Stuff You Should Know - Is your employer spying on you?

Episode Date: June 17, 2014

Your employer may be secretly reading your emails, watching what websites you visit and tracking your whereabouts through your phone. And because of how the courts have ruled, there's nothing you can do about it. Learn all about employer spying here. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry. How do? Jerry. How's it going? I wish we didn't have to pay money for playing music because I really wanted Max Wells. I always feel like somebody's watching me to be early then. You don't have to pay for your own rendition. I can't sing. Come in at any time. No. Great song though. Yeah. And it turns out he's right. Someone is watching. Well he was

coked to the gills, which was his thing. Was he? Did you not see the video? No. Oh man, he's like looking out the blinds and everything and dancing in his living room. Yeah, he was coked up. I was a kid. I didn't understand that. I didn't either. Yeah. He was right though, was the point. Cocaine or no. He was correct. Yeah, especially nowadays. Like you don't need drugs to be paranoid. You can just like be paranoid and be totally correct. Yeah. You know, especially if you're gainfully employed. Yes, that is true. Because what I found out from this article, Chuck, is that if it's not the NSA eavesdropping on you or surveilling you, it's your employer. Yeah, and not only that, but you have implicitly agreed to be spied on because

it is no doubt somewhere in your work contract or your work agreement that they can do exactly that. That would be explicitly agreed. You're just probably duped into it. What did I say? Implicit. Yeah, explicit. Yeah, but I mean, if you don't know that you agreed to it. Yeah, because who reads that stuff? I know. It is the thing. Like there's a growing trend among employers to basically slide some claws into your employee handbook that you have to sign, your employment agreement, applications sometimes have them now, where it basically says I consent to being surveilled electronically in X number of forms or any form you guys can come up with. And like you said, people don't read that and they're not aware of it. And the other devious part of the whole thing

about employee surveillance is that they don't by law have to tell you that you're being surveilled. Right. There's two states, Connecticut and Delaware that require employers say, hey, we're watching you. And Delaware barely even counts. I love Delaware. I was kidding. Yeah, it's the screen door capital, isn't it, according to the Simpsons? I think so. We're going to Delaware. That's fun. I've done some camping at the Delaware Water Gap. It's nice. Nice. Actually, I don't even think that's in Delaware though, is it? I have to look that up. It might be in New Jersey. It's in the Aegean. That's funny. Thanks, man. So I guess we kind of answered the question that this

episode asked was, is your employer spying on you? And the answer is almost decidedly yes. So we found from our research that stats are really old. It seems like there is a flurry of research and discussion in like the early to mid to late 90s when the internet was new. And then it just died off because apparently employers won. There were ethical questions. There were legal questions like, can this happen? Yeah. And everybody said, yeah. Well, the court said, yeah, totally. Yeah. If they're in your office and they're working on your computers and yeah, you sure have the right. I do have some stats from, and this is the most recent thing I could find is about three and a half years ago, which is brand new compared to other stuff. Yeah. A lot of these things are

citing like surveys done in 2000 and 2001. That's a different world back then. I mean, even current articles are using that. Like there's just no data out there. No shame. Well, here's some stuff from a few years ago. 28% of employers have fired workers for email misuse at this point. And for 64% of those were violating company policies. 62% were inappropriate language. There must be some overlap because they're already over a hundred percent. Excessive personal use, 26% confidentiality breaching, 22%. 30% of employers have fired people for internet misuse, not email, but internet. And that means surfing inappropriate content was 84% of that. Like, you know, you're looking at porn at work, get fired for that.

And then nowadays with social networking, 66%, they estimate or monitoring internet connections to see what websites you're browsing on a day-to-day basis. I think that's ridiculously low. There's no way that that's it. Well, I mean, just because, and the article points out just because they are set up to do so doesn't mean they are. Like generally, the one guy in the article says they would be doing nothing but looking at activity if they were really spying on everyone all the time. They say generally, it's if there's a problem with an employee or something and someone is flagged, they will probably start paying attention. But you know, this is all the pain no one knows. Right, you know.

