[ilovesprint]

Cuz I havent updated it... Had to switch to a work BB this week

[ilovesprint]

bump bump bump

[crackle]

Interesting reading.

I have also been issued a bb by my employer, couple of questions for those who know if you dont mind.

1. Can my employer know where i am at any given time with this phone?

2. Can my employer download some sort of log that shows the places i visited each week and for how long?

3. Can my employer know where i am live, ie when i am talking and he is in his office in another state?

4. If yes to any of the above questions, is there a way for me to "disable" this feature and then enable it when i want?

5. Anyone else not like the idea of their employer knowing exactly where they are, even on free time?

6. Is there any chat/email part of the bb that is not easily trackable?

Thanks in advance.

Crackle.

[exelant]

For everyone asking about what your employer knows. Doesn't it depend on how many employees? If there are a lot of employees, your employer probably won't go snooping into your movements unless they feel a need - like you're already in trouble for someting and they are building a case.

Like sniffs said, he doesn't care and as long as you don't cause him a lot of work repairing damage you've done, he isn't going to snoop or hassle you. All the IT people I know say the same thing. I might mention it never hurts to take care of your IT person! That might get you a heads-up warning to knock it off before you actually get in trouble.

No one should have to say that if you're worried about it, what exactly are you doing with your employer's property?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[sniffs]

Interesting reading.

I have also been issued a bb by my employer, couple of questions for those who know if you dont mind.

1. Can my employer know where i am at any given time with this phone?

No. But if Location Tracking is enabled, it captures GPS coords.. Also, the carriers can locate you with every call you make via Cell Triangulation.

2. Can my employer download some sort of log that shows the places i visited each week and for how long?

No.. but the carriers can.

3. Can my employer know where i am live, ie when i am talking and he is in his office in another state?

No.. but the carriers can.

4. If yes to any of the above questions, is there a way for me to "disable" this feature and then enable it when i want?

Yes.. turn the cell radio off.

5. Anyone else not like the idea of their employer knowing exactly where they are, even on free time?

Turn the phone off than? If it's a company issued Blackberry, there's a feature called Auto On/Off that automatically turns the BB on and off at specified times.

6. Is there any chat/email part of the bb that is not easily trackable?

Blackberry Messenger.. Dont confuse this with PIN message.. they do the same thing, but I believe Pin Messages can be tracked.

Thanks in advance.

Crackle.

My response to your questions are under them.

Basically it's like this.. If your company issues you a car and decides to put GPS in it and track you, they can. Same thing with the phone.. company issue phones are just that, COMPANY issued. Some companies allow you to use it for personal use.. but keep in mind, it is a company device so anything personal you do on it, is property of the company. If you are going through a litigation and the company decides to track everything you do on the BB, they can and will. There's no difference between the BB vs a laptop with an aircard with GPS on the card. Would you put porn on it? If so, than the company has the right to see what you are doing. Are you going to put any illegal things on the laptop or communicate with your lover on it? the company has the right to view it.

As long as you aren't causing a ripple in the space time continium, we (IT) wont care.. If you start doing weird stuff and hosing your BB, that's when we start monitoring.. and with what the BES provides and what 3rd party monitoring software provides, not a damn thing on the BB is safe from prying eyes. (by prying eyes, I mean the BES admin)

[crackle]

My response to your questions are under them.

Basically it's like this.. If your company issues you a car and decides to put GPS in it and track you, they can. Same thing with the phone.. company issue phones are just that, COMPANY issued. Some companies allow you to use it for personal use.. but keep in mind, it is a company device so anything personal you do on it, is property of the company. If you are going through a litigation and the company decides to track everything you do on the BB, they can and will. There's no difference between the BB vs a laptop with an aircard with GPS on the card. Would you put porn on it? If so, than the company has the right to see what you are doing. Are you going to put any illegal things on the laptop or communicate with your lover on it? the company has the right to view it.

