I am going to leave the company that I am currently working for (it’s a Japanese subsidiary of an European company).
The company gave us employees smartphones to be used for work,
but at the signing of the contract I was told that I could use the company phone also for personal stuff without any problem (quote: “as long as it is nothing illegal, we don’t care”). So, I used the company phone for private messages with family and friends until I got a private phone.
A few months back there was a case of power harassment from the president toward an employee who then sued the company and left.
I just got to know that under the Japanese president’s order they secretly managed to restore the deleted Line messages on her phone using some software they downloaded after she left and used it to see whether she talked to someone else inside the company about her harassment.
Since I was close to her, I suspect that they will also check my messages after I leave.
(They probably already checked our conversations from her phone, but they may decide to check my phone as well)
I don’t want them to spy on my private messages and stuff. Is there a way to properly delete conversations on Line? Also, just for discussion purpose, since I do not have material evidence to do anything anyway, is it legal for them to recover the conversations on my account without my permission?
4 comments
You may unfortunately lose the phone and not get it back.
Not sure about how to delete things so they can’t be recovered, but would signing out of Line and also removing the app be enough to delete any stored data? Could you reset it to factory settings?
Otherwise, maybe you could find out what is the policy in case of loss/damage…
> I don’t want them to spy on my private messages and stuff. Is there a way to properly delete conversations on Line? Also, just for discussion purpose, since I do not have material evidence to do anything anyway, is it legal for them to recover the conversations on my account without my permission?
If you don’t want them to “spy on your private messages and stuff”, don’t use their property to do your ‘private messages and stuff’.
IANAL, but it should be perfectly legal for them to do anything they wish with their property. They do not require your permission to do so.
There are methods to securely wipe a phone such that data can’t be (easily) recovered from it. Specifics would depend on the make and model of your phone. Alternatively, simply destroy, or lose it.
Factory reset the phone a few times.