Employers aren't being too terribly forthcoming. Our job is different though because we, with our research, we can be looking at virtually anything. You know this stuff we've looked at online here. I can't tell you how many lists we must be on just from the research we've like the marijuana one alone. Oh yeah. It was like these guys do nothing but research like human trafficking and hookers and marijuana and bomb making. Yeah, it's crazy. And we can, we're all over social media. So that's part of our job. So yeah, no, I know it was kind of, it was different to see like the other side of it. But at the same time, I was like, wow, I really feel bad for like, you know, the average employee. Have you ever worked at a place like that?

If you go on to Twitter, no. I have. If you go on to Twitter or something for a minute or two, like you can get fired for that. It's weird. My chicken software job that I had before this one, the famous chicken software job. Yeah. You know, nothing on the internet is applicable to what you do. So if the boss walks by and you're just checking the brave score from ESPN, you know, you feel like you have to hide it real quick. Sure. Where now I'm like, come on, you know, let me check a score. It's no big deal. Yeah. And some employers don't care. I saw this one article from, it was some sort of a Christian organization that ended up firing employees. And he said, I didn't care if they were on Facebook and doing that other stuff. But when

they started to talk smack about the company is when they got riled up and fired people. Supposedly there's, that's what employers are looking for is they're, they're looking for employees that are, like you said, talking smack about the company, divulging company secrets. Sure. Yeah. Leaking information. That's probably the biggest one they're looking for. Yeah. And then like grossly misusing time or like sexually harassing or something like that. That one makes total sense. Sending inappropriate jokes around. If you're like the guy in the office sending like overt inappropriate emails all around the office, then yeah, they're gonna tag you. Right. So they aren't necessarily watching you at all times, but the system is most likely

set up to where they can to where if you do something that is that tricks triggers a filter something that somebody's going to get an email, they're going to examine it and it's going to get sent to HR if it fits the criteria. Yeah. Right. Yeah, pretty much. But like you said, they, they could, I mean, they're most companies are set up now with what they call continuous since systematic surveillance. So if they wanted to be bored out of their mind, they, most companies could literally look at everything you're doing at all times. Right. You feel bad for the system admin for that. Having to watch all that. Exactly. So we said that employers don't have to tell you that they're surveilling you. As a matter of fact, legally

speaking, they can lie and tell you that they're not surveilling you. And then if you bust them and take them to court, you will lose. As far back as 1996, an employee for Pillsbury, you know, right. He, I guess he didn't really like his job that much. Sure. He was known for talking smack and in two different emails, which he assured were confidential, weren't used for disciplinary action and just were his own. He said that they should kill the back stabbing bastards about one group of people. And he referred to the company Christmas party as the Jim Jones Kool-Aid affair. And he got fired for that. That's every company Christmas party. Right. He got fired for that. But he took Pillsbury to court and was like, they said that they weren't paying attention to

these emails and that they wouldn't use them against me. And the court said, so what, man? It's like you said, the court has decided that if you are using their device or you're using their network on their time, that's even off of their time. Well, yeah, but especially on their time, then they have a right to protect their business by monitoring what's going on with their business devices on their business network with their employees. Yeah. I think within reason, some of that does make sense. You don't want your employees divulging secrets or sending lurid emails around to everyone. And all of a sudden you're slapped with a lawsuit. Right. Which I think is what ultimately boils. Yeah. So some of this is understandable. I get it.

