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blutbad_buddy OP t1_j1sshya wrote

State employee cell phones.

It's just one little word and makes all the difference.

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inelasticplastick t1_j1wvrf9 wrote

the ban is on only those cell phones which are owned/managed by the state, right?

or is the ban on all cell phones state employees operate?

edit: attempting to be clearer

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purplemusicianz t1_j1sx19e wrote

I mean as a zoomer this seems like it should be obvious. All social media should be banned from state and government cell phones. There’s no reason to have any social site on there

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_j1tywfi wrote

I’m not sure about that. There is absolutely no reason for TikTok or any personal social media but the state uses other social media as a way to disseminate information.

There are some legitimate uses for work related social media on a state device. The Department of Labor posts closings and careers on Facebook. AOT links to road conditions, Fish and Wildlife posts information as well. I’m not sure any of them use TokTok though.

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AllThisFakeFruit t1_j1tzmz7 wrote

Seriously this, so many people like to forget that government services use social media to inform people. I honestly would love to hear there solution to what would replace town social media accounts.

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gooker10 t1_j1uej2r wrote

official accounts like VT trans and their twitter updates sure, but not every employee.

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ManOfDrinks t1_j1udrvm wrote

Nobody is talking about axing existing social media accounts used in an official capacity. This is about state employees using their state issued mobile phone to install TikTok for personal use.

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AllThisFakeFruit t1_j1ueh5e wrote

Nobody Except the person above and a lot of other people when this subject of banning apps is brought up. Dude literally says "All social media should be banned from state and government cell phones. There’s no reason to have any social site on there."

I also agree that you shouldn't use personal social media on your work phone, but the above sentiment is beyond dumb.

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_j1ufolq wrote

Yeah, my general thought is this will end up as a knee jerk reaction which end up in bad policy because people don't think through an issue before they react.

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RetiscentSun t1_j1ubd1e wrote

So you could have a policy that says no social media apps on the phone unless necessary for job duties. Simple enough?

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seijio t1_j1udu7i wrote

Simple and makes sense. This guarantees it will not be implemented in State Government.

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inelasticplastick t1_j1wwhem wrote

pretty simple concept. i like it.

the grey would remain in the “necessary for job duties”

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[deleted] t1_j1vlxgq wrote

[deleted]

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mamamouse492 t1_j1xkgkb wrote

This is incorrect. Instagram stories and reels (the only Instagram features that actually reach anyone now with their current algorithm) cannot be created and posted from desktop.

Also, when you know 99% or your end users will be on mobile, you should always check what your work looks like on mobile, even when you can post from desktop.

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TheTowerBard t1_j200m7n wrote

As someone who manages socials for corpos I have to completely disagree with you. Some platforms absolutely force you to use the app either by making you finish setting up your account in one, or by making their web app so broken/annoying you have to use the app for your own sanity. Also, like others have mentioned, you want to see what your users are seeing.

I am one of two people in my company that has access to our social media accounts. The other person is in marketing and uses the platforms for ad management. Our company pays for our personal cell phones because of this.

We also want to be on every platform, and we always want to test out new platforms, because we want as many people to see our messaging as possible. The same goes for whatever the state is trying to communicate.

This all being said, the state can absolutely provide secure phones that allow socials to the folks who might need to be able to access them. And only allow it for those specific folks. They can also provide them a second phone for all other work related needs.

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justasmalltowngirl89 t1_j1weyt3 wrote

I'm a millennial and was briefly a VT state employee. It never occurred to me to download any apps to my work phone that were not tied in with my work. Which basically meant to apps. That's not the intended purpose. I never even used my work laptop to log into social media accounts because it's a state device. Truly baffling to me that any state employee could go through all the required training and then download apps onto state devices for personal purposes.

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inelasticplastick t1_j1wwxcn wrote

ive observed that

the employees who are older are much better at listening, following directions accurately, asking necessarily follow-up questions, and keeping common sense in play when making decisions.

