A Surveillance Corporation Exposed: Over 21 Million Employee Screenshots Leaked Online
Rewritten Article:
Peeeping on Employees: Theit Data, Privacy, and Well-being at Risk
In the digital age, corporations are increasingly invading their employees' privacy, all under the guise of boosting productivity. But a recent screw-up by employee monitoring app WorkComposer has put the data—and faces—of thousands of employees and their parent companies in danger.
Last Thursday, researchers from Cybernews stumbled upon a whopping 21 million screenshots from WorkComposer stashed away in an exposed Amazon S3 bucket. WorkComposer, which works with over 200,000 firms globally, routinely snaps screenshots of an employee's computer every 3 to 5 minutes. Which means these leaked images might contain sensitive stuff—like confidential chats, login credentials, and even personal details that could set an employee up for identity theft, scams, and more.
The exact number of impacted companies or employees remains unknown. Yet, according to the researchers, these images offer a minute-by-minute glimpse into "how workers juggle their daily tasks." After discovering the snafu, Cybernews, who had previously exposed a similar breach by WebWork earlier this year, notified WorkComposer, and they promptly secured the information. However, WorkComposer remained deafeningly silent when Gizmodo reached out for comment.
While the images are now hidden again, the WorkComposer faux-pas serves as a grim reminder: companies shouldn't have access to such intimate details of their employees. Jose Martinez, a Senior Organizer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, weighed in on the issue, "If an employee made the kind of blunder WorkComposer did, this information may be used to terminate them. WorkComposer should be fired for this unprofessional behavior."
Apart from screenshot monitoring, WorkComposer also offers services like time tracking and web monitoring. Its website boasts a suspiciously dystopian goal: "We help people stop frittering away their lives on distractions and complete what truly matters to them instead." Ironically, a data breach like this is undoubtedly a major distraction for many people, and any monitoring is, by nature, a distraction.
Studies have shown that surveillance's harmful psychological and mental health impacts are well-documented. This doesn't vanish when third-party companies spy on employees. In 2023, the American Psychological Association reported that 56 percent of surveilled employees felt stressed at work, compared to 40 percent of their unmonitored counterparts. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen also pointed out that monitoring employees might lead to errors and force them to prioritize meaningless metrics instead of their tasks.
Workplace spying isn't a novel concept. Nevertheless, the WorkComposer scandal indicates that as surveillance multiplies exponentially thanks to new technology, so do its harms. Unfortunately, the United States offers little federal or state-level protection. It essentially leaves it up to each company to decide how much privacy and autonomy they want to strip away from their employees. It's hard to imagine a genuine justification for the nearly total dismantling of privacy that companies like WorkComposer champion.
- The digital age has seen an increase in corporate intrusion of employee privacy, often under the guise of productivity, as exposed in the WorkComposer incident.
- Cybernews discovered 21 million screenshots from WorkComposer stored in an exposed Amazon S3 bucket, potentially containing sensitive data.
- WorkComposer, which serves over 200,000 firms worldwide, took screenshots of employees' computers every 3 to 5 minutes, posing a risk for identity theft and scams.
- The exact impacted companies and employees remain undetermined, but the leaked images provide a minute-by-minute view into worker productivity.
- After discovering the breach, Cybernews secured the information, but WorkComposer remained unresponsive when reached out by Gizmodo for comment.
- Jose Martinez, a Senior Organizer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized WorkComposer's behavior, suggesting that misuse of such data could lead to employee termination.
- In 2023, the American Psychological Association reported that 56% of surveilled employees felt stressed at work, compared to 40% of unmonitored counterparts, highlighting the psychological impacts of surveillance in the workplace.