The thing is, though, is it's so... Slippery of a slope. It is. It's already just so draconian that it's just completely lopsided. Like, how do you surveil your own employer? How do you do that? Like, shouldn't it be more balanced than that? Yeah. I mean, the whole thing, just let me get on my soapbox and we'll get down to breath text. But the whole thing stinks of you just being indebted to your employer for giving you a job. It just kind of has that whole mentality attached to it. Like, your employer can do whatever you want. If you don't like it, you can go hit the bread line. Yeah. Rusky, you know? Yeah. I'm done. No, I'm with you, man. It's definitely like, you know, as an employee to feel like someone has

their foot on your throat. Yeah. There's 50 people in Bangalore who would kill for your job right now. We could get them over here, you know? Yeah. It just makes me sad. It is sad. That is the state of things. So I guess we should talk a little bit about how they're spying on you. And there are many ways, but there are five pretty likely ones that you probably have in your office. And we'll go through them in more detail. And I had a sixth that I added. We'll hear in a minute. Okay. Packet sniffers, log files, desktop monitoring programs, phones, and closed circuit cameras. And I'm going to go ahead and say phones as a two-parter because company issued cell phones as well. Right. So what's your other one? GPS. I was surprised

GPS was kept out of this because that was one of the original means of surveillance in the workplace. Yeah. With the little trackers that they put on like delivery trucks or whatever to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do. But now it's been extended to things like employee cell phones. About 3% of companies track their employees using GPS by tracking their cell phone. And then 1% track their employees by tracking their keyless entry cards. Oh, really? Yeah. Man. Yeah. Well, 1%. Thankfully, that's like, I mean, what company is that? I don't know, but it's probably a pretty pedantic company that's not an enjoyable company to work for. I would think it's like a highly sensitive, like, you know, someone who's making, uh...

You would hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Well, they're the 1% at least. Let's dig in. And let's start with packet sniffers. I love that those two words together. They're just... Yeah. They're great packet sniffers. Yes. They've been around for a while. It's nothing new. And they monitor the computer network and they perform tests and diagnostic tests and troubleshoot all sorts of things. So they're not inherently, they're just to root out, you know, what you're emailing to your buddy. No, it's like that's how they sort spam out from your regular stuff. Yeah. So it's not nefarious in and of itself. No. But it can be when it's set to something called promiscuous mode, which I thought was pretty funny too. Yeah. STD mode. And that means,

instead of just looking for certain keywords, they can basically look at all of it. Right. And a packet is just a piece of information. Well, it's like if you send me an email saying, hey Josh, that might be split up into X number packets. Right. And then my computer busily recombines it into the full email and combines the packets together. And the packet sniffer just sniffs all those packets to look for, hi Josh, I'm going to bring a gun to work tomorrow and you're in trouble. That's a bad way to do that. You're not supposed to send a warning. You're not supposed to do that at all. Yeah. How about let's not give advice to office shooters? I think that's a wise policy. Okay. What you would do is give advice, say, Josh, don't come into work tomorrow because

that happens. Oh, really? Yeah. With shooters, they'll say sometimes they will have warned like the one person they like at work. Like, hey, if I were you, I wouldn't come in tomorrow. Yeah. Which is when you pick up the phone and call the cops. Exactly. You have a moral obligation to protect the lives of others. Yeah. You don't say sweet. I don't have to come in tomorrow. Right. You know. Crazy guy gave me the day off. Yeah. Call the cops. So with the packet sniffing, they're filtered in unfiltered modes and unfiltered will capture everything and filtered is when they're looking for like keywords or any sort of specific data. Right. Like, I would imagine the name of your company. Yeah, maybe like dangerous words like like gun. Sure. Drug related words, that kind of

stuff. Kilo. Sure. In my trunk. Right. That kind of thing. At my desk. That's a bad one with Kilo. Oh, yeah. Kilo at my desk. So if something is packet sniffing, they can see what websites you're visiting, what you're doing there, what you're downloading, the emails you're sending, what's in those emails. Yeah. Basically any and everything you're doing. And you can set up a packet sniffer on like say your computer, your system admin can set it up on your computer. Yeah. It would basically just be able to see what your computer's doing. Yeah. What websites is visiting, what emails it's sending. It's basically just like eavesdropping onto a transmission cable. Yeah. You know, the thing is, is that kind of raises some legal ramifications, which we'll

