{"id":269993,"date":"2021-06-08T19:38:31","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T16:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/walmarts-free-phones-for-employees-raise-privacy-concerns-experts\/"},"modified":"2021-06-08T19:38:31","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T16:38:31","slug":"walmarts-free-phones-for-employees-raise-privacy-concerns-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/walmarts-free-phones-for-employees-raise-privacy-concerns-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"#Walmart’s free phones for employees raise privacy concerns: experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Walmart’s free phones for employees raise privacy concerns: experts<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Digital privacy experts are raising red flags about Walmart\u2019s plans to give 740,000 employees free smartphones that the company says will improve worker productivity without collecting personal data.<\/p>\n

Walmart said Thursday<\/a> that it planned to give nearly half its US employees free Samsung Galaxy phones by the end of the year. Employees will use the phones to access the \u201cMe@Walmart\u201d app<\/a>, which will allow them to clock in, manage shifts and communicate with supervisors.<\/p>\n

Employees will also be allowed to take the phones home for personal use.<\/p>\n

But Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Center of Technology<\/a> Innovation at the Brookings Institution, had some blunt advice for Walmart workers: \u201cTurn down the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployees should realize when they\u2019re using company provided phones, the company can engage in surveillance on what they do on that phone,\u201d West told The Post. \u201cThat can include a wide range of personal, financial and social<\/a> interactions. Basically everything you do on that phone can be subject to surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to privacy disclosures on the Apple App Store, the \u201cMe@Walmart\u201d app can access employee data including financial information, precise location data and health and fitness information.<\/p>\n

Walmart promises that this information is only used for app functions. Financial information is used for paychecks, precise location data confirms when employees clock in to work and health and fitness is used for coronavirus assessments, according to Walmart spokesperson Camille Dunn.\u00a0She said that use of any individual feature was optional.<\/p>\n

\"The
Walmart promises that the information it collects is only used for app functions like scheduling shifts. <\/figcaption>
Wamart<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWalmart\u00a0will not have access to any personal data,\u201d Dunn told The Post.<\/p>\n

She added that Walmart will not see employees\u2019 non-work-related emails, text messages, calls, voicemails, browser history, photos, videos or location.<\/p>\n

But West argued that the lines between work and personal information are less clear than presented by Walmart. He questioned whether employees\u2019 personal email use and web browsing while on the clock could be monitored, for example.<\/p>\n

On a Reddit forum used by Walmart workers, some users complained about the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalmart will not have any access to personal data\u2026 HAHAHAHAHA,\u201d wrote one apparent employee.<\/p>\n

Another said, \u201cNah, we good. Keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n

United for Respect, a labor advocacy group, painted the smartphone initiative as a distraction from low wages at Walmart.<\/p>\n

\u201cAssociates don\u2019t need free smartphones, they need a starting wage of $15 and a voice in health and safety on the job,\u201d the group\u2019s corporate accountability director Bianca Agustin told The Post.<\/p>\n

Another apparent Walmart employee wrote on Reddit, \u201cKeep it and give me my $15 already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9s Arrieta, director of consumer privacy engineering at the civil liberties-focused nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Walmart workers who choose to accept smartphones should turn them off when they leave work and keep a separate device for personal use.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can afford having a different phone for your personal life, I would highly recommend to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Andr\u00e9s
Andr\u00e9s Arrieta of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said Walmart workers who choose to accept smartphones should turn them off when they leave work and keep a separate device for personal use.<\/figcaption>
Wamart<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like West, Arrieta said the lines between personal and work data are often blurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the app needs your contacts because your co-worker needs you to call them, the app can\u2019t necessarily tell which contacts in your list [are work-related] and which aren\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cIt starts getting really complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Arrieta said he did not \u201cnecessarily assume this a nefarious app.\u201d He said that if companies are going to require employees to use apps, providing work devices for free is better than requiring them to install the apps on their personal phones.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen in the past that employers will force employees to install these very intrusive applications in their personal phones,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a good step that they\u2019re saying, \u2018We\u2019re going to give you another phone for free.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Walmart’s free phones for employees raise privacy concerns: experts” Digital privacy experts are raising red flags about Walmart\u2019s plans to give 740,000 employees free smartphones that the company says will improve worker productivity without collecting personal data. Walmart said Thursday that it planned to give nearly half its US employees free Samsung Galaxy phones by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":269994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/walmart-phones-26.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[15047,108651,71380,32332],"class_list":["post-269993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-privacy","tag-6-8-21","tag-digital-privacy","tag-walmart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}