privacy at work.
So now that we know it’s legal and common, how are we being tracked on the internet?
Well your employer probably uses software and hardware to scan for intruders.
But as much as it looks for threats outside the company, it looks internally too.
It can scan your data for clues of bad behavior.
Like looking for certain keywords when you search for things online or reading your outgoing
email for any company secrets.
But privacy is part of a broader issue of how we’re tracked online even in our own
home.
Many sites use cookies, which are text files websites put on your computer.
And this is actually for your benefit.
Basically they tell the website if you’ve been there before, what links you might have
clicked on, that sort of thing.
It helps personalize the website experience to you.
Like if you’re on a news website reading about the Oscars, it can show you related
stories about the golden globes.
So it’s not all bad.
But sometimes it can get a little creepy.
Search engines knows a ton about you.
If you have certain settings turned on, they can track your location on your smartphone
and even know every voice command you’ve said.
Search engines give the information they learn to advertisers.
See, creepy.
But this results in us being able to use social networking sites for free.
That’s the tradeoff.
And I won’t even get into what the government knows about you.
That’s opening a whole other can of worms.
‘Sup NSA!
But really privacy in the tech driven age is becoming seen as more of a luxury good,
even though one study published in the journal Science found that evidence suggests that
privacy is a universal human need.
And studies show overwhelmingly that people want more internet privacy.
So while the Supreme Court kicks the can down the road on the matter of privacy in the workplace,
check your privacy settings in the meantime.
With all the internet knows about you, could you ever disappear online?
In this digital age, should you have the right to be forgotten?
Testtube News takes a closer look
in this episode,