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Worker Fired For Disabling GPS App That Tracked Her 24 Hours a Day
An anonymous reader writes: Myrna Arias claims she was fired for refusing to run an app that would track her location even when she was off the clock. She is now suing Intermex Wire Transfer LLC in a Kern County Superior Court. Her claim reads in part: "After researching the app and speaking with a trainer from Xora, Plaintiff and her co-workers asked whether Intermex would be monitoring their movements while off duty. Stubits admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she installed the app on her phone. Plaintiff expressed that she had no problem with the app's GPS function during work hours, but she objected to the monitoring of her location during non-work hours and complained to Stubits that this was an invasion of her privacy. She likened the app to a prisoner's ankle bracelet and informed Stubits that his actions were illegal. Stubits replied that she should tolerate the illegal intrusion...."
Privacy. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The solution: leave the phone at work when you are off duty.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
You're a slave, and if you're lucky, and behave, your servitude will have some modicum of treatment that is necessary to keep you fit for employment.
Welcome to the new future. Same as the old past.
So, what is good about all these chains anyway?
GPS trackers are being used ubiquitously nowadays. I do not have any problems with them, although I do not have any. They are being used for controlling people who drive for a living.
But, using them to track people off duty is a completely ludicrous. It should be banned. In Portugal, I know, the Personal Data Protection Law strictly forbids it. IMHO, the US could learn a lot from certain European laws.
They should be allowed to know where their property is. She has no case.
This may well be sarcastic, but they do know where their property is. It's with the employee. They have no reason to care where the phone is spatially since they aren't going to physically access the phone. The reason for the app wasn't to track the phone, but to track the employee attached to the phone.
I'd hand it to my boss every day at the end of the day as I walked out the door, and pick it back up when I got in the next morning.
Companies need to learn that slavery works totally different in 20th century:
The company should have offered her 5% less salary on the job offer and then ask if she wants to join a "voluntary data collection study" that measures employee driving behavior off-duty compared to work tasks. She could win by being part of the study a maximum of 7% on top of her salary. On top she should be proud of being part of this circle of privileged employees that push the boundaries of making work a better place. And all she had to do is install an app on her phone that collects data. During her anniversary review she would receive a 5% as part of being in the study, by just missing by few points the bracket for 7%.... but she can do better next year...
I hope one would see the sarcasm in the previous statement...
It was a company issued phone. So I see no problem in it.
If it was her own device then I would not install it. But a company device. Then she can just turn it off when she is off the clock. And then get her own phone.
Is the app installed on her personal device, or was it installed on the company's personal device? Her personal device should be her personal business, broadly speaking. Her company's personal device is their business.
Finding God in a Dog
The plaintiff was working two jobs during this time (she wanted to attain health insurance at the earlier place) and the defendants maliciously called the other employer apparently within a week of when she would have gotten her health insurance benefit and got her fired there.
It's one thing to fire an employee, you can always find some fig leaf pretext to cover your ass. But using private information that you got from the employee and going out of your way to contact another employer and cause harm to the ex-employee? There's no legitimate cause for that. That's demonstrates that it wasn't just a bad employee.
Even if that is the case, that is not what they were using the functionality for.
From the article:
"Management never made mention of mileage. They would tell her co-workers and her of their driving speed, roads taken, and time spent at customer locations. Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time." (emphasis mine)
They were not using the GPS functionality to track the phone. They were using it to track employees both on and off-work.
This is creepy as heck. IMHO, there should be criminal laws against this sort of behavior. This should be a criminal case her manager, not a civil one against the company.
Apparently you have never worked in a job where you are on call 24/7 even when you only work in the office 9-5. I am a Sr. Systems Engineer, but when things go really bad somewhere, I am supposed to be reachable at all times except when I specifically am "on vacation". Fortunately, I get to use my own phone with no obnoxious company software on it.
Nevermore.
Her employer required her to use the company issued phone, and to have it on 24/7 (from the lawsuit).
Your "solution" would result in the exact same thing hers did: termination.
If the allegations are true, it sounds like both her manager and CEO were douchebags. And stupid ones at that.