talk about later. Yeah. So there's a certain way you have to do it. But if you put that packet sniffer on like a your server for the whole company's network, yeah, it can pick up all that traffic. Yeah, if it's right there in the middle of the action. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, if you're digging this kind of stuff, if you'd like words like packet sniffers and servers and kilo, then you should go listen to tech stuff, which is like an all tech, very good related podcast here at HowStuffWorks.com. Yeah. From our colleagues, Jonathan and Lauren. That's right. And I bet they have covered this better than we are about to. Which is why I'm saying like go listen to those guys if you're liking this. For the less jokey, more informative version. More pun filled. Yeah,

that's true. Yeah. Another way, and this is the one that's really draconian and common, is a desktop monitoring software. So if you're sitting at your computer and you're typing something in, you're sending a signal throughout your computer. Right. And there are software systems that that either physically installed hard on your laptop, hard or remotely installed via a Trojan horse like, Hey, install this program because you need it. But there's also this hidden program in there that you don't need. And you don't even know. And it's going to track all of your activity on your computer. I would guess that if you're getting, if your employers tracking you or spying on you, they're not going to use the Trojan horse. It's more like a hacker tactic.

Sure. But the result is the same. I mean, there's a program on there now where, whereas like a packet sniffer is keeping track of like where your computer is going on the internet. Remember that old Microsoft commercial? Where do you want to go today? The old Windows commercial. So it's keeping track of where you're going today and who you're talking to along the way. Yeah. This, um, the desktop monitoring programs, that's like any keystroke you make is logging. And so you don't, you can be writing a note to yourself that you never save. Yeah. You just trash after where you never save it. So it's never saved on your system. This desktop monitoring system is keeping track of your keystrokes. So it sees everything that goes on on your, on your desktop.

Yeah. And when you get that company issued laptop, it very likely already has it installed. Right. And again, the system admin can remotely install it because you're on the same network as them and they have, uh, administrative sway over your computer. They're like Svengali's. Yeah. Or if the IT guy comes by and says, Oh, I need your laptop for an hour because I need to install some sort of program. It sounds familiar. Beware of that, of that message. No, but that, that impression was dead on. Okay. Um, there are alert systems that are on some of these programs. Oh, wait, hold on. Before we move on to the alert systems. Okay. There's a, that desktop monitoring thing. Yeah. So with keystrokes, you

know, um, it's, it's picking up all the keystrokes and it's basically redirecting them to whoever's watching your computer at that moment. Right. And so maybe they have a text file that's open and it's just seeing what's being typed as it's going on. Yeah. Or it can be saved for later as a text file and then like emailed to the system admin. Right. Or it can, the same programs can intercept what's being sent to your video card or what your video card is sending out to your monitor and redirected, split and then redirected to your system admin or whoever's spying on you. And it, they can recreate what you're seeing on your desktop by intercepting your video cards transmission, transmission within your operating system. Yeah. That's, that's some serious spying

on you. Some serious spying. Uh, and the alert system I mentioned, that's part of the monitoring software. Um, where again, sort of like keywords or certain alerts or maybe websites, uh, whereas some companies just will block websites altogether. Yeah. Like Facebook or, you know, you know, anything they consider to be a time waster. Right. Um, or it can be set up on an alert system where they just know that you were spending way too much time, uh, online gambling. You've got a problem. Which would be anytime if you're at work. You know, I doubt if they allow for like, you get 10 minutes a day to gamble online or otherwise, you can play craps at your desk. Right. Uh, another way, if you think that, hey,

