With the ‘nothing really new’ side, when typewriters were replaced by the first personal computers and word processing programs there was already software to count keystrokes and so on to ‘keep the secretaries honest’ as compared to typewriter speeds. That was in the mid 1980’s. Comparing their acumen on word processors vs the typewriter was ‘all the rage’ because the PC was supposed to enable them to type faster.
The current incarnation of monitoring should surprise few except the most naive.
And it does. Typewriters were a major hassle! Of course, there was a gap between the two that was occupied by dedicated ‘word processor’ machines.
But my point was [hopefully obviously] not the advantages of word processing systems, but the monitoring of work activity that has nothing but expanded and become more sophisticated over time.
I’m not sure it has all be in a single direction. Imagine being a clerk in the 19th century, with the senior clerk looking down over a room-full of men all heads-down trying to look diligent and hard at work having brought in their own pencils and lump of coal (okay, the latter was only in winter). No talking allowed, of course.
The key question here is: Are the employees that are working from home taking a work computer home or are they using their own computer?
If the former then it’s pretty simple. The work computer can contain whatever employer-malware the employer has put there and if you want to do unmonitored activity then do it on your own computer.
If the latter then it could get thorny. Is the employer obligating you to install employer-malware on your own computer? Probably not.
Speaking for my own employer, we have encouraged employees to take their work computer home - because the work computer is already set up with all the expected software (not employer-malware), at the expected versions, with appropriate security configuration, including being able to use the company VPN for (relatively) seamless WFH.
Many employees have company-issued laptops and/or tablets so taking it home is straightforward and normal anyway.
If employees are using their own virus-ridden computers but connecting in to the company VPN then that is not ideal.
So you should be taking a work computer home and that is win-win. Win for your privacy. Win for company security.
That can happen. There are laws in place regarding that e.g. in NSW, the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005.
If email is going through the company mail server even when you are at home then you should be aware of that. There are legitimate reasons for the company to monitor such email automatically and sometimes manually (e.g. prevent outbound malware or spam). If you are really concerned about that a) you shouldn’t be sending via company mail server if it’s not company-related and b) use PGP or any equivalent tech.
From what I’ve seen, monitoring or restricting web activity is more fraught - and is often epic fail on the part of the employer e.g. blocking legitimate web sites. Again, if you are really concerned about that, you shouldn’t be surfing at work if it’s not company-related. Many employees, who are at work, can surf more-or-less privately on their phone by temporarily disabling WiFi, particularly if the phone is a personal phone. (Then it’s just the government monitoring or restricting web activity. 
)
I have been working from home on my computer. Very early on I had major concerns with the access my employer sought, and was going to return to the office - but these were fixed very quickly and my work now resides entirely within its own VM.
There is a single network connection that my employer has established on my computer, but only its VM traffic goes through there (yes, I do monitor my traffic).
Google seems to be stepping it up. Once the masses ignore the implications and ramifications and they see ‘HAL-9000’ for them to speak to where does it go then?
I played with the voice assistant on my phone once or twice, but nowadays it is disabled. There is no obvious value to me, but plenty of value to Google, in talking at my phone.
Do not, I repeat do not, go outside after installing an automated door lock, just in case the google assistant gets turned on 
An absolute shocker regarding Russian hackers accessing security cameras.
Better disable your bedroom and bathroom cameras.
I never take a camera into the bathroom. While my phone sits in the bedroom while I shower, My headphones are strategically placed to cover the camera. Cameras on laptops and tablets are typically covered with a bandaid unless in use.
Always assume that any nearby camera is ‘live’. Similarly, any nearby microphone is also ‘live’ - do not tell your partner/child/friend the password to your shared bank account in open speech.
Using the same logic I don’t use my real name on Ancestry or when researching family history.
It’s amazing just how much can be scraped. If on the side you hold a job in an organisation that has access to other personal records, EG loans specialist, accountants, public service staff, etc? I fear attacks from within more than random external acts.
The alternative would be to deny Boogle, FacePlant, Amasonic, and so many others their future business models and goals of relentless data acquisition.
P.S.
Not using your real name and identity is a long lost on-line tradition. Even government is against using fake ID’s.
Damn. I fouled up then. Can you change it later?
So whose family history did you end up researching? Do you think it was as interesting as your own would have been?