As long as you aren't causing a ripple in the space time continium, we (IT) wont care.. If you start doing weird stuff and hosing your BB, that's when we start monitoring.. and with what the BES provides and what 3rd party monitoring software provides, not a damn thing on the BB is safe from prying eyes. (by prying eyes, I mean the BES admin)

Thanks for taking the time to reply, i appreciate it.

I guess what i am worried about is, my company wants me to spend a certain amount of time with client x and the same with client z each week. I dont need to do exactly this to get the job done, but it is stated i must spend this time, even if i dont need to.

So, yeah, its something i will have to look at i guess.

For those who answered previously about not doing anything wrong, i dont do anything wrong, in particular, but i dont like the idea of being "monitered" throughout my day...

[sniffs]

being monitored on a BB is the same as being micro-managed in a cubicle.. =P

If you give the company any reason to doubt your whereabouts, they can always find out via a few methods.. one is to open the SQL DB and look where it's capturing your GPS coords..

the other is to have the carrier look at which tower your phone is bouncing off of.. they keep this info just like they keep the call logs.

my advice would be to be where your supposed to be. =P

[bizuser]

I was wondering if the BES server can monitor and report the web activity when tethering with the 8830? Based on the other posts in the thread, it sounds like it can, but no one specifically mentioned that so I thought I would ask.

Thanks!

[Lloyd_Humph]

being monitored on a BB is the same as being micro-managed in a cubicle.. =P

If you give the company any reason to doubt your whereabouts, they can always find out via a few methods.. one is to open the SQL DB and look where it's capturing your GPS coords..

the other is to have the carrier look at which tower your phone is bouncing off of.. they keep this info just like they keep the call logs.

my advice would be to be where your supposed to be. =P

You keep saying SQL DB, as if you're deliberately trying to avoid telling us whether you're using mySQL, MSSQL etc? Is the database an arbitrary one? Do you get a choice?

And where you said Sequel, it's not sequel. SQL = Standard Query Language, so it could in theory be a whole manner of databases that accept SQL commands.

Lloyd

[sniffs]

Not at all.. we use a MS clustered MSSQL 2005 db. =)

[Lloyd_Humph]

Not at all.. we use a MS clustered MSSQL 2005 db. =)

How many berries is that handling? Sounds up to the job of quite a few...

[sniffs]

It can handle quite alot.. Only 600 berries so far, about 70 treo's(on our Goodlink server) and it's not even phasing it.

We've also got about 30 Citrix servers and hundreds of other servers that are in the mix, 4 exchange servers (6500 mailboxes), a few monitoring servers, a helpdesk, a few Sharepoint servers, etc.. =)

[bizuser]

So are websites visited via tethering tracked and reported through the BES?

[orle8050]

Good thread! Very informative and glad I have my own berry and not hooked up to BES.

If you want privacy. Then buy your own device and leave your work BB at home or at work.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Lloyd_Humph]

It can handle quite alot.. Only 600 berries so far, about 70 treo's(on our Goodlink server) and it's not even phasing it.

We've also got about 30 Citrix servers and hundreds of other servers that are in the mix, 4 exchange servers (6500 mailboxes), a few monitoring servers, a helpdesk, a few Sharepoint servers, etc.. =)

Impressive! Do you have to load balance the berries? Surely they can't create enough traffic? And how do you securely connect (SSL etc?) to the berries? Do you have any authentication at all?

[DigtheBerry]

I'm so glad I decided to get my own curve and get off their bes. whats nice is the girl who handles all our accounts(200+ of them in the company) got me a new curve brand new due to an account coming up for renewal, we moved my phone # over to my family share and as long as I give them a bill each month they still pay the 80 bucks for me as long as I am employed... a win win... so I just forward my outlook email to my phone email and they cant do a thing about my phone!!! I use it too much for personal stuff and I didnt want them hassleing me.

[sniffs]

Impressive! Do you have to load balance the berries? Surely they can't create enough traffic? And how do you securely connect (SSL etc?) to the berries? Do you have any authentication at all?