I delete all my stuff and I, I cover my paper trail, my e-paper trail, you were wrong because you have log files in your computer that, um, even when you've deleted something, there's a log file somewhere on your computer, most likely that, uh, that logs exactly what you have just done. Right. Like when you delete that email, it's not really deleted. Right. At least initially. Yeah. And those log files can be gotten to remotely if you're on the same network again, or they can set up, um, some sort of program that emails log files to them, especially ones that are trigger some sort of filter. Yeah. And log files, I mean, those are normal. They're, they're part of your operating system. Yeah. But, um, they can be gotten to,

in other words, they can be used against you. That's true. Yeah. And normally they're used for bugs or originally they were used for bugs. Oh, really? Yeah. It's like the computer tracked its own activity. And then if something happened and go back and look at somebody who could read that kind of code, yeah, could go back and say, Oh, well, here was, here's the problem. This is why it crashed and then fix that bug. Gotcha. I bet desktop monitoring software is the bulk of how they're getting this information. Uh, yeah, I would imagine that like a company that's involved in this does, um, desktop monitoring and, uh, packet sniffing packet sniffing. Um, I guess we can talk about, how about this after this message break, we'll talk about old school eavesdropping,

the wire style. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your

best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. You don't necessarily even have to be on your laptop to get spied on because your phone might be bugged. That's true.

That's I guess the simplest way to say it, right? Well, yeah, especially if you have a work issued phone or iPad or whatever, your, um, like they can just totally eavesdrop on that. But if it's like your phone at your desk, there's almost a hundred percent chances being eavesdropped on. Well, it says 12 percent in here. Well, so another very, very old statistic that I still see cited today is that companies eavesdropped on like 400 million calls a year. Yeah. But that was from like 1998. That's the ACLU number, right? Right. Yeah. Which I find it sad that the ACLU hasn't done any report on workplace surveillance, workplace spying, anything like that since the late 90s. Yeah. It's 2014 ACLU. Let's get on the ball. Yeah. I mean, it's not all Nazis and Klansmen,

you know, like there are other issues to be addressed. You just did jazz hands to Nazis and Klansmen. Here's the thing though with wiretapping. Supposedly federal law says you can't wiretap because you need consent from the party. But the Privacy Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 said they can eavesdrop on job-related talk. And how do you know if it's job-related unless you listen in for a few minutes first? Right. So they're protected. It's all, it's a loophole. They can listen to all your calls. Yeah. All. I don't know how long they can listen, but long enough to determine if you're going to be talking about work. So that's a pretty wide margin. I think a couple minutes is routinely argued for in cases like that. And the Electronic

Protection Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act says there's two types of communication and one's protected and one's not. Stored communication is not. Yes. Communication that's simultaneously transmitted and received is protected. Yeah, this gets hinky. And they were saying like they were basically protecting a phone call because in 1986 we could possibly come in the future. Discipline the phone conversation. Exactly. So phone calls are very much protected. Yeah. Again, except for that workaround with business where they can't tell if it's personal or business for a couple minutes. But then emails fall into this weird category because emails are transmitted. They're in motion. So apparently you can't scoop up people's emails when they're

being transmitted. Right. But emails also have the characteristic of sitting on an outgoing server for a minute. Right. Well, not a minute, but for however long it takes before it's sent. It could be a second and that still counts. Even less. While it's sitting on that server, it can be copied and analyzed and all sorts of stuff and be totally within the law. Yeah. And I love the analogy in here. If that doesn't quite make sense, they drop the analogy of it's like if your standard mail that your mail carrier delivers to your house, while they're delivering it, you can't go open your neighbor's mail. But once it sits in that mailbox, then you can go read your neighbor's mail. But you can't do that though. That's insane. No, you can't.

