Ridiculous Company Expects Employees to Grant Them Remote Access to Their Personal Devices

Anyone who isn't an IT worker might be a little more than concerned when the boss asks all the employees to install a certificate on their phones that prompts the warning: "installing this profile will allow the administrator to remotely manage your iPhone." A cybersecurity expert might roll their eyes, but the rest of us would likely panic and indignantly google the legality of such a request. One concerned redditor asked r/antiwork for advice about installing such a certificate to their personal device and while most were disturbed, many IT professionals chimed in with both insightful and condescending comments.

Posted by Mel Dawn

“Company asked us to install a certificate on our personal devices to access Teams and Outlook” Posted by u/Tryxis

The comment section

“You can tell if it had more space, he would download more dicks instead of the damn app.” said u/the42thdoctor.

“If the company doesn't pay for them phone and plan, nothing work related is going on it.” said u/l4nc3r.

“I'm an HVAC guy and I'll use my personal phone camera to take pics of jobs or important paperwork, communicate with coworkers and the owner, and use Google maps to get to jobs. I draw the line there. I would never install a tracking app or anything of the sort. I also lucked out with the owner of the company being a 1 in 100 good owner/boss. The guy is genuinely awesome and cares about the people he has working for him. If he was an asshole, I wouldn't use my personal phone for shit.” said u/Slipsonic.

“It blows my mind that I have co-workers that are not only fine with this, but actually use and communicate through them during personal hours. It's made me an outcast in the department but if that's what it takes to keep a hard line drawn between work and real life then I guess I'm missing Brenda's birthday mixer” said u/SlimmG8r.

“Personally, I think you working for a technology company is actually a really good reason to be using a flip phone!” said u/jeffjoraj.

IT security workers in the comment section weighed in and offered their perspective

“Fellow IT worker - this is the best reply thus far in the thread.” said u/Bar0que.

“Literally everyone in IT rolling their eyes at this post lol.” said u/ThreshOP.

“I’m an endpoint and MDM admin. This thread is so frustrating lol.” said u/LittleLight85.

“There's definitely context missing here, because he neglected to show the other screens of this wizard (Intune BYOD Enrollment) that specifically states the employer cannot see or alter any personal information on the device. Intune's BYOD enrollment segments their workplace provided apps into a separate encrypted area. Yes, they can delete Outlook or Teams data at termination time or whatever, but they can't see or alter anything personal on your device. They should be providing company phones, but lots of employers (mine included) prefer to give a monthly stipend for using your personal device because MDM has come so far and you can guarantee integrity of corporate data while not crossing a boundary into being able to access employee personal info.” said u/brokerceej.

“This looks like intune MAM. It creates a separate partition, your personal data cannot be manipulated. I'd rather have this than 2 devices, I already have enough shit that needs charging.” said u/Mrwrongthinker.

“That's an iOS system-level alert. All MDM suites have the same warnings there.” said u/Chrontius.