I have never accepted a cellphone from any employer I’ve ever had. But if you have, there’s a growing danger I want you to know about!
Many workplaces have BYOD policies. They’ll pay for your cellphone service, but you bring your own device.
Your boss and the data-wiping epidemic!
Here’s something I didn’t anticipate: The Wall Street Journal reports more and more employers who run enterprise software on your phone — maybe something like Outlook email — are contracting with software services that can go in remotely and wipe your phone if you’re fired!
That’s a 100% clean erase of every last photo of your spouse, or child, or pictures of a trip you took. It’s all gone.
I believe this kind of taking by an employer borders on the illegal. Remember, they’re only paying the bill, you paid for the device. Your pics are your pics. Your apps are your apps.
Many of these security wipes happen if there’s a problem with the internal security that pops up at an employer. Then they’ll go in and automatically wipe out everybody’s device.
So what can you do about it? You need to back up your stuff. If you’re an Apple person, you back up through the iCloud. With Android, y0u can use Google Plus, DropBox, or Box, or any of a number of other free cloud storage services where you can store the things that matter to you.
If you’re an Android person, make sure you back up all your apps and contacts with Google. Because you don’t want to have to recreate that stuff in the event your phone does get wiped out!
And employers, you need to find a better way to do this, because what many of you are doing is flat-out wrong!
ARTICLE: How to wipe your phone clean before selling it
