Using the BlackBerry Spy App to keep employees in check has transcended the conventional ethical and moral complications. It’s more about the legality of the spyware that has firms worried. The BlackBerry Spy App allows employers to keep a check on cellular activities of their employees. This basically means that if companies choose to invest in the BlackBerry Spy they will be able to look into their emails and text messages i.e. who they are being sent to and who they are coming from, including the content of the email/texts with the exact time they was sent. The BlackBerry Spy also allows management to look into picture logs, call logs, and peek into their staff’s BBM Chats.
Since it is created for maximum efficiency and effective results the BlackBerry Spy App also allows employers to record their employees’ surroundings through a spy call. They can also listen to their surroundings live if they chose to. What this basically means is that through the BlackBerry Spy App employers are given the ability to listen to every single word that their employees utter, even when they’re not at work. And if that wasn’t enough the BlackBerry Spy App also tracks the employee through the GPS connection.
The line between keeping a company’s interests safe and invading someone’s personal life is very thin indeed. This is the main reason why firms worry that implementing the BlackBerry Spy App could result in legal chaos in the future. Firms can take a few simple steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen:
1. Only install the BlackBerry Spy App on phones that the company is allotting to its staff on its own. Company property is meant to be used for company related chores and the employees can be questioned he/she deviates from this purpose.
2. Make the surveillance undertaken through the BlackBerry Spy App a part of office policy and ensure that employees are aware of this policy. There is a likelihood that employees will not waver from their loyalty to the firm if they know about the policy, which is fine. Firms need to remember that they’re only trying to keep their interests safe; they’re not trying to make sure that they catch someone doing something wrong no matter what happens.
If these two steps are followed there is absolutely no way that the BlackBerry Spy App can become a legal problem for the company. It is when the app is implemented in a sneaky manner and tampers with an employee’s personal property e.g. their personal phones that it becomes a problem for the employer.
