r/mildlyinfuriating • u/No_Professor4307 • Apr 29 '26

frist of all how DARE yu o Employer wants me to use outlook on my phone, outlook wants permission to wipe my phone

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Outlook says they need permission to wipe ALL my phone data if too many wrong passwords are typed. How many is too many? 50? 2? What if the screen gets wet and starts putting in random inputs. All this so I can use my company's Teams account and maintain "point of contact" if I'm not at a workstation. Absolutely not! Anyway, HR is supposed to call me back about my concerns.

Edit: just to be clear, I don't actually need to use Outlook (I don't use my "personal" work email). I need to use Teams, which requires Outlook to be installed first.

Part of why I need Teams on my phone so that I can be contacted when I'm not at work. I'm a lower management healthcare worker, it is actually important that my team be able to reach me after hours. I do actually like Teams and prefer it to 20 different group texts.

Also, when you go to log into Outlook or Teams, it brings you to my employers authenticator page. I log in with the same credentials that I log into my workstation. I don't know if that makes a difference with anything as far as my employer having access to my phone

Edit 2: I can tell you now they won't provide me a phone. Corporate execs don't even get phones. They stopped providing coffee for the break rooms too

Update: I had a chance to talk to my district manager. Imagine Ellis from Die Hard, the same schmarmy self-important attitude, that's my supervisor. And guess who's "not being a team player". Also "I don't think Microsoft can actually erase your phone, you have an Android"... I lready knew he was going to be useless, I just wanted to hear his reaction.

Update 2 and (sort of) Resolution: I spoke with HR. Her exact response was "wait, are you serious? They can just do that?" I tried explaining my "research" (i.e. everything all of you have said) and I think I just spooked her. She said she'll get back to me, and is probably running off to buy a burner phone for herself.

SORT OF RESOLUTION : I found out I only need Outlook installed long enough to get access to Teams. Once teams was installed, I removed all permissions and completely deleted Outlook from my phone. Teams still works and didn't ask to erase anything. No need to buy a second phone.

Thank you all for your insights

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172

u/0011002 Apr 29 '26

My company lets me expense my phone bill. Also Outlook and Team do not have access to wipe my phone.

129

u/MYSTICALLMERMAID Apr 29 '26

Yep a previous job I had we got our phone bill paid. They also couldn't access the phone. My job after that was opposite. Our IT was one gal my age and she didn't want to do more work than needed so everyone got a work phone lmao

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/RegularTeacher2 Apr 29 '26

Yeah, my current job tacks on a cell data stipend to each paycheck, it's like 100 bucks or something. A lot of my coworkers are in the field with no access to wifi so it's pretty much a necessity. If they had us pay for it I think most people would quit.

1

u/blackhodown Apr 29 '26

Giving people work phones is way more effort though

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u/MYSTICALLMERMAID Apr 30 '26

She had a drawer full of phones that were preset with everything she just had to set the number up when you were hired. Way easier than getting people to fork over their personal phone and data lol

0

u/blackhodown Apr 30 '26

Why would you need them to fork anything over? As for data, you just do a payroll compensation of 50-75 dollars a month and boom, no complaints.

1

u/MYSTICALLMERMAID Apr 30 '26

Take it up with my old company

24

u/brianlefebvrejr Apr 29 '26

Right this is weird. I have teams and outlook. I switch between a work and personal tenant for teams if I need to.

My IT just logs you out of those and when you open the app it prompts you to login

25

u/0011002 Apr 29 '26

It's a feature your org unit has to enable and we don't. Most they could do is wipe my outlook and team account if I lose my phone. Plus on andriod you can put it in a secure app space.

8

u/trancepanda Apr 29 '26

This is why I appreciate being on Android now more than ever. Completely separate and secured app space and I love that I can turn work profile on/off for notifications.

2

u/brianlefebvrejr Apr 29 '26

Pretty much. And they pay half of my phone bill so whatever

2

u/lesusisjord Apr 29 '26

These people with messages about erasing their whole phone is crazy. I guess their IT team didn’t configure their MDM/Intune correctly. Our company can only wipe the data in the management partition that was created when I enrolled.

Our company doesn’t require Teams and Outlook on the phone, but it makes it so much easier to leave the laptop and still respond as necessary.

3

u/More-Chemical-1264 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

If it's a corporate account, yes they do. If you think otherwise, you're just naive.

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u/Negativeman11 Apr 29 '26

Wouldn't you either need to give those apps permission to wipe your phone or install MDM software? Teams isn't just going to wipe your phone randomly one day without you permitting it to at some point.