Just ask ClearView AI. Put a photo up on Facebook? They have it. Sent an Instagram out showing a family gathering? They’ve got it, and figured out who was also in that Facebook photo.
In good news Facebook, Microsoft and IBM have all announced that they are stepping back from facial recognition for the moment and in particular not sharing their tools with government (especially police forces). In bad news, while they collectively hold a bunch of data that can be used to identify individuals companies such as Clearview AI have already grabbed what they can and are actively using it.
I understand that Queensland, Victorian (I think) and Federal Police all have contracts with Clearview AI - something that should worry everyone who has attended recent protests in particular but all of us a a change in our rights as citizens to participate in democratic discourse.
Sure - but the company will always have that history. (I also messed up, but backed up before putting many connections in as I wasn’t prepared to pay or to be identified to others.)
I wonder about the European Union’s Right to be Forgotten. Is it just a surface measure, so search engines must discard results that you have asked not be shown but those results are still in a database somewhere? Given history, I do not expect any entity (private, government or individual) to simply discard data that may be of future value. Storage is cheap.
Slight amendment to that: The web site is based in Russia but they claim that they are not the ones who have discovered and/or hacked the cameras. They claim simply to be streaming a selection of insecure web cams. (In other words, if they had malicious intent, they surely wouldn’t be making it public that a web cam has been compromised.)
Either way, if you find out that your camera has been hacked, you are one of the lucky ones.
This gets back to what I wrote yesterday … there is a motherload of devices on the internet that have long ago been abandoned by the manufacturer and are no longer receiving security updates and which at no time have been secure.
I’ll assume you saw the ‘’ humour.
More practically my ‘mum’s’. Someone else, a not so close cousin had already done my dad’s. I’ve learnt more about the recent past history of several nations, and a little about the individual family members.
P.S.
One reality is many simply seem to collect massive family trees as part of a hobby. I suspect that given a few basic details it’s not that hard to join the dots. We rely on the security of Ancestry et al to not display the details of the living. It does not prevent any one not directly related adding details of non related living to their research trees. They are simply not revealed to others.
There is a far more serious side to what is held by the searchable family history data bases. I found my siblings in another’s tree, all marked as private, but colour coded for gender none the less. I believe the other tree owner is distantly connected to one of my in-laws, and is trying to collect the family history of all those who lived in a particular region of Australia. One could suggest the tree goes far beyond immediate needs.
That part is simple, verifying that you have connected the right persons and connected them correctly is the hard part. Many of the trees made public, or available to me, have manifest errors caused by jumping to conclusions and not checking the details.
“But his name is the same as my three greats grandfather!” Yup but it’s only him if he managed to impregnate your 3G grandma at age seven from across the Irish sea.
But back to privacy, I have not had any problems with data being revealed by Ancestry that they said would not be.
There seems to be a driving ambition for some to collect every single person who’s distantly related as well as more immediate family. I subbed to ancestry originally because I was looking for my biological mother. I found her in the end, and found lots of interesting stuff but its limited, somewhat, by the fact that on her side, they didn’t breed very much. I have just one cousin, there, he was an only, as was I, and the other brother didn’t have any kids at all. I did go for the DNA offer as well, and that was a screaming success for me, I found two half brothers and many cousins as well. Sadly, too late to meet either mother or father, but at least I was able to talk with people who knew them and loved them.
All I have done is follow direct lines back as far as I can. Thats been interesting, and its not all from Ancestry. Robert the Bruce is my 22nd Great Grandfather. LOL! And so it is for hundreds of other people. I can get back another 8 generations beyond that. But for lesser mortals, only a max of about 10 generations.
Same here. I dropped my subscription after a while because the errors I was getting made the whole thing a bit silly. I had taken a copy of my tree to MyHeritage at one point and it turns out that entity wants you to add every person even remotely connected. However, you can avoid that quite easily, and it does have an excellent checking system, which you can use to crosscheck: it will list all those people who were born before their parents… and so on.
I was glad to have found what I was originally looking for, though.
I’ve also been researching my adoptive family’s tree. Very disappointing and upsetting for my last remaining Aunt who is in her 90s, to find out that the first member of the family to migrate to Australia was a convict, rather than a free settler. (Plenty of evidence for that, my cousins are also a bit miffed. I think they all thought they were a bit special)