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mamamouse492 t1_j1xkrhn wrote

That's interesting because at my workplace, employees over 40ish tend to use their work issued cell phone as their only phone. including all their personal contacts, email, photos, social media, etc.

And almost all employees under 40 have 2 separate devices, one personal and one work.

I don't work for the state though.

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gooker10 t1_j1ueg57 wrote

how is it not already banned on state employee cell phones.

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d-cent t1_j1vfefr wrote

Right? What's to consider? Just do it

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inelasticplastick t1_j1ww7ab wrote

well i would wager a guess that there is a process involved for banning an app

the alternative would be to only allow a whitelist of approved apps

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Twombls t1_j1svdm1 wrote

Does anyone other than boomers actually use company phones for personal reasons like tiktok and stuff though?

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Hell_Camino t1_j1u8fzd wrote

The gray area is when companies or governments say to the employees, “Use your personal phone for work and we will simply reimburse you $XX per month”. Can those people have TikTok and other social media apps on their phones? If the answer is no then a lot of employees will likely say they want a work-specific phone (along with their separate personal phone). Then employers are going to have to purchase a lot of new phones which is more expensive and more work for people who purchase, disseminate, inventory, and repair/replace all of those phones. So, banning TikTok and social media from employee phones is a significant decision.

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cpujockey t1_j1uaukz wrote

> TikTok and social media from employee phones is a significant decision.

Honestly - it's not a bad decision.

There are quite a few discussions on r/sysadmin about using OTP apps on personal devices. While I think that's a non-issue, I am starting to think we should all have a separate device for work.

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Hell_Camino t1_j1uaynd wrote

It’s just the hassle factor of having two phones

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cpujockey t1_j1ud9yk wrote

the other factor is having an IT admin struggling to apply company policy over MDM to BYOD devices and users freaking out that even if the policy is not enabled to wipe their device that it still gives warnings that it could.

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gooker10 t1_j1uencz wrote

division of church and state, I have both an ATT personal and a Work VZ, it keeps them separated, ones is a 12 pro other is a iphone 8

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Hell_Camino t1_j1ues6g wrote

Yeh, my sister goes that route too. It’s just annoying to have to manage multiple phones.

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gooker10 t1_j1uj4xv wrote

right but your already managing 2 emails accounts, passwords, ID badges, vehicles, etc,. it's nice to have a back up phone that works but you never look at on the weekends

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d-cent t1_j1vgqve wrote

I'm not sure why the downvotes. It is a huge hassle. Making sure 2 phones are charged at all times. It's nearly impossible to keep them in the same pocket so you have to get a belt holster.

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_j1w5fz1 wrote

I have a work and personal cell. No company business on the personal, no personal on the company. It’s a pain in the ass but also much better then not having a work life separation.

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thqks t1_j1vt5yt wrote

Imo, that would be worse than dealing with an authentication app. Hell, I'd even delete Tiktok from my phone before I had to give up my phone reimbursement.

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cpujockey t1_j1vu1rk wrote

well /r/sysadmin get's pretty spicy when you ask users to install an authenticator app on their phones. Like I get it - it's your device, but to me it's no different than putting a key on your keychain.

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_j21o5ej wrote

I’ve asked employee to do this. I have also has them say no. Not much you can do. It is not really a key as a key is a physical device and I know exactly what it does, an authentication app comes with a TOS written by a lawyer in 3 point font that may or may not commit you to giving away your 7th child. Nobody knows because nobody has ever read one all the way through

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rockstang t1_j1ucawk wrote

Forget the inherent risk of data collection, I don't want ANY personal social media on state funded cell phones.

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inelasticplastick t1_j1wx6iu wrote

that would be a major impedement to some core job duties and an impediment to perhaps a surprisingly high number of operations which employees of the state are expected to complete

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TheTowerBard t1_j201jod wrote

That's just completely unrealistic and incredibly short sighted. Lots of towns, state departments, transportation depts, etc, use socials for messaging. There is no better way to reach that many people.