You can't do that with your neighbor's mail. You can't with email. Exactly. And you have said quite accurately that the court generally sides with, well, they side with citizens when it comes to privacy in general. But once you become an employee, the employer has most of the pull. Almost exclusively. They rule in favor of the employer because the network belongs to the employer and the devices often belong to the employer. And we should say that's a trend that may be going away. There's something called Bring Your Own Device movement where companies are starting to basically say you need to supply your own computer. You definitely need to supply your own phone. Maybe you need to supply your own

iPad. Perhaps we'll give you a little bit of a stipend to offset the cost of using your own phone. But that raises a lot of questions about the legality then of snooping on you while you're not on your company's network. Well, that's me. I bought my own laptop because I wanted to Mac and they wouldn't give me one. So I was like, all right, I'll go buy one. And that's what I use exclusively. And then as long as you're not on the company network, you should not be subject to any kind of snooping or spying. Well, they can't. But if they do, you would have a pretty good lawsuit on your hands. But if they had bought that Mac for you, or if your Mac is on the company network, they are virtually free to look at whatever they want. Yeah, but when I am not at

work, I'm not on the company network. That's good. So it is impossible for them to know what I'm doing. Right. But I think I would guess also, I'm not a lawyer. But if you opened up, say, your personal email account on the company network, if they had software, and I fully believe that this exists, that could just basically go in and copy all the files in your personal email while you're on the company network, that that would be legal. Yeah. And don't be fooled by that HTTPS in front of your Facebook account, because that is not protecting you like you think it is if you're at work. Yeah. And it's supposed to, the Hypertex transfer protocol is secure. It's not secure when you're at work on the work network.

No. So we'll talk about what you can do about all this in a minute. We got another message. Okay. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, um, if you, if you six, if your employer doesn't tell you that you are being surveilled and you want to know, like how could you possibly find out that kind of thing? Well, I would recommend reading the article, how to tell if your boss is spying on you and Forbes from about a year and a half ago. Um, but I'll let's current for this. So it is. I'm going to summarize some of it here though, cause it's a great article. Uh, they said whether or not you can tell depends a lot on where it's being done. If it's, um, they said, if it's upstream at the firewall, it's going to be hard for you to know, but at that point in the stream, they're probably

just going to be able to tell like what websites you're going to, if they want to get more granular and like poke into your emails and see what you're doing, then, um, they're going to have to be using some sort of monitoring software. And if you want to check and see if that is running on your computer, um, if you have a PC, you can go hit control alt delete, pull up your task manager and go to the processes tab and then look at all your process on a Mac. Um, I just typed in activity monitor. Right. And, uh, that's where you want to end up. And so like it's going to bring up these really weirdly named dot exe files. Yeah. Like everything that your computer is doing that you don't even know it's doing. Right. And look at the names. They say you can compare yours.

If you're at work, just put your laptop next to your cubicle buddy and see if the same processes are running. If they're the same, that didn't help you much, but if you have something running that they don't, then that might be a red flag. Well, it could help you in that like you're both employees and you're both being surveilled at the same time. True, but it won't help you really know. Right. Necessarily. Yeah. But you can also like search for those names on, on the internet. Right. Yeah. You can, if anything stands out as something you never heard of, just Google it and, um, see if it's spyware and then go check it out. Um, one of the funny things though, as they point out in this article is that spyware programs are flagged by antivirus and malware

programs is malicious. So, um, companies are making a, what they call white lists. So the IT department knows, uh, to say, no, this isn't bad. Right. And so I need to put it on a separate list. Right. And they said in many cases, those lists are public. Oh, okay. So apparently you can tell that way. I'm not really sure how that works though, but it is in the article that I mentioned in Forbes. I mean, that, I bet tech stuff has a better step by step guide, but, um, yeah, I mean, look at your processes, see what's running. Yeah. And then once you find out that your company's surveilling you, you have zero recourse against it. Yeah. And we were talking earlier, if you do look at your processes that might have an obvious name, like what, what did

you say? Like, uh, we are watching you.exe. Yeah. But it might not cause a lot of these are, are disguised. Sure. So, um, like everything's cool.exe. You're not being watched. Get back to work. Exactly. Um, and there's, like I said, very little you can do, if not nothing, but luckily the courts are starting to rule or have on one specific thing in favor of employees or people seeking employment. Yeah. Um, there was a growing trend among companies where they were demanding the social media passwords and login for like Facebook pages and stuff like that when the applicants Facebook page wasn't publicly visible. What? Yeah. And people would hand that over. Yeah. And they were, uh, yeah. You wanted to be hired. Yes. Of the, as a condition of even

