COVID Asks Do Not Respect Privacy

Unprecedented Times

We are all experiencing life differently than we were a month ago, and there is no manual to follow. How we eat, play, clean, go to school, exercise, and work have all changed. For companies trying to maintain services for their customers, they are scrambling too.

Trying to Scale

Most companies that needed a remote access solution to ensure business continuity had one before this pandemic. It is doubtful, though, the solution was designed to scale to this level. It is simply not operationally or financially feasible for companies to have infrastructure in-place to support remote access for their entire employee base.

Right now, companies are faced with weighing different remote access options to get their employees connected, especially when trying to maintain data protection controls. Some companies, still unsure about how long this will last and how effective this new remote business model will be to their bottom line, are asking employees to connect using personal computers.

Concerns

IF your company (or school) asks you to work remote, they are likely to ask you to use cloud services like WebEx, Zoom, Office 365, and G-suite. Happy for continued employment during this time, most people will install the apps that come with these services. What they don't think about is their privacy.

Many of these collaboration and meeting software clients share information about your computer and location with data brokers like Facebook and Google. Some apps designed to make your experience more seamless (like the OneDrive and Google Drive clients) not only give you access to files in the platform, they also sync files from your computer TO the cloud.

Case-in-point, the ultra-popular Zoom meetings client  monitors system status, location and device information about each user. Yesterday (3/26), Motherboard found the Zoom app for Apple devices sends analytics to not only Google but also to Facebook, regardless of if you are a Facebook user or not. The problem with this is that the Zoom Privacy Policy does not mention Facebook.

This is only one of many concerns being glazed over right now as the world struggles to deal with this new normal.

Although we are pointing out Zoom because its popular (partly because they've made it free right now), you should be worried about all of the software and platforms. Keep in mind, companies have not had an extended evaluation period with these new tools. For example, I know teachers and students being asked to hold classes over WebEx and Zoom for the first time. Have the school districts determined how these services store meeting recordings and chats? Are our childrens faces being run through an AI? Are these sessions encrypted and do employees of the platform have access to this data?

What can you do?

This is really about choice. How do you respond if your company requests this is how you work from home? Of course, you will comply...I would too. But you CAN do simple things like run the apps in your browser. Office 365, Zoom and WebEx can all be run without installing their software. They do not want you to do that and you will get endless pop-ups to remind you how much better your life will be if you install the software. Stay strong!!! Your privacy is worth it!

You can also get some help from our friends over at SAEOS. We have consulted with them on creating a secure remote work desktop that runs on a USB stick. They have versions for adults and kids alike, with a pretty good set of instructions. SAEOS gives you a clean environment every time to ensure none of your data makes its way to the cloud - unless you give it!