Everything's load balanced.. My BES, GL server, Attachment server, mobile analyzer server, and 4 exchange servers are all VM and do the job quite easily.

It kind sucks for the end users because we have a content filter, and since we have all data on the BB's going through our DC, if you browse a website that is normally blocked on your company PC, it'll come up blocked on the BB's also. =/

As for security, it's whatever RIM provides(encryption, etc), then of course our firewalls an such..

[melskys]

I've spent a lot of time recently and haven't found definitive answers to these 3 specific questions. I find a lot of commentary on what people should or shouldn't do with a company device but not solid answers.

1) If I have my corporate email through BES and add my personal Yahoo Mail through BIS does my company have any sort of access to my emails sent or received through the Yahoo BIS account? (short of commandeering the device itself and looking at it)

2) Are web pages visited using the "Internet Service" (not MDS) able to be logged/monitored by the BES Admin?

3) Are other services such as AIM for BB able to be logged/monitored by the BES Admin if I am not going through the MDS proxy?

I know that if I didn't do these personal activities on my corporate device I would have nothing to worry about. However my company has not put very restrictive official/technical policies on our devices and it would be very convenient to use it for these personal purposes, I just want to make an informed decision before I do this.

Thanks!

[sniffs]

1. No, I dont believe so. It could be possible though.. I've just never checked.

2. Websites visited by the device, no matter if visited by the "Internet Service" or MEdia Net will be logged. It's saved in your browser history which is viewable by the logs on the BES.

3. Refer to # 2.

MDS isn't necessarily a proxy.. It's more like a highly encrypted AES VPN tunnel between the device and the BES. Even using that other internet service to go around this, all the stuff is logged on the device and its accessible by the BES.

[melskys]

1. No, I dont believe so. It could be possible though.. I've just never checked.

2. Websites visited by the device, no matter if visited by the "Internet Service" or MEdia Net will be logged. It's saved in your browser history which is viewable by the logs on the BES.

3. Refer to # 2.

MDS isn't necessarily a proxy.. It's more like a highly encrypted AES VPN tunnel between the device and the BES. Even using that other internet service to go around this, all the stuff is logged on the device and its accessible by the BES.

Thanks for the answers.. from them I'm not thinking that using an AIM client to send instant messages would be logged on the device or by anything on the BES.

[sniffs]

I'm pretty sure all IM programs are logged.

I cant verify right now, as it takes a little too long to turn my laptop on, connect to the VPN and connect to the BES just to check.

Once I'm in my office tomorrow, I'll check it out and post for sure whether they are logged or not.

[wolfiea]

I'm pretty sure all IM programs are logged.

I cant verify right now, as it takes a little too long to turn my laptop on, connect to the VPN and connect to the BES just to check.

Once I'm in my office tomorrow, I'll check it out and post for sure whether they are logged or not.

were you able to check on this?

[Exiled Bulldawg]

I'm a bes admin.. I can see your visited IE urls, your SMS texts, dunno about bis emails, never tried.. cant view bb messenger.. I can view your mms and all calls placed.

and yes, in the new service pack on the bes, it can track your location's long/lat and put it on the sqldb..

I wonder if BIS has the same capabilities? I actually carry a separate BIS Blackberry for that reason.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[sniffs]

I dont see anywhere in the BES config where to log IM's.. nor do I see the files in the log folder.

I believe the only real IM can be logged is the BB Messenger.. the rest aren't.

Although I see policies to disable logging of IM logs on the device itself, nothing that would indicate the logging is on the BES though.

This doesn't mean they aren't logged somewhere.. just that I dont see any options for it on the BES itself.

[Radius]

I'm guilty of snooping through everything I can, but I never share the info. It's a good way to see how people think and what frame of mind they are in at any given time.

But bottom line, most things you do are tracked and logged these days. All credit purchases, all internet traffic is logged all over the place, even these so called encrypted IM programs are logged and can be decrypted. Time to give up any notion of privacy.