being considered. Wow. Um, and so some states started to outlaw that pretty quick, which is good. Yeah. That's terrible. I mean, I don't do anything on Facebook that anyone would care about. No, but a lot of people do. A lot of people. So if you're looking for a job, if you have a job, especially if you suspect your company is more straight lace than you are, right, you just want to post everything with the idea, send every email, visit every website with the idea that you're being watched. Yeah. And you have zero expectation of privacy. The courts have found when you are on a company network, on a company device, and then even beyond that, there have been instances where people have been fired and lost lawsuits as a result. Um, for stuff they did that was maybe related to work

that was not on the company device that was not on company time or on a company network, but it was like they were blogging about, you know, making fun of their coworkers still got fired. Yeah. So basically you just have to, I don't know what you have to do, but it's sad. It's a sad state of affairs when even your own personal stuff, your own personal opinions done on your personal blog, like can get you fired legally. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't even mention cameras. Oh, yeah. Most offices have cameras in their office. I know we do. We do. Yeah. Well, you know, the little bubble in the ceiling. That's what those are. Yeah, that's what those are. I thought they were rain collectors. No, not rain collectors. Um, yeah,

companies have cameras set up to, uh, thwart office creepers supposedly and like, um, theft. Yeah. But they can also see, you know, if you're having a liaison in a copy room, well, they can like, if you're that dumb, they can watch what you're doing on your computer. Yeah. They can surveil your computer, your desktop, just from watching your, point it toward your screen. Yeah. This is where Josh said, you haven't, you've got like four of those above your desk. And did you read the IKEA story that I sent you? I did. It seemed above and beyond the, um, the realm of acceptability. Yeah. A woman, a 12 year employee, um, sort of high level. She was deputy director of communications and

merchandising for all of France. I'd call that fairly high level. Yeah. For 24 stores in France is their third biggest market. Oh really? Her name was, uh, Virginia Pauline. I'm sure there's a well said better French way to say that, but she got hepatitis C and had to take a year off of work and IKEA thought, well, I don't really think she's as sick as she says. And so we're going to hire a private investigator. We're going to give them their social security number, her personal cell phone number, her bank account details and whatever else they need. And you go find out how sick she is. And a lot of those things were ill gotten too from corrupt, like public workers. Yeah. Cops and stuff. So people were rightfully outraged. And, uh, I think it's in court still

because this was late last year, uh, seeing if they broke the law by doing this. But apparently IKEA has been doing this like, it said to hundreds of employees in the course of the last decade. Right. So when you get that crappy furniture that you don't know how to put together, or the lamp ad, if you like that ad, then someone posted that it's really good. It's great. Yeah. The lamp doesn't move apparently. No, I think I said it was computer animated. It's just a lamp that is like Jones made it seem real with this. Oh, it was a spike Jones joint. Yeah. Nice. Talented dude. He really is man. Her was great. Um, and I want to point out one thing you said, if you said, if you think your company is more straight laced, I would even say like,

if you think your company like no way would they do this, don't be fooled. You know, if you think it's just some super cool hip hipster young company, oh yeah, they might be spying on you as well. Yeah. I mean, if they want you out, like you're just giving them dirt pretty much in any tech type company or anything that has any sort of trade secrets. I'm sure you're being heavily, heavily monitored. Sure. So I guess go forth and relax everybody. Yeah. Feel good about everything. If you want to know more about being surveilled at work again, go check out tech stuff. You'll like it. And you can type the keywords employer spying in the search bar at house of works.com and it will likely bring up

