George Orwell is rolling in his grave.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced 53% of people worldwide out of their jobs, and for the rest that kept them, they were either in essential in-house positions or online, forced to be under watchful eye of micro-managing employers.

Thus, there was a surge in demand for employee surveillance technology at the beginning of the pandemic. Top10VPN website reported that in April 2020, demand for employee monitoring software rose by 87%, and that was 63% higher in March 2021 compared to the pre-pandemic average. However, even prior to the pandemic, workers were often asked to download some kind of spyware on their computers.

So, how does employee monitoring software work? What is it used for? And lastly, why is it problematic?

At its core, employee monitoring software serves to ‘manage productivity’. In other words, tracking what employees are doing at every moment is supposed to lead to higher productivity and less lazying around. Just knowing that they might be watched may ‘motivate’ them to be on their best behavior. Although the principle idea somewhat makes sense, the main issue lies in how this productivity is being managed.

According to the article by MadeUseOf, out of the 26 most popular monitoring software:

• 81% record keystrokes on your keyboard
• 61% monitor messaging in real time
• 65% alert the employer on all of your actions (opening/closing apps, sending messages, logging into websites…)
• 38% have remote control capabilities (someone else can control your computer like you, block/allow software, and access all of the data)

If this sounds like Orwellian surveillance, that’s because it is. Depending on where in the world you work and live, it may or may not be legal. Brian Honan, a cybersecurity consultant and former advisor at Europol, told the CNBC that monitoring software features like logging keystrokes and taking screenshots may not be legal under European Union’s GDPR regulations, given the sheer quantity of information they accumulate. In the United States, most monitoring methods are legal, and the federal legislation doesn’t require employers do disclose monitoring activity to workers. If you work in the U.S. you can read more about the specifics here. Asian countries have their own rules. Same for other continents. So if you’re worried that your employer is overstepping their boundaries, make sure to check your local regulations.

The issue is, the rate at which an employee is typing or moving their mouse won’t affect how ‘productive’ they are, as even the most basic desk jobs require some form of focus and thinking. Developers are known to spend most of their time thinking about programming solutions, away from their keyboard. Shallow metrics like time tracking and words typed don’t capture the quality of work, only quantity. Most importantly, this level of privacy invasion takes the ‘human’ out of workers. To illustrate my point, here’s an excerpt from the PC Magazines’s article on The Best Employee Monitoring Software for 2021:

“Automation and the ability to set alerts by way of email reminders and warnings are also effective ways to manage a large, distributed workforce. This activity data can also be aggregated on a macro level in real-time admin and manager dashboards. You should also be able to construct detailed reports to slice and dice your various productivity metrics. You can drill down into the data using factors such as the most productive or unproductive employees, or compare team or departmental efficiency or productivity on specific projects”.

This is not to put down the author of this article, as they were simply doing their job and reviewing products. What I would like you to take away is that this is what companies are looking for – comparing workers like they’re inefficient hardware, and ignoring the fact that those ‘cogs’ have families, friends or other people in their lives that didn’t sign up to be monitored by a third party. A lot of workers are use their personal computers for work, and this allows for potential breaches in privacy. For example, if the employee receives a personal email as a pop-up during their work hours, it may reveal personal or sensitive information about the sender, which is now stored permanently as a screenshot in some company’s database. Or, personal files on the children of the employee may be stored on the computer, like photos, documents, etc., so the company they’re working for has access to that too. There are countless possible situations like this, where both the employee and unaware third parties are affected in the process of crunching numbers for ultimate productivity.

The question is then, where is all of this data stored, and who can access it? Even if the employer doesn’t misuse this information, unless the data is provably deleted afterwards (it rarely is), the privacy and security problems don’t disappear. The move to remote working has made companies and their workers more vulnerable to cyber attacks. As early as April 2020, the U.S. government reported a 400% increase in cyber attacks compared to pre-COVID times. Most remote workers use their personal computers on an insecure WiFi connection for their job, and are not especially tech savvy. That makes them, and the companies they’re working for, a great target for hackers. In a successful data breach, a cyber attacker can get all of the company’s collected data, such as IDs, passwords, personal information of the employees and their familes, security footage, bank information, and much more.

Many employers tend to make the argument that they do not install monitoring software without their employees’ consent. However, this argument chooses to ignore the inherent power dynamic between an employer and an employee, which has only increased during COVID. Presented with the options of either installing the monitoring software or potentially losing their job, most will pick the former option. In a time such as the COVID crisis, people tend to cling to their jobs more, and feel thankful that they can still pay their rent. Of course, not all employers were created equal. Some pressure their workers to give ‘consent’. The NBC News article from early August 2021 reports that the workers of one of the world’s largest call centers, Teleperformance, were allegedly coerced to install home surveillance cameras, where both their rooms and their families would be recorded.

Surveillance at work has evolved alongside advancements in technology. New and shinier ways of watching employees, from a simple webcam to monitoring visited websites and logging keystrokes, seem to be coming out every other week, presenting new questions about where the line should be drawn between effective work and invasion of privacy. For those that are have to use monitoring software, make sure not to use your personal computer for work if possible, update your software regularly, back up your files and use antivirus software to detect potential security breaches.