Employee monitoring software
Employee monitoring software, also known as bossware or tattleware, is a means of employee monitoring, and allows company administrators to monitor and supervise all their employee computers from a central location.[1] It is normally deployed over a business network and allows for easy centralized log viewing via one central networked PC. Sometimes, companies opt to monitor their employees using remote desktop software instead.[2]
Purpose[edit]
Employee monitoring software is used to supervise employees' performance, prevent illegal activities, avoid confidential info leakage, and catch insider threats. Nowadays employee monitoring software is widely used in technology companies.[3]
Features[edit]
An employee monitoring system can monitor almost everything on a computer, such as keystrokes and passwords entered, websites visited, chats in Facebook Messenger, Skype and other social media. A piece of monitoring software can also capture screenshots of mobile activities. E-mail monitoring includes employers having access to records of employee’s e-mails that are sent through the company’s servers.[4] Companies may use keyword searches to natural language processing to analyze e-mails.[4] The administrator can view the logs through a cloud panel, or receive the logs by email.
Other kinds of monitoring include webcam and/or microphone activation, and "invisible" monitoring.[5][6][7][8][9] Employee monitoring software has been called a form of spyware.[6][9] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of these systems by companies to monitor their employees increased.[8][10]
Criticism[edit]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which originated the term "bossware", has denounced employee monitoring software as a violation of privacy.[7][11] The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) denounced bossware as a threat to the safety and health of employees.[12]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the r/antiwork subreddit shared various mouse jiggler strategies to combat monitoring software intended to monitor the productivity of remote workers.[6]
A study by Reports and Data predicts that the global market for employee remote monitoring software will hit $1.3 billion by 2027.[13]
See also[edit]
- Computer surveillance
- Computer surveillance in the workplace
- Job satisfaction
- Malware
- Spyware
- Trojan horse
- User activity monitoring
References[edit]
- ^ "What Is Employee Monitoring Software? (with pictures)". wiseGEEK. Archived from the original on 2018-01-02. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
- ^ "What is employee monitoring?". WhatIs.com. Archived from the original on 16 February 2018. Retrieved 16 February 2018.
- ^ Ciocchetti, Corey A. (2011). "The Eavesdropping Employer: A Twenty-First Century Framework for Employee Monitoring". American Business Law Journal. 48 (2): 285–369. doi:10.1111/j.1744-1714.2011.01116.x. ISSN 1744-1714.
- ^ a b Spitzmüller, Christiane; Stanton, Jeffrey M. (June 2006). "Examining employee compliance with organizational surveillance and monitoring". Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. 79 (2): 245–272. doi:10.1348/096317905x52607. ISSN 0963-1798.
- ^ Gilliland, Donald (2021-07-24). "Warning: Your boss is probably spying on you — and it could be bad for your health". The Hill. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
- ^ a b c Cole, Samantha (2021-12-08). "Workers Are Using 'Mouse Movers' So They Can Use the Bathroom in Peace". Vice. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
- ^ a b Cyphers, Bennett; Gullo, Karen (2020-06-30). "Inside the Invasive, Secretive "Bossware" Tracking Workers". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
- ^ a b Klosowski, Thorin (2021-02-10). "How Your Boss Can Use Your Remote-Work Tools to Spy on You". The New York Times. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
- ^ a b Crispin, Jessa (2021-09-16). "Employers are spying on us at home with 'tattleware'. It's time to track them instead". The Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
- ^ ‘Bossware is coming for almost every worker’: the software you might not realize is watching you The Guardian. 2022.
- ^ "Warning: Bossware May Be Hazardous To Your Health" (PDF). Center for Democracy & Technology. 2021. Retrieved 2024-05-15.
- ^ Scherer, Matt (2021-09-16). "Strategies to Tackle Bossware's Threats to the Health & Safety of Workers". Center for Democracy and Technology. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
- ^ "Workplace monitoring platform Aware takes in $60M". VentureBeat. 2021-10-13. Retrieved 2022-08-09.