Worth highlighting that the keylogger was imposed on the employee after they had missed deadlines and showed poor performance... Presumably as an incentive to actually work, which I guess wasn't effective.
That is not worth highlighting. This sort of behaviour by companies continues the dehumanisation of the workforce and should be unconditionally condemned.
Anyone who thinks this is reasonable can only be stuck in an SV bubble like people who push the gig economy knowing they’ll only ever benefit from it, not be subject to it.
What standards should they apply to determining whether her employment should be continued? I'm guessing that it's harder to release employees in Australia than in the US, since by most standards here, she would have lost her job well before the keyboard tracking was applied. (based on the accusations of her work performance)
In Australia, you need to make sure you have all your documentation lined up and iron-clad before you let someone go. Most companies I know of avoid firing, preferring to "encourage individuals to explore other opportunities" as this bypasses all of the complexities of unfair dismissal [1].
Sure, and I support that, but the usual documentation of performance reviews, OKRs, etc aren't enough? (I don't know how any of this works, having not worked a real job.) Surprised management is so eager to automate their own jobs.
Traditionally you would go into perfomance review, where you would be checked up on regularly to see how your work is going and what roadblocks you are encountering.
No logging necessary, just some face to face time (which you could also do over zoom, btw).
If the employees performance stays bad despite roadblocks being handled, then it isn't really important whether or not it's bad because they aren't typing enough.
Of course this requires management to actually do their job, and unlike the other employees their metrics don't seem to include them actually doing any work.
Her output isn't merely to press keys, she's supposed to be producing something with those keypresses, being able to show a lack of delivery on that work despite repeated chances given should be sufficient. No need to get so invasive.
It makes me so uncomfortable to see staff like this justify the use of these monitoring technologies. Employees are increasingly treating their staff like children, and with headlines like this, it seems increasingly appropriate.
I don’t particularly like it but in this case it worked well: it identified someone who wasn’t working and then saved the company from litigation.
As long as companies don’t use it as some kind of metric then I don’t see an issue. I don’t assume privacy in the office, so why should my work be private?
If anything, such companies using keyloggers should be forced to openly state such practices to any potential employees. If they are really so proud of it, then don't be sneaky, let potential employees know about such practices and choose not to work for them.
Companies that need keyloggers, often have dysfunctional management and processes to evaluate employees, so need to resort to such desperate measures.
Well, they did get a legal case thrown at them about it. Probably easier and cheaper to stockpile more hard evidence than is likely needed than risk having too little when the court cases come around.
1. because it is in Australia where you need good reason to fire someone, and disgruntled people litigate.
2. I don’t like the privacy implications. However it sounds like her litigation was baseless so at least making her visible helps future employers avoid her and risk of litigation.
Why would anyone want to push somebody into homelessness or into permanent reliance on government subsidies because they cannot find work only because they screwed up?
Imagine saying something controversial on social media and having that plastered all over the web.
I don’t want to do any such thing. I want people to stop abusing the judicial system. She didn’t work, she was fired and she sued. I think it’s good if other businesses are aware of her behaviour.
Unless your business is media or heavily linked to public perception, your controversial opinions should be irrelevant to work. This is different to a worker who doesn’t do their work and sues, that is _very_ relevant to future work.
Your premise is also incorrect: there are businesses that are happy to take on extra risk and will happily employ felons or other black sheep. Many people are willing to give a second chance, but they should be aware that they are giving a second chance.
> your controversial opinions should be irrelevant to work
That is, unfortunately (or fortunately if you're that kind of person), not how things work for a large amount of jobs. If you have that scarlet letter, you're shut out of a lot of positions, even when that history _shouldn't_ matter.
It doesn't appear to be as simple as that. She worked at the company for 18 years. If she was unproductive and committing fraud for all of the 18 years there, then that is a reflection of how incompetent her managers and the company's processes are.
To be employed by them, for so long, means that she was likely productive for most of her time there (then slacked off at some point) and/or how employees are managed and evaluated at that company is completely dysfunctional.
I honestly think the company being too dysfunctional to be aware of her behavior is more likely than her being a productive employee for more than a decade and then deciding to do no work.
> I don’t like the privacy implications. However it sounds like her litigation was baseless so at least making her visible helps future employers avoid her and risk of litigation.
But the privacy implications should not be ignored, and it appears the company and media organizations seek to do further damage and harm, beyond what was required to win the case.
The ability of people to change or their right to seek future employment elsewhere, can't be ignored or purposely inhibited without creating more legal and litigation issues.
In general news organisations (Daily Mail, et al) have been doing a poor job sourcing images for minor stories, they frequently assign interns to scour social media for the name and often come up with right name wrong person photos.
I repeat once again, not her face. Not the same shape. Not even a photograph. Not even useful for picking the actual [erson out from a lineup of women of a similar age and build.
Making a case for job abandonment is much easier than proving mere underperformance.
The keylogger isn't strictly necessary. My trade secret: look at authentication counts.
Here in the US, company policy mandates that the employee lock the screen when away from desk and we have timeouts to enforce it (for PCI). Labor law requires 3-4 breaks per shift.
So when arriving at their desk and returning from each break, all employees should have an absolute minimum of 3-4 authentications logged per shift.
Realistically it's going to be way more than that because people get up and do stuff all the time (which is fine, and desirable, since it at least suggests activity), but if someone has less than the absolute minimum number of logins they'd accrue if they were physically chained to their desk, they're either not actually at their desk, they're violating labor law by not taking breaks (while also somehow underperforming), or they installed a mouse jiggler (which I'd then look for and get them for "installing software/hardware to obfuscate evidence of job abandonment").
