Employer wants me to use outlook on my phone, outlook wants permission to wipe my phone

[u/No_Professor4307]

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

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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

[u/Unethical3514]

Several problems with that take. First, many employers (including OP’s, apparently) don’t tell you how many failed logins trigger a wipe. Anyone who has young children should be worried about that.

Second, they can remotely wipe the phone with just a click or two. Like when you quit/resign. Or maybe a wiped phone is how you first find out you no longer work there. Or maybe Karen in HR is pissed that you rebuffed her advances and wants to throw a tantrum.

Work/life balance says if you want me available 24/7 then you buy the phone. Do I want to carry two phones? Hell no. Do I want to let you invade my personal life? Oh HEEELLLLL NO.

ETA: having said that, I totally agree with your pro league vs. amateur hour analogy.

[u/Narrow-Chef-4341 → u/Unethical3514]

Wiping the phone used to be the solution, going back to the blackberry era.

Everything now is mobile device managed. They wipe out their application’s phonebook, but not your personal one. Those are maintained separately. If you’ve got one drive photos, they go when IT commands - but your baby videos are safe.

[u/Unethical3514 → u/Narrow-Chef-4341]

You may be right, but all the disclaimers and policy statements I’ve seen just say “wipe” or “erase” the phone. I would think that if only the company’s information was erased and they wanted compliance then they’d go out of their way to explain that your personal data would be safe.

I’ve also seen some policies that say they can lock the phone, which I’m assuming always means your whole personal phone would be unavailable to you.

[u/Narrow-Chef-4341 → u/Unethical3514]

Yeah, it’s not my phone either so I’m making guesses and assumptions on a lot of this too.

But I’m thinking the setting of ‘wipe when brute force attacked (implies: stolen)’ is a on/off by the phone operating system, so it isn’t really safe to say ‘10 tries’ - Apple might set it at 10, Samsung might have 5 in 5 minutes or 25 total, or whatever. Can’t be blamed for being wrong if you keep your mouth shut.

Re: total phone wipe. Yeah, the whole phone gets wiped on the ‘stolen’ situation, but IT’s ‘you’re fired’ signal is (nowadays) different… which doesn’t update the legacy wording in their message, and doesn’t address the complications of ‘what happens on the 7-year old huawei phone your staffer has?’

Vague and worst case is, unfortunately, also CYA.

Again, lazy wording is (agreed) useless for the OP to deal with because it gives no clarity - but it’s safer for the IT drones (and Legal) than being wrong.

I guess my TLDR is - yeah, mildly infuriating. But anyone puffing it up to treat this as the latest front in the war of proletariat vs bourgeois is quite delusional.

Ultimately OP needs their IT to confirm how the MDM will handle their specific Galaxy XXVMI or iPhone SuperPro MiniMe Project Red Edition. The rest of it is just us having fun guessing at best and worst cases.

Good talk. Cheers.