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Businesses Privacy

Wells Fargo Tells Employees: Delete TikTok from Company Phones (engadget.com) 95

Posted by EditorDavid from the time's-up dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Wells Fargo does not want TikTok on its employees' phones. According to The Information, the financial institution sent its employees a note, telling them to remove the app from corporate devices immediately...

A Wells Fargo spokesperson confirmed the company's move to The Information, explaining that it came to the decision due to concerns about TikTok's privacy practices:

"We have identified a small number of Wells Fargo employees with corporate-owned devices who had installed the TikTok application on their device. Due to concerns about TikTok's privacy and security controls and practices, and because corporate-owned devices should be used for company business only, we have directed those employees to remove the app from their devices."
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Wells Fargo Tells Employees: Delete TikTok from Company Phones More

Wells Fargo Tells Employees: Delete TikTok from Company Phones

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  • Corporate owned devices (Score:4, Insightful)

    by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @08:37AM (#60289328)

    As long as you keep your spyware and MDM profiles off my personal device, this is fine. Provide a device, and you can have it with dancing hula penguins for all I care.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      That's a perfectly reasonable position, but it's not for me. If you want the work phone to be 100% work only that's fine if I am free to leave the phone on my desk when I go home at the end of the day OR I'm being compensated for having to carry a corporate device with no benefit to me around outside work hours.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        The phone came with your promotion/hiring and it's a job requirement you agreed to when you accepted the job/promotion. Refuse the phone, refuse the job/promotion - been this way for decades in corporate America.

        I've carried a pager, cellphone, and/or laptop for work, and I was specifically compensated with paid time off or a cash stipend. This battle was fought and won in the 1990s.

        I think corporate phone in this story means a phone the bank reimburses employees for, not one bought and actively managed by

  • Why are they not restricted at the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ELCouz ( 1338259 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @08:38AM (#60289338)
    Any corporate phone should also be possible to be remotely managed.

    • Re:Why are they not restricted at the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @09:22AM (#60289486)

      Any corporate phone should also be possible to be remotely managed.

      While I'd disagree with "any corporate", I'd certainly agree that Wells Fargo, a massive financial/banking institution should. They've got the scale/budget and the sensitive data. I've had small-business customers provide cell phones for field workers / construction foremen who basically just need to use them like walkie-talkies, and MDM isn't really justifiable at that scale. No sensitive customer information, and no need for the expense. But... banking?!?

      This is almost as shocking as if we found out the President could dictate firewall exceptions at the Whitehouse. "But I need this range forwarded to my laptop so my Bittorrent downloads go faster. The connectability test page said so and it can't be wrong."

      • I know your not torrent comment was a joke but that is exactly what happened with Trump and his Twitter phone, it happened with Obama and Hillary, it is why Hillary and many other politicians ran their own email servers etc.

        They all think they are above common sense and legal requirements.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SkonkersBeDonkers ( 6780818 )

        You're correct, the big news here should be how does Wells Fargo have corporate devices where people were able to install it in the first place?

        BTW, a rando AC tried to suggest iPhones, don't be a troll, iPhones are absolutely just as manageable through MDM as Android.

        • That doesn't surprise me as I would imagine higher level management who has the least technological expertise would want to install anything as if the device was their personal phone. Then middle management would also want the same privileges.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Posting anon because a WF employee, but in fact, all the corporate apps run in a secure container and there is also a whitelist (they do allow stuff like ESPN app, etc... things which are super-common and don't exfiltrate data) for what you're allowed to install on the phone.

            The whitelist for the non-container'ed apps only gets checked once a day or when you try and run the container, though, so if you manage to install something non-approved, you just get an email saying to remove it and that you can't use

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          I think corporate phone means a phone the bank reimburses employees for, not one bought and actively managed by the bank.

    • Corporate devices usually have MDM and can be remotely manged and even wiped. I've been waiting for a high profile report of a disgruntled IT person wiping all devices on the way out. Where I work its mostly BYOD but we still have some MDM control, I can at least wipe corporate data and apps - in some cases everything. I'm sure some of my coworker do not backup their devices and I could really ruin their day.

    • Any corporate phone should also be possible to be remotely managed.

      Plenty of phones also come with work/private profiles which are sandboxed from each other. The presence of TikTok shouldn't be a security risk to a company depending on which phone it's on. You either ban the app on all devices personal and company, or you don't have to do it on either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebonum ( 830686 )

      Any company that gives out a device that isn't locked down deserves what comes next.

  • News 4 hours into the future (Score:3)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @08:49AM (#60289358)

    Wells Fargo rescinded their demand to remove Tik Tok from company phones as that email was put out in error.

    Just like Amazon did the other day.

    Curiouser and curiouser

    • Not very curious, if you want to participate in the Chinese market, you will follow the dictates of the Chinese government. TikTok is a surveillance platform, your employees need state surveillance in China, same as if you cross the border in China, you can be asked to install spyware or else you will either be ejected or disappear.

      Many companies now give out burners to travel to China.

      • Many companies now give out burners to travel to China.

        What do you mean? Butane or propane?

        • A burner phone is a phone that's for temporary use that can be easily destroyed or disposed of, often used by people in high-risk professions, sometimes criminal. If you ever see someone in a college or university using a really shit phone that probably cost half a day's wages at best, odds are good he's a drug dealer.

