Troll printer salesman.

I've seen that same "never accept counter offers" reasoning before, and to some degree I agree with it, but that's assuming that the benefits of a job are entirely monetarily-based, which isn't a great way to look at employment. What if the employer giving you a counter offer is a smaller shop with less resources, but has a great work environment, your coworkers and boss are awesome, and the work you're doing is fun and interesting?

can block that device from connecting.

In that case:

what you describe is functionally no different than simply backing up company documents from your work PC to an external drive, and then leaving with that information. Or, even lower tech, just taking physical documents with you when you leave.

I don't know what your work does, but this is definitely starting to become common at many places. While I certainly don't want to relinquish admin control over my personal phone, I also like the the ability to remotely connect to work resources without needing to carry around two phones.

Well, we're referring to different things. ganjadude and I were talking about effectively "taking" company data, and how useful mobile management tools are at preventing that, so I was using "backlash" to refer to *companies* having issues with employees that leave.

To your point - users may not have any legal or official room to complain, but that rarely stops people from actually complaining.

To do BYOD you either need to specify EXACTLY what people can or can't use

A lot of the mobile remote software allows for this sort of control.

There are regulations about how different classifications of data can be moved around and stored.

Employers that follow those regulations/classifications probably won't require (or even allow) BYOD, so I would agree with vux984 that they aren't really different from other methods of taking company data off-site.

Typically the remote management software will work with any connection, so if your wifi hits the internet (mild pedantry - airplane mode disables wifi too, but obviously you could just disable mobile data), and is consequently able to call 'home' to your employer, it'll still be able to perform a remote wipe.

That said, what you describe is functionally no different than simply backing up company documents from your work PC to an external drive, and then leaving with that information. Or, even lower tech, just taking physical documents with you when you leave.

All of the mentioned restrictions only work if the phone is locked.

The mobile management software that's out there (and used by some companies that allow BYOD) works just fine on unlocked/rooted phones.

I wonder if companies allow a sales phone number be switch to a competitor when the sales person switches jobs.

If a company changes their procedures to allow employees to use their own phones instead of handing them out, they'll also change their procedures about phone numbers. My company simply uses internal numbers assigned to everyone (that they control), that we can forward to our personal phones if need be; this isn't an issue for companies already allowing BYOD.

Yeah. I haven't used any of these remote tools myself, and I'm really curious to see if there will be some sort of 'backlash' once they become more common and people do exactly what you describe.

Typically (in what I've seen in IT) they're not *forcing* people to bring their own devices, they're *allowing* them (or suggesting them) to do so. I highly doubt that a company that requires an employee to have a smart phone of some kind in their role would require them to use their own phone.

Yeah, totally, although that's not much different than someone just storing data from their work machine to a USB stick, and keeping that stick in their possession after leaving/getting fired. I assume ultimately those sorts of situations where companies are seriously worried about that data "theft" result in legal action, or something something similar.

Agreed, although the Dropbox-related concern has already existed on regular work machines (assuming you're able to install software, which many people in technical roles are allowed to do).

Yup, I'd agree, and if/when my employer implements such software I will likely disable work email on my phone.