My new employer allows us to install teams on personal devices, which is pretty cool,…but… they require an amount of access I’m uncomfortable with, like i have authorized them and they have used in very , very circumstances, permission to factory reset my phone.
Which I don’t love.
However, I can get any old phone or table, doesn’t even need a mobile plan, just the ability to connect to wifi and have a webcam and basic speaker and microphone capability, and the ability to download and install apps from the google playstore. The thing is, I’m not sure what to get. Are they’re any good cheap tablets or refurbished phones out there for like $100-$150 that I can just just for work?
Then I can remove the software from my primary device.
Quite the hot take that the burner is the phone you take all your work calls on from the employer that’s been paying your mortgage for 15 years who put your kids through college and who you were constantly around, and the phone you don’t even make phone calls from for most of those 15 years is the main event.
Kindle Fire tablet, especially if bought around Prime Day or Black Friday.
Instructions on how to set them up to use the regular Google app store are online. It’s a multi-step process, but doable.
I used to have work email, etc. on my fire tablet.
One caveat: if your corporate connection is with the Intune app, I’m not certain a Fire tablet would work. Intune makes use of a few features in Android that I’m not altogether certain exist in Amazon’s bastardized version
Yeah, like a million of them. Just hit up whatever classified ads website is hot in your area. There’s a million different old android phones out there. Heck, I just trashed my Xiomi redmi note 7 for a pixel 7, and there was nothing wrong with the note 7, The pixel 7 is functionally, barely an upgrade. I considered using the note for a similiar purpose to what you’re suggesting - removing the cell connection and just using it for one app on wifi.
And as others noted, yeah, start with ‘I don’t run an android device, youll need to give me one’. No way would I put anything corporate on my personal phone. Ever.
Just curious, but why would they need permission to reset your whole phone?
We also have personal devices but they are separated into two profiles.
The “work” profile is the part of the phone the company needs to secure. The apps (outlook, teams etc) and any data stored. Makes sense from a security perspective.
The normal “home” profile that you use they do not require access to.
I am using an Android phone (Samsung S10 Plus) and the work profile works quite well (I can use the fingerprint scanner to access the profile as well which saves a lot of time).
I haven’t, because from their perspective, they’ve provided my work machine, monitors, a keyboard, a mouse, a headset and a webcam for video calls, so they have provided everything i need.
Adding to teams to as seperate device would enable me to participate in video calls for work, while being logged in through my personal laptop, making me much, much more mobile for travel.
Bingo. If your device is compromised…or if you do something, like leave the company, that causes the company to no longer trust you, they want to protect IP and potentially any customer data.
The easiest, most reliable form of protection is to nuke the device from orbit.
(That’s why, when you put in notice that you’re leaving your employer, you should disconnect your work accounts from your personal devices before you give notice…)
My perception of Intune is that it creates a virtual firewall within the device, to keep personal and work stuff separate. On the work side, they’re able to restrict which apps (and which versions of apps) can be used.
(It’s probably not technically correct to describe it as a virtual firewall…but I’m a power user rather than an Android technical expert. It’s close enough for conversational purposes.)
It’s not a complete firewall. On my Pixel, my work apps can access personal files (but not, I think, vice-versa), and the Android clipboard seems to work for sharing text.
It’s annoying that the arrangement requires me to have two copies of certain apps (e.g. a personal copy of Edge, and a work copy of Edge). And I absolutely HATE that I can’t see work and personal calendars at the same time without doing a lot of VBA gymnastics to mirror calendars in a way that doesn’t violate corporate security policy.
Whereas I have taken the stance: I absolutely refuse to carry two phones; if you want me to be reachable when out of the office / away from my computer, allow me to connect from a phone that I can use for both personal and corporate use.
It was a bigger deal when there was less consistency in how devices charged. Having to carry two separate chargers, in addition to two separate phones… Ugh.