Woman Allegedly Fired for Deleting App That Let Her Boss Track Her Movements 24/7
A California woman is suing her former employer after she claims she was fired for uninstalling a smartphone app that let her boss track her movements 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
According to Ars Technica, which obtained a copy of the complaint, Myrna Arias worked for the Intermex wire transfer service when she says her boss, John Stubits, fired her for deleting the Xora (now ClickSoftware) job management app from her smartphone.
In the suit Arias claims that the app allowed Intermex and Stubits to track her movement whether she was working or not.
Arias said that when she and her fellow employees asked Stubits if he could track them when they weren’t working, Stubits, “admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she had installed the app on her phone.”
According to the suit, Arias didn’t have a problem with the app tracking her while she was working, but didn’t want it doing so when she was off. Doing so, Arias said, amounted to an invasion of privacy.
Xora, the app that Arias complained about, tracks and manages mobile employees while they’re in the field.
Arias said she is seeking payment for lost wages and punitive damages.
We reached out to Intermex, and will update this article when we receive a response.
The proliferation of smartphones and our always-connected culture have given rise to a number of privacy issues and complaints. Social media users continuously argue that Facebook and Twitter regularly invade users’ privacy, while similar allegations have been made against major smartphone makers and websites.
The difference here is that Arias was required to install an app on her handset by her employer, something more and more companies require their workers to do in order to protect corporate data stored on their smartphones.
Do you think Arias should have been fired for not using the app, as her suit alleges? Should employers be able to track workers when they’re not on the job? Sound off in the comments.
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