Privacy has been an online issue for a long time. Recently, Facebook revamped its privacy policies and Google Buzz was forced to revamp some of its policies as well. While all this goes on, there are other entities that are working towards stripping those privacies. No, this is not about the CIA, KGB, Mossad or any of those intelligence agencies. It is actually about a company called Teneros, which has released software called Social Sentry that allows employers to monitor the activity of their employees on social networks.
This app is so intrusive it can:
Inform employers when employees are on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites
Monitor social networking activity by employees regardless of the device they are using (Computer, iPods, Mobile phones, etc)
Monitor regardless of what network is being used to access the sites
Be configured with advanced rules that send out automatic alerts and notifications
Give detailed reports and statistics
Be deployed in under an hour and requires no hardware or software installation
Using this software to monitor employees’ behavior during working hours is acceptable. However, the software also allows monitoring of everything they are saying on the sites even after working hours. This amounts to an invasion of privacy. While that is the negative side, the positive side is that it allows employers to have tighter control on security especially when it comes to company news leaks.
The pros and cons of this software can be argued about for a while. But the significant fact that emerges from this is that – it is a sign of things to come.