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headgasketidiot t1_j1uaapq wrote

I've seen several government bans of TikTok, but I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish. I see TikTok trackers all over the web. Are they banning just the TikTok app? Are they also banning any app that loads TikTok trackers? Are they going to blacklist every website that loads a TikTok tracker?

For example, Ally bank had a TikTok tracker on its website's account page and presumably its app for months if not years, though it seems to be gone now. Would the Ally Bank app have been banned too? How are users to know if their app has a TikTok tracker? Is the state going to provide a whitelist of apps and websites that they've audited where there is no TikTok tracker?

Maybe this is a bad way to build the web.

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gooker10 t1_j1uet4w wrote

pretty sure it is for the data, tracking, send back to the bytedance parent company, think like Meta has data from FB and insta and created a profile they can package and sell to the highest bidders for those users, and geo locations

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headgasketidiot t1_j1ufgn3 wrote

I guess I should've said that I know what they're trying to accomplish, but I don't understand why they think this will accomplish it.

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blutbad_buddy OP t1_j1up9us wrote

Why the hell does a bank need a TikTok traker?!

Are there people uploading sexy or funny posts about their account?

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headgasketidiot t1_j1urx1x wrote

Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the content of either. It's purely a deal to create a more complete user profile to sell to data brokers for advertising data. Businesses view it as an "additional revenue stream" when they build an app. If you google "how to monetize app engagement," you'll find a million articles like this one https://www.forbes.com/sites/peggyannesalz/2019/01/14/3-ways-to-make-money-from-app-engagement/?sh=d50442dadc7b

>App companies that have the inside track on data around user activity in and with their apps are sitting on a goldmine. This is because they are the sole owners of valuable first-party data, data that is owned, unique, accurate and—above all—current. Easy to understand why first-party data that is becoming what Maribel Adams, Head of Digital at MediaMax, over in her blog at Street Fight calls “the core ingredient to driving customer acquisition and retention.”

This is a completely normal practice. I don't even mean to call out Ally Bank in particular. This is just how the web works. I recently wrote a whole blog post titled Any App That Could Just Be A Website Only Exists To Track You on just this phenomenon, and it's part of a series I'm writing on the "attention economy." The first part talks about TikTok, too.

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blutbad_buddy OP t1_j1ut4pg wrote

> Any App That Could Just Be A Website Only Exists To Track You

This is why I don't have a cell phone anymore. My SO uses a flip phone that cant run apps and doesn't even have gps. Monetizing my data points and trashing my privacy is a real fucked up thing to do to me as a customer and I do everything I can to make it a pain in the ass to do to me while also giving them the smallest number of data points possible. But on a supposedly secure banking app?! What the actual fuck?!!!

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headgasketidiot t1_j1uxz57 wrote

That's pretty awesome. I consider giving up my phone every now and then, but I am too weak. Props to you for actually doing it.

>But on a supposedly secure banking app?! What the actual fuck?!!!

Yeah, it's a pretty normal practice, unfortunately. There's trackers on all sorts of shit you'd think is private. I even found one on a major pharmacy brand's COVID test appointment scheduling and results page a while back that was leaking patient data and made national news. It's just depressingly normalized.

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inelasticplastick t1_j1wxcfn wrote

my understanding is that TikTok specifically is an emergent critical security concern

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thqks t1_j1vtzbe wrote

I'm surprised you can even download apps. I can't install anything on my work laptop, so shouldn't state-owned phones be the same?

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_j21o9yp wrote

Mobile device security is much different than your standards domain security to implement.

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Howard_Scott_Warshaw t1_j1x5j91 wrote

A CCP controlled indoctrination app that actively harvests user data?

An app that shows Chinese users lessons of math, science, technology, etc but shows US users people who eat laundry detergent and stack milk crates!?

Naahhhhh. Let it ride. No issue here. In fact, lets make it a law we all have to use Huawei phones!

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