Droid X as a Tracking Device

[woodtree60]

Hi: We just got new Droid X phones at work. We were hinted that the phones may be used to track our daily movements throughout the course of the day. I have no worries that I will be caught being at the wrong place at the wrong time etc. However, I do have a problem with an employer tracking it's employees on the sneak. Don't we have enough big brother in our lives.

 

[lordofthereef]

I don't think this is legal unless they tell you outfront...

 

[IOWA]

Hi: We just got new Droid X phones at work. We were hinted that the phones may be used to track our daily movements throughout the course of the day. I have no worries that I will be caught being at the wrong place at the wrong time etc. However, I do have a problem with an employer tracking it's employees on the sneak. Don't we have enough big brother in our lives.

Why don't you root it and find out. Or better yet, in order to have a tracking app, it would have to be rooted.

 

[rehpyc]

And even then, it'd use the GPS. If your GPS is turned off, you won't be tracked. That is, if you don't need the GPS. If you work for a courier of sorts, they may have a program installed that logs your travel, but you should then be able to find it within the list of installed applications.

Hell, if you're that worried, and you were given what was suppose to be a stock DX, just use the sbf and ensure the phone is stock :]

 

[bigbadwulff]

Complain about workers that don't do what they are supposed to and not the employers that gets dicked by these idiots...

 

[mruno]

make sure google latitude is turned off

 

[scotthanna]

It's not a phone feature. It's a Verizon feature called Field Force Manager. A manager or supervisor can see exactly where his team is and assign a task to that person...like getting him to a service call quicker. It can be a time clock, so the manager gets a report that lets them know when the employee actually showed up on the job site and when they left.

It can report speed, so a company can see how their vehicles are being driven.

Yes, it can also be used by a manager to see where his employees are wasting time at.

I have no idea why a company wouldn't share this information with their employees. It is a very effective tool to manage an outside team.

Doesn't seem big brother to me. That's the government looking into things that should be none of their business. A company getting real time information as to how their employees are using their time is totally their business.

 

[mruno]

wow I couldn't believe it until i looked it up:Field Force Manager

 

[Tesseract]

I am a consultant that employs about 10 people. We are the typical outsourced helpdesk, and the majority of our workforce spends their day in the field. We MUST trust our employees implicitly, because in their position it is very easy to deceive, and steal an hour of time from us, etc....We allow for lunch, we allow for breaks, but when you're driving between clients it's easy to take a 2 hour lunch and say that there was traffic between calls and that's why you arrived at 1:45pm instead of 1:00pm.

We recently had someone start running their own service calls between our service calls (charging one of our customers $75/hr instead of our $135/hr), and we found out that this was happening because of one of these applications (field force manager, specifically).

I too hate these kinds of spying applications, but now I have to take the position of: if you have nothing to hide, what do you care? We have been proven to need this to keep one person honest. After this example was dealt with, we haven't had any other incidents, but now we will always be suspicious. It makes me wonder if it had happened before (we've been in business for about 10 years).

 

[mruno]

So is FFM software installed on the phones? or is does it track the cell phones by IMEI and towers?

P.S. So what is your employees' salaries? Are you hiring?

 

[Tesseract]

WE pay tech support engineers 40-80k depending on experience, telecom engineers 40-70k depending on experience. New york tristate area service, office is in central long island.

 

[IOWA]

I am a consultant that employs about 10 people. We are the typical outsourced helpdesk, and the majority of our workforce spends their day in the field. We MUST trust our employees implicitly, because in their position it is very easy to deceive, and steal an hour of time from us, etc....We allow for lunch, we allow for breaks, but when you're driving between clients it's easy to take a 2 hour lunch and say that there was traffic between calls and that's why you arrived at 1:45pm instead of 1:00pm.

We recently had someone start running their own service calls between our service calls (charging one of our customers $75/hr instead of our $135/hr), and we found out that this was happening because of one of these applications (field force manager, specifically).

I too hate these kinds of spying applications, but now I have to take the position of: if you have nothing to hide, what do you care? We have been proven to need this to keep one person honest. After this example was dealt with, we haven't had any other incidents, but now we will always be suspicious. It makes me wonder if it had happened before (we've been in business for about 10 years).

Why wouldn't you just put trackers on the company vehicle and not the phone? Makes more sense to me.

 

[eraursls1984]

Why wouldn't you just put trackers on the company vehicle and not the phone? Makes more sense to me.

That would cost more money, why not use paid for company phones that already have this ability instead of buying another device. I'm not against this because its not big brother spying, you on company time and that company is watching.