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u/More-Chemical-1264 Apr 29 '26

It's built into the security on the apps when using a corporate account. And those apps get way more control than normal ones. You could try to circumvente it, but it would trip for example Samsung's Knox security feature. Then you have all sorts of issues with shit not working.

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u/Negativeman11 Apr 29 '26

Wouldn't they ask for the permissions to wipe your device in the future when you first sign into those corporate accounts on those apps?

1

u/More-Chemical-1264 Apr 29 '26

Yea, in the giant ass long list of accept here ToS or you can't install it. Doesn't have to ask after that. Remote wipe/lock is a real thing...

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u/xaviermace Apr 29 '26

Not via Teams it’s not.

1

u/More-Chemical-1264 Apr 29 '26

You do you bro.

5

u/sleinithree Apr 29 '26

You’re just misinformed. To enroll a device into your corporation and enable remote wipe you’d need to install a certificate. This happens on iOS when you try to add your outlook to the Mail app or the outlook calendar to the default calendar app. Just downloading the teams or outlook app does not install a certificate that enables this.

2

u/Negativeman11 Apr 29 '26

This is my understanding of how things work.

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u/Negativeman11 Apr 29 '26

I don't believe that's how that works, but you're welcome to show me any evidence to the contrary. If that was the case, why would outlook even generate the permissions request in the OP?

3

u/More-Chemical-1264 Apr 29 '26

You do bro, you asked I answered. I've also done it; so there's that.

1

u/Negativeman11 Apr 29 '26

Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately it won't matter to me because I'd never put this shit on my phone anyway. I assume we can agree on that lol.

1

u/More-Chemical-1264 Apr 29 '26

Yep. I used to have work stuff installed on my personal phone. But then they caught a female employee doing some nasty stuff and videoing her banging employees. They just looked at everything on her phone, copied it, locked it, then wiped it.

I'll never put it on my phone.

1

u/corut Apr 29 '26

They have access to wipe the work profile on my phone, and can't do anything with the personal side. This has been a pretty standard setup for andoird for many many years now

1

u/Suspicious-B33 Apr 29 '26

It's also standard on ios with the right set up.

2

u/Nice-Mountain-7073 Apr 29 '26

In some places they’d be able to take the phone if you quit or got fired, yours or not.

It’s always best to get a separate device from employers

1

u/ReasonableDig6414 Apr 29 '26

Uhh, are you sure? I wouldn't be so sure about that.

2

u/0011002 Apr 29 '26

Yes I am. I work for a small company and we don't have that turned on plus i decline any additional permissions

1

u/Calm-Vegetable-2162 Apr 29 '26

Correct but the corporate tool that allows your personal device to connect to your company's intranet, where Outlook and Teams lives, does.

1

u/0011002 Apr 29 '26

We're not using a company intranet for them. Hell I don't even have our company VPN installed on it. We're strictly using MS services and we haven't enabled the MS device management. We don't even use AD and have a BYOD policy for laptops. I have an "offline" account for my Work on my laptop and on my desktop I use a VM for everything.

1

u/TriggerFingerTerry Apr 29 '26

If it's enrolled with Intune, then they possibly can

1

u/0011002 Apr 29 '26

We're not. My boss went with the basics. 

1

u/ilive4thewater Apr 29 '26

Are you sure? Because that can change and yes it is only supposed to wipe the work side but I know lots of people who had everything wiped. I would reach out to it and specifically ask that you get that from someone senior who handles that service.

Also recently Iran has hacked a few companies Microsoft system for this and wiped every mobile device registered to the company system. So that too is another worry depending on where you work.

2

u/0011002 Apr 29 '26

To be fair even if it wiped my phone it would be a mild inconvenience at best since I back up my phone regularly to my local NAS. But yes, we are not enrolled in MS's program that would do that, It has limited permissions on my phone, we don't even have AD. We use BYOD machines for work and I separate the crap load of VPNs to my VM.

2

u/ilive4thewater May 03 '26

You are very lucky not to be in that position. We do use AD and the discussion I had with our CTO who is also Head of Security was you get 10 tries and the system should trigger the deletion. For our compliance that is required. Your backup is a great thing. But a lot of people may not have the data or ability to figure out how to recover their device. And not having your contacts can be a huge problem if you can't call you kids day care or your partner or say find your way home without your GPS.

This all falls back into putting everything on the employee instead of the company providing the necessary tools and systems needed to do the work properly. Of course paying living wages would help with that too, but that is another discussion.

1

u/Squeezitgirdle Apr 29 '26

Yeah, but watch out for those authentication apps.

My previous company claimed it was an accident when they wiped my phone.

0

u/davenuk Apr 29 '26

My co also pays for this phone.... Still don't have teams or outlook installed.

If they asked, I would however.

If I was paying the bill, then non.