She probably lied about it.
That's no justification for the employer's action. If your employee doesn't behave properly, you talk with them, maybe put them on performance plan, or maybe terminate their employment.
To talk with another employer to get her fired there is pretty unethical and evidence of douchebaggery.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
once you did that, it's not your phone and your life any more.
they want crap apps on a phone, they have to provide the phone. otherwise, you are chattel, like cattle, only not in demand at the supermarket.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
but it was never hers. It was company provided!
First, read TFA. It's short. Then you won't look like a moron. You'll see things like the first paragraph:
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone - an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You'll also find bits like this:
The app had a "clock in/out" feature which did not stop GPS monitoring, that function remained on. This is the problem about which Ms. Arias complained.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
One thing she could have done - turn call forwarding to a private phone on, so that the 24/7 condition is met, and then... sky's the limit.
Get a friendly taxi driver to take the phone for the night.
Put it on an RC plane and take it for a trip over the city center.
Put it in a box and attach with a magnet to your boss' car.
Borrow it for a friend who does car races (preferably illegal) to take it for a 200MPH ride.
Root the phone, get a GPS spoofing app and "send it to Antarctica".
Or just leave it in a desk drawer at work...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
but it was never hers. It was company provided!
So why didn't she just use a different phone while off duty?
>It's a company issued phone
No. It was her phone. Read the complaint.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
This is only an issue if the following criteria are met 1) she was required to have phone on her 24/7 2) she was not advised the tracking would happen and be monitored in her contract If not both of those, then it's a non issue as she could have left her cell phone home, and she was aware what she was getting into- and getting paid mighty fine for it. A company has a right to track the location of its equipment at all times. It's their equipment.
Imagine the fun you could have with a fake a GPS signal - When your employer asks why you fly to the north pole every night at 3000mph you can tell him you're moonlighting for Santa.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
That's a great plan. Then she could instead be fired for not taking calls from customers 24/7 on the phone in the tin box instead. Brilliant!
She should have bought her own phone for after hours and left the work phone at home. No employer can force you to carry their phone when you are not working.
Like it or not, a lot of nasty employment conditions are technically legal or hard to prove. Really the best thing is to publicize what is happening on glassdoor and similar sites. It's not going to immediately stop entry level employees, who have few better choices, from applying. But confirmed bad practices will deny the perpetrator ability to recruit top talent for positions that have the most impact on the company's future.
As of now, Intermex is described as nice working environment on Glassdoor. If I was considering an offer and read about 24/7 GPS tracking in page after page of reviews, I certainly would not join.
TFA says that, but I didn't see anything in the primary source (the formal legal paperwork) to support it.
The relevant phrasing direct from the complaint says things like:
In April 2014, Intermex asked Plaintiff and other employees to download an application ("app") called Xora to their smart phones.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Maybe in some socialist hellhole they can't. But in the Land of the Free, you'll do what ever your masters tell you to, or live the rest of your life on the streets.
Maybe "living off the land" should become an official school subject? It's not like the situation is going to improve.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They basically lied to her about the function of the app by not telling her that they would be tracking her every move 24/7. When she discovered she was being tracked all the time and her creepy boss was making creepy stalker-like comments about her, she complained, then removed the app. The company would be very smart to settle out of court.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Read the first sentence of the article
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Yes. I read that afterwords. It seems to contradict the text of the legal complaint. My experience of journalists biases me to the legal complaint as probably being closer to the truth. But it's a clear contradiction between the two texts.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Don't you mean, "She should have left the work phone at the office"?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Some employers can require on call engineers. The question comes down to salaried or hourly. If salaried and mandentory on call, then the alternate solution is to leave the phone at work for privacy reasons and auto forward to your Google Voice number. My GV account can ring up to 3 phones at once. This can include a landline, cell, and google talk. A VOIP line with some providers can allow multi presence. This includes a VOIP phone at home, a VOIP app on a tablet, etc. I can be reashed, but I don't have to give out my personal cell number to be reached.
