The upcoming Android operating system updates will give employers unprecedented power to monitor their employees’ communications, as they will allow companies to record and review all RCS messages (the advanced version of SMS that supports images and video) sent and received on work devices.

The new archiving feature is designed to serve the needs of highly regulated companies, such as financial institutions, brokerage firms and government agencies, which are required by laws such as US Securities Exchange Commission regulations to maintain complete communications records. It will also allow managers to monitor internal communications for the purposes of investigations or resolving employment disputes.

andAccording to the official Google blogThe feature will work by integrating third-party archive applications with the messaging system, enabling the IT department to instantly access the content of each message, including modified or deleted versions of it, while notifying the employee of the monitoring process.

Although Google has confirmed that this feature will not affect encrypted applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram, it raises critical questions about the limits of privacy in the work environment, especially after many have come to consider instant messages a relatively personal space compared to official work email.

Source: Independent