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AOL Selling AIM Gateway/Listener To Employers
PizzaFace writes "After pushing free instant messaging to more than 100,000,000 users, AOL is now selling AIM-monitoring software to businesses that want to monitor and control the messaging of their employees. AIM Enterprise Gateway will reportedly sell for about $35/employee/year."
Because you can encrypt your messages.
It's a big deal because it's brilliant! It's a fantastic business plan and a wonderful idea. Get everyone to use your program such that it becomes a scourge, and make people pay to get rid of it. I love it.
They even made it so that they could be the only ones to kill it.
Brilliant! It makes me laugh out loud, what a wonderful move this is for AOL!
Employees should have no expectation of privacy for any information placed into the business equipment of the Company/government... This policy shall serve as notice to any and all that Company/government equipment may be monitored without further notice.
There is plenty of other text that details this, but that's the meat of it. Companies have a right to monitor any traffic to protect their interests. If you don't want your AOL messages watched, find a company that supports employee privacy on company equipment over covering its own ass. Good luck, because I've never heard of one.
I think it's kind of shady on AOL's part to suddenly roll over on its user base. However, there are a lot companies that don't allow IM because it's more difficult to keep an eye on than email. AOL may benefit from more acceptance as a result of this move.
The companies can still get around this, don't assume that they are that inept and encryption will protect you. One thing they can do is install and hide key logging software, software that takes screen shots of what you are writing, etc.
This sort of argument always goads me and I'll tell you why.
I was surfing around on my home PC last week and found an interesting application that could save me some time at work. I downloaded it, put it on a floppy disk, took it to work next day, installed it and saved myself 20 minutes work for the week. This was on my time; I would never have been surfing at work to find it. I have saved my boss two days work this year, and next year, the year after and so on.
Should I charge my boss for this? It doesn't really seem worth to me. It only took me a minute.
Should I complain that my work life is interfering with my home life because I sometimes think about the job even when I'm not there? I think he might laugh at me. This is the year 2002 and the boundaries, rightly or wrongly, between home and work are close.
If a company cannot trust its staff to make the odd instant message or personnel phone call then they probably are doomed. If they have the money to spend spying on staff like this then there is something terribly wrong with their attitude and I wouldn't want to work for them. If someone in the company is not pulling their weight because they are chatting all day then it will show - you don't need spying software for this.
It's about a bit of give and take. Not spying on conversations with the missus.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
How is allowing someone else to monitor my communications more secure?
Just keep in mind who the customer is. In the mass market, the customer is rarely the user.
Nope, no sig