this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Norbert the Hungarian. Hi guys. This is Norbert. I live in a small town in Hungary about 40 miles away from the Capitol. I always listen to the podcast while commuting and love the show. I work for an IT company. Hey, how about that? Works pretty well. Think about that. Yeah. Giving email, chat and phone support for American users, mostly from New Jersey, North Carolina and Illinois. And here's the thing. I'm not sure whether it is due to cultural differences, but what I have noticed is that almost none of the users greet us. He said great us. Sweet Norbert. When we answer their calls or when receiving emails from them, neither a simple hey, nor a good morning, nothing. The

conversation usually starts off from their side with a long yeah. Is there a reason why this is so guys? I also need to add this guy talking to who Norbert us. No, I'm saying like who people who go yeah. New Jersey, North Carolina and Illinois. It's like the boss from office space. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I also need to add to this that here we are talking about educated people and not end users. Street people is what he says. They're riffraff. Over here in Europe, this is unacceptable. It is a sign of disrespect and ignorance. Is this normal practice in the US? Should I worry about it? You guys could answer that would be amazing. Yeah, Norbert. Here's my deal is you can sniff out sales calls and things and I'm never friendly to those. In

fact, most of those aren't even a person now. It's just a recording. Yeah, right. You know, but if you were offering IT support, if it's unsolicited cold calls, I'm not surprised that he's getting that. But if like this is the company. Yeah, he said he's giving email chat and phone support. So he's trying to support. So I guess he's responding to a request, I would guess then, right? I guess the only thing I can think of Norbert is that maybe you're supporting them because something's not working and so they're ticked off maybe. Yeah, Americans get stressed out when computers malfunction. Yeah, and there's a tendency to shoot the messenger in all cultures, I think. Yeah, I think we've said yeah to start every sentence in the last like 30 seconds. Anyway,

Norbert, I apologize on behalf of Americans. And if you ever call me buddy, I'm going to say, Hey, Norbert, how you doing, buddy? Good morning, Norbert. And then we'll just get going from there. That's a t-shirt. Get what? Good morning, Norbert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever been hungry? I have. You have to. Yeah, you mean I went to Budapest. It's beautiful. That's where I went. I thought it was beautiful too. One of the most beautiful cities around. Yeah, and it was inexpensive and the people were beautiful and nice. Museums are great. Did you go to the hospital in the Rock? No, what's that? It's this cavern system underneath Budapest that was converted in the 30s into a secret bunker and hospital and like power plant to where the city could hide

under the city. And it came in handy in World War II and during the Cold War. And it was a secret up until like the 60s, 70s, maybe 80s. Is that on the Buddha side? Or maybe like until the end of Communism in Hungary. It was in the pest side, I believe. Yeah, but it's this amazing museum now filled with mannequins, dummies who are like having surgery performed upon them. Some are like bleeding. It's supposed to take place in the context of war. There's a mannequin screaming. I didn't even know they made those things, but it's really awesome. Like they have old-timey medical equipment and if you go on a tour of this museum, the last tour of the night is a flashlight tour, so they turn all the lights out and you're walking around with flashlights and like coming

like face-to-face with these like dummies when you come around the corner. It is really neat. I need to go back to Budapest. Yeah, I want to go back as well. When I was younger, so I didn't, you know, I'd do Europe differently at this age for sure. Oh yeah, sure. Were you like backpack in there? Yeah, and we did some museums, but it was also a lot of just walking around and people watching and getting drunk. On schnapps and Budapest. Actually, we had the Bull's Blood wine there because it was like a dollar a bottle. Right. I didn't find it anywhere. No, I don't believe I had it. I did like the apricot schnapps were beautiful. All right, so that's Hungary everybody. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck like Norbert did, you can tweet to us at SYSK

podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Hang out with us on Pinterest or Instagram. It's Instagram slash SYSK podcast, right? Yeah. And look up Pinterest.com slash Josh and Chuck. Great. And then you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and you can hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it

and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.