The Exploding Market for Devices That Help You Evade Corporate Productivity Trackers

In 2017, Lorenzo, who works in health care, took on a temporary document-reviewing gig he could do from home. He was between full-time office jobs, and liked that the temporary gig allowed him to take his son to school in the morning, walk his dog at lunch, and generally have more flexibility during the day. But Lorenzo soon found that his employer was monitoring him more closely than he had anticipated. The company used the workplace messaging service Microsoft Lync, which would display a green icon on employee profiles if they were active and a yellow icon if their computer had gone to sleep. Whenever Lorenzo would step away for a few minutes to refill his coffee or use the restroom, his Lync profile invariably reported him as inactive.