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  • Hacker News
  • TLDR: yes, governments in favor of Chat Control legislation want to make absolutely sure it doesn't apply to them.
    by spwa4
  • Chat Control 1 or 2?
    by inigyou
  • What? 75% people use personal chats for work? I've never seen this in my over 20 years working in the UK, Poland and few other countries.

    Personal messaging apps were always banned everywhere I worked.

    by Roark66
  • I have not for couple of years, but before covid I've worked in a well-known Polish company that was trying to force everyone to use at first HipChat, then some awful OSS chat. My team set up discord then.
    by KptMarchewa
  • "ban personal messaging apps at work"

    What does that even mean? I doubt you can forbid the usage of personal messaging apps except in very exceptional cases (like a court room).

    On the other hand: Using personal messaging apps for work related information is a no-go anyway because of confidentiality agreements basically everyone signs.

    by weinzierl
  • Colleagues often setup WhatsApp groups etc so not on company slack/ms teams which will be monitored/loggged
    by khurs
  • Finance - no personal devices in the office and no personal (or unauthorised) messaging apps on your work devices.
    by blitzar
  • Using personal messaging apps for work, for example, sending work related messages through WhatsApp or Telegram instead of using the proper corporate/official app.

    You can forbid your employees to use non official apps to send work related messages for privacy, compliance, security and other reasons.

    by tecleandor
  • I also didn't fully understand if the context is:

    - Ban ANY use of your personal chats / device at work (eg. your wife texts you to bring milk on the way home)

    - Ban WORK communication (eg. My colleague don't understand recent commit I've made)

    So the web really isn't explaining how things enforced or what is being done. I do know of some industries where you put your personal phone when entering specific locations or having stickers on cameras) but here I didn't fully understood the scope.

    by rock_artist
  • Our company does the same. We are not allowed to use whatsapp for any work-related stuff.

    This is for several reasons, mostly security and data-loss prevention. On Teams we can monitor with purview what happens with personal (customer!) data, which is mandatory here in europe under GDPR. We must take steps to ensure it is only processed by entities we have a data processing agreement with.

    But we don't block people from using it for personal purposes of course. Whatsapp groups between colleagues to coordinate lunch options and nights out are super commonplace and perfectly fine. Even on work hardware (on android on the personal side of the phone, on iOS we just block copy/paste into whatsapp from corporate app).

    I even saw our CISO using whatsapp web on his corp laptop. It's fine as long as it's not used for actual work. Here in EU it is mandatory to permit some level of personal activity even on work devices.

    by wolvoleo
  • Of course, the consequence is you end up communicating for work on something like Teams instead of an usable chat app.
    by nottorp
  • True, Teams is a horrible tool. I wish we had something better but our company insists on keeping everything within the MS ecosystem.
    by wolvoleo
  • I refuse to install that malware on my phone. Upshot is that I don't get bothered by coworkers after hours.
    by lossyalgo
  • Like zoom where you chat disappears when the meeting is closed?

    Or how about slack, that lives in an alternate reality where outlook calendar can be ignored?

    by throwa356262
  • I'm surprised any company allows work to be done over employees personal apps/devices/numbers. If a colleague/boss contacted me about work via my personal number they'd be quickly told to never do it again.
    by basisword
  • It's not at all uncommon. I didn't have a usable work phone number for years given that, even when I technically had a desk, I was never there. I always used my personal phone and, for that matter, laptop for that matter.
    by ghaff
  • Meanwhile in Spain I use WhatsApp to contact the municipality, the GP uses it to send my blood results and package delivery drivers ask me to share my location. I hate it.
    by retired
  • Would you rather they used Teams? Or what would be a better alternative? Phone / email?
    by tsimionescu
  • The 2016 coup attempt in Turkey was organized entirely on whatsapp. All of the conversations were recovered from multiple phones too.
    by dizhn
  • Why not delete it? I assume that if you don't have it, they offer some other form of communication with you?
    by mschild
  • I would imagine this is the exact problem they are trying to stop:

    Civil servant accused of leaking Govt information to foreign intelligence service in Ireland

    https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2026/0530/1576047-yevgen-mcke...

    by s_dev
  • I don't understand why they put this up like it's working in their favor. Their website doesn't explain anything extraordinary that makes them different from the average chat app, except that it is europe based.
    by Yokohiii
  • I'm not reading anything in this article that seems to pretend like it's working in their favour?

    It's just an article from a company about their industry, companies do that all the time for brand recognition, building trust (showing expertise in their domain), and educating potential customers about why they might need this sort of product (lead generation).

    by williamdclt
  • What would possibly differentiate a chat app?
    by inigyou
  • Why would they need anything different? If they offer the same features as other chat apps, they can simply aim to compete on price (and/or on other non-functional attributes like performance, reliability, UX, social connection, etc).
    by tsimionescu
  • If anything it is highlighting the pointlessness of any new messaging platform. Companies can and should lock down to the platform that comes with their subscription for everything else - and for all personal matters that is locked down with network effects by sms, whatsapp & wechat.

    You could maybe make the case for a federated - email like - messaging service for inter company / party communications. Matrix basically ...

    by blitzar
  • At least for the financial institutions on this list, I can say they have no other choice. Regulation forces them to log everything to avoid insider trading, etc. Any communication outside of their internal systems can't be logged and is therefore a compliance risk.
    by benny_s
  • GDPR guarantees a right to privacy even on work devices. I think you need to filter out personal messages if compliance requires logging.
    by sigmoid10
  • Been a sackable offence for over a decade in finance, I can not fathom why other sectors have been so slow to enforce some basic standards.

    Recording every call, message (and in my office - thing you said at your desk) is mostly used for conflict resolution - when counterparties disagree you go to the tapes and see what was said. From there my word is my bond, it is done.

    by blitzar