          • Sorry, but that's your projection, or possibly your local environment. Many people just don't see any reason to spend much money on a phone. My sister, e.g., keeps losing them, so why not just get a cheap one.

            • She keeps losing them, or so she says. Are you sure she's not selling drugs?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by HiThere ( 15173 )

                Ok. Projection.

                Yes, I'm quite certain. And the strange thing would be if she didn't lose them, because she tends to lose things. I'm carrying a spare house key for her so that she won't get locked out. Not everyone is well organized in their personal space. (She was quite organized in her professional space, before she retired. But her personal space is even more of a disaster than mine. OTOH, my professional space was relatively a disaster. Fortunately ability with computers saved me.)

            • Agree. I keep a phone forever until I get another one, so I'm carrying around a (now) cheap "burner-quality" phone. The only drugs I buy are at the pharmacy.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kenh ( 9056 )

            Or poor, or thrifty... there are entire groups of people who do not believe you need to spend a weeks salary on a cellphone, and reject the notion that their worth/self-esteem can be measured by the cost of their cellphone.

        • Nah, Samsung with a bad battery

      • Yeah, just like if you want to "participate" with your cellphone anywhere else in the world, you need to follow the dictates of Google and Apple and use their own surveillance platforms.

    • Amazon was saying it about personal phones, Fargo is saying it about company phones, company property.

      • Correction: Amazon was saying it about personal phones that connected to company email and systems.
      • Amazon can suck a fat one. No employer is going to tell me what to do with my personal device. If you want remote wipe remote admin and dictating what apps can be installed on my personal device, then work won't be performed on said personal device and you can provide me a work phone at company expense. This happened at the company I work for now where they were going to enable remote wipe/admin though outlook. Pretty much everyone in the company promptly uninstalled outlook/teams from their phone. Company
        • Should also add, that to this day outlook/teams has not been reinstalled on my phone. I access the web versions instead now.

    • Not really. TikTok sent out the email by having one of the phones with TikTok installed send it.

  • This applies to corporate phones, i.e. ones that are provided by Wells Fargo. They provide the phone, so they can decide what's on it. Doesn't matter if it's TikTok, Candy Crush, or Sketchbook.

  • Is that why don't phones have multi profiles, /users so that one can br managed, and the other run for personal use with limited or no app cross over.

    That way when you leave a company they can hit a few buttons and wipe the company data from the device. But leave your personal stuff alone.

    It is like windows 3.1 where the concept of mutli users is rare.

    • no, if employer bought the phone they can have whatever rules they want and it's their device. At best "Personal stuff" doesn't matter and should be put on a personal device.

    • Who would that benefit?

      It would increase prices with benefit only to a small number of end users who didn't pay for the phones anyway and reduces the total number of hardware sales.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      That way when you leave a company

      I was under the impression that this applies to company phones. So when you leave the company, you turn in your badge and company phone to security.

  • ... and what about all other phone "apps"? Just about every free "app" listens, steals all of your info, and sends it to some random place. Why is everybody so concerned about Tik Tok, all of a sudden?
    • TikTok is just the latest. If Wells Fargo IT is paying attention there should probably be a list of apps that are banned.

      • Re:All other "apps"? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:09PM (#60290070) Homepage Journal

        TikTok is just the latest. If Wells Fargo IT is paying attention there should probably be a list of apps that are banned.

        If they were paying attention, they wouldn't allow you to install any apps on a company-owned device, period. Requests for additional apps should always go through the IT department.

        Things get murkier when BYOD is involved, but the story is talking about company-owned devices. And BYOD should not even be a thing. If they need you to have a device, they should provide it. If a device is going to connect to their network, you should not be able to install apps on it.

        • If they were paying attention, they wouldn't allow you to install any apps on a company-owned device, period. Requests for additional apps should always go through the IT department.

          Sure, you tell to all that to upper management.

          • I'd tell 'em. And no doubt wind up looking for another job, subsequently. But I wouldn't expect upper management to follow the same rules as everyone else, because they never do.

  • Why are they asking, a corporate owned device should be able to be managed by a central corporate system, it should just be removed.

  • Company devices should have MDM (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @10:29AM (#60289706)

    And the company should remotely uninstall TikTok or forbid installation in the first place.

    Letting known spyware installed on company devices? It's a case of IT mismanagement.

    • Or you use devices with sandbox company profiles and let the user do whatever the hell you want.

      Seriously blacklisting software is a very 2003 way of managing company devices. MDM control is far more fine grained that that now if you're a company the size of Wells Fargo.

      Now security issues still exist, but to overcome them you'd also need to ban personal phones from the company.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • When asked to comment, the Wells Fargo CEO replied

    Employees were ordered to remove the app to avoid the possibility of theft from our customers because goddamn it, they are our customers and were going to be the only ones to steal from them.

  • why would tik tok be on an adults business phone at all. It is kinda like that other big tech company that adds little do dads to pictures (Snap?). Kids yes, adults I do not get it.

    But then I am not on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter either. But wait I am on social media, I did start reading Slashdot years ago. Although as I recall it was more tech back in the day. But my memory could be going ;) lol

    Just my 2 cents ;)
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  • No MDM / MAM? FAIL.

  • Surely a firm of their size should be dishing out fully locked down phones? I know mine does.
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