This is all trivial to do with Defender KQL or whatever SIEM you have. No spyware necessary.
aye. logins to the laptop, SSO hits to access internal sites, number of emails or text (teams, slack, whatever) sent, DNS queries and to which sites, etc.
lots of ways to track this without being invasive, and plenty of endpoint security and business analytics already do.
Does anyone else get reminded of snow crash feds with stuff like this? I know when I’m sent a company document on company servers I behave like Yt’s mum.
Ah, Unilad.com, one of the most trusted of news sites!
When every single link on the page leads to another page on the same base domain,
you know you are dealing with a site that pedals in nothing but clickbait.
> missed deadlines and meetings, been difficult to contact and had cost her employer a fine after failing to complete a task
Nah, she wasn't fired due to keystroke "tech". She was fired due to performance issues that she attributes to mental health problems. Burnout is the first thing that comes to mind that might prevent people from performing as well as they should.
She can't be very bright - says that nobody hires her because the fact she was fired went viral, complains of that to a newspaper.
Keylogging on employee workstations is a Bad Thing, but some people really take the piss - and risk ruining it for the rest of us. Hopefully this sort of event continues to be the exception to the rule.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadAnyone who thinks this is reasonable can only be stuck in an SV bubble like people who push the gig economy knowing they’ll only ever benefit from it, not be subject to it.
Regardless, measuring keystrokes sounds as dumb as lines of code.
[1] https://www.fwc.gov.au/job-loss-or-dismissal/unfair-dismissa...
This comment alone would take you the entire morning.
No logging necessary, just some face to face time (which you could also do over zoom, btw).
If the employees performance stays bad despite roadblocks being handled, then it isn't really important whether or not it's bad because they aren't typing enough.
Of course this requires management to actually do their job, and unlike the other employees their metrics don't seem to include them actually doing any work.
As long as companies don’t use it as some kind of metric then I don’t see an issue. I don’t assume privacy in the office, so why should my work be private?
Companies that need keyloggers, often have dysfunctional management and processes to evaluate employees, so need to resort to such desperate measures.
Question 2: why does this news story need to plaster her face all over the article multiple times?
2. I don’t like the privacy implications. However it sounds like her litigation was baseless so at least making her visible helps future employers avoid her and risk of litigation.
Imagine saying something controversial on social media and having that plastered all over the web.
Unless your business is media or heavily linked to public perception, your controversial opinions should be irrelevant to work. This is different to a worker who doesn’t do their work and sues, that is _very_ relevant to future work.
Your premise is also incorrect: there are businesses that are happy to take on extra risk and will happily employ felons or other black sheep. Many people are willing to give a second chance, but they should be aware that they are giving a second chance.
That is, unfortunately (or fortunately if you're that kind of person), not how things work for a large amount of jobs. If you have that scarlet letter, you're shut out of a lot of positions, even when that history _shouldn't_ matter.
Instead of taking responsibility for it, she played the victim card and filed a lawsuit in bad faith. She does not belong in any workplace.
To be employed by them, for so long, means that she was likely productive for most of her time there (then slacked off at some point) and/or how employees are managed and evaluated at that company is completely dysfunctional.
But the privacy implications should not be ignored, and it appears the company and media organizations seek to do further damage and harm, beyond what was required to win the case.
The ability of people to change or their right to seek future employment elsewhere, can't be ignored or purposely inhibited without creating more legal and litigation issues.
* It's barely a 'news' publication, it's the UK LadBible social media network of schlock.
* Not her face unless there's some heavy heavy filters doing the lifting. See:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/exclusive/article-12387247/...
for a possible 'correct' image.
In general news organisations (Daily Mail, et al) have been doing a poor job sourcing images for minor stories, they frequently assign interns to scour social media for the name and often come up with right name wrong person photos.
See the Daily Mail piece for a realistic image of a person more likely to be who the story is about.
The keylogger isn't strictly necessary. My trade secret: look at authentication counts.
Here in the US, company policy mandates that the employee lock the screen when away from desk and we have timeouts to enforce it (for PCI). Labor law requires 3-4 breaks per shift.
So when arriving at their desk and returning from each break, all employees should have an absolute minimum of 3-4 authentications logged per shift.
Realistically it's going to be way more than that because people get up and do stuff all the time (which is fine, and desirable, since it at least suggests activity), but if someone has less than the absolute minimum number of logins they'd accrue if they were physically chained to their desk, they're either not actually at their desk, they're violating labor law by not taking breaks (while also somehow underperforming), or they installed a mouse jiggler (which I'd then look for and get them for "installing software/hardware to obfuscate evidence of job abandonment").
This is all trivial to do with Defender KQL or whatever SIEM you have. No spyware necessary.
lots of ways to track this without being invasive, and plenty of endpoint security and business analytics already do.
to inspire feelings based on the person's face instead of the actual happening. the face is irrelevant to the story.
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/33350-mouse-odometer
First except I found https://www.deaneckles.com/blog/700_docsend_in_snow_crash/
When every single link on the page leads to another page on the same base domain, you know you are dealing with a site that pedals in nothing but clickbait.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Nah, she wasn't fired due to keystroke "tech". She was fired due to performance issues that she attributes to mental health problems. Burnout is the first thing that comes to mind that might prevent people from performing as well as they should.
Keylogging on employee workstations is a Bad Thing, but some people really take the piss - and risk ruining it for the rest of us. Hopefully this sort of event continues to be the exception to the rule.