My GV piints to a free IP Kall number, which goes to a free VOIP account on IPPI, which has free voicemail, free missed call notifications by email, and multi presence up to 3 phones. Solves my after hours contact number while exiting employer tracking. I can call in using Goolge Voice. I can be home, at a club, or in Disnyland and the origin does not show up, only the GV number.
The truth shall set you free!
This is all irrelevant. She consented to have the app running as a condition of her employment, and she removed it, and got fired. This is a simple cut and dried case.
There is an area of law that states that contracts are only enforceable if they are legal and at least somewhat fair - there are things that simply cannot be signed away, as well as those that are considered unconscionable additions that have higher scrutiny by the law in order for you to do so. For example, while it is totally legal to give up your children to another (adoption, etc.), it would never be considered legally binding if a work contract had a clause in it requiring you to. Likewise a clause requiring you to perform fellatio might be upheld in a contract for a porn star - it's part of the main focus of the job - but would never be considered a valid clause for pretty much any other job out there.
If racism is the factor cited by blacks as the reason that they cannot get ahead, live in urban wastelands, etc. then it stands to reason that fresh-of-the-boat blacks from Africa would face the same racism. And so it should be similarly impossible for African blacks in America to succeed as it is for African-Americans to succeed.
Since that does not appear to be the case, perhaps the "black culture" is to blame and not racism.
Don't agree with everything, but Daniel Quinn's essay on education is a must read.
http://ishmael.org/Education/W...
Some excerpts...
"Of course, then, as now, everyone knew that the citizen's education was doing no such thing. It was perceived then--as now--that there was something strangely wrong with the schools. They were failing--and failing miserably--at delivering on these enticing promises. Ah well, teachers weren't being paid enough, so what could you expect? We raised teachers' salaries--again and again and again--and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The schools were physically decrepit, lightless, and uninspiring. We built new ones--tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them--and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The curriculum was antiquated and irrelevant. We modernized the curriculum, did our damnedest to make it relevant--and still the schools failed. Every week--then as now--you could read about some bright new idea that would surely "fix" whatever was wrong with our schools: the open classroom, team teaching, back to basics, more homework, less homework, no homework--I couldn't begin to enumerate them all. Hundreds of these bright ideas were implemented--thousands of them were implemented--and still the schools failed.
"During the Great Depression it became urgently important to keep young people off the job market for as long as possible, and so it came to be understood that a twelfth-grade education was essential for every citizen. As before, it didn't much matter what was added to fill up the time, so long as it was marginally plausible. Let's have them learn how to analyze a poem, even if they never read another one in their whole adult life. Let's have them read a great classic novel, even if they never read another one in their whole adult life. Let's have them study world history, even if it all just goes in one ear and out the other. Let's have them study Euclidean geometry, even if two years later they couldn't prove a single theorem to save their lives. All these things and many, many more were of course justified on the basis that they would contribute to the success and rich fulfilment that these children would experience as adults. Except, of course, that it didn't. But no one wanted to know about that. No one would have dreamed of testing young people five years after graduation to find out how much of it they'd retained. No one would have dreamed of asking them how useful it had been to them in realistic terms or how much it had contributed to their success and fulfilment as humans. What would be the point of asking them to evaluate their education? What did they know about it, after all? They were just high-school graduates, not professional educators.
"At the end of the Second World War, no one knew what the economic future was going to be like. With the disappearance of the war industries, would the country fall back into the pre-war depression slump? The word began to go out that the citizen's education should really include four years of college. Everyone should go to college. As the economy continued to grow, however, this injunction began to be softened. Four years of college would sure be good for you, but it wasn't part of the citizen's education, which ultimately remained a twelfth-grade education.
"And it should be noted that our high-school graduates are reliably entry-level workers. We want them to have to grab the lowest rung on the ladder. What sense would it make to give them skills that would make it possible for them to grab the second rung or the third rung? Those are the rungs their older brothers and sisters are reaching for. And if this year's graduates were reaching for the second or third rungs, who would be doing the work at the bottom? The business people who do the hiring constantly complain that graduates know absolutely nothing, have virtually no useful skills at all. But in truth how could it be otherwise