Despite the numerous advantages working from home offers employees, enterprises, and the environment, many bosses struggle with the concept and want to see their staff back in the office as often as possible. (So does US President Donald J. Trump.) Trust is good, control is better? If company bosses can’t get workers back to the office full-time, they can call to check on a worker if their presence indicator in Teams or another messaging service is set to inactive (yellow) for too long. But some go further, resorting to monitoring the activity of workers’ keyboards or mice with so-called “bossware.” This software, which is banned in the EU for data protection reasons, is used to ensure that employees work from home during their entire working hours. The employee-led US organization Coworker.org had already found more than 550 products in its 2021 Bossware and Employment Tech Database that use technologies such as AI, location tracking and biometrics to “manage” employees and collect their data — often without their knowledge. And that was four years ago. With the rise of generative AI tools, bossware has become even more potentially intrusive. Always stay on the move In the US, where even more rigid controls are legal, the monitoring of company computers was a hot-button issue long before 2020 and the COVID-19 outbreak. It was the epidemic of bossware that followed the coronavirus pandemic that led to a boom in solutions to limit what companies can find out, according to Vice magazine. Search queries for so-called “mouse mover” and “mouse jiggler” solutions skyrocketed after March 2020, when many desk workers moved from the office to home at the start of the pandemic — and have remained consistently high ever since. The virtual shelves of online retailers such as Amazon are also full of plug-and-play mouse mover devices that allow the mouse pointer to be rotated from below, or USB sticks with pre-installed software that mimics mouse movements. By inserting the stick, the computer is tricked into believing that it is an active mouse. ‘Simulation’ software is also available In some cases, however, you don’t even have to buy a device to imitate a moving mouse. Numerous programs are offered for free on the internet for this purpose. The catch is that employees who need such devices because their employers distrust them so much are unlikely to have admin rights to install new software on a company PC. In general, the effectiveness of these work tools should not be fully trusted. For example, Bloomberg reported in June 2024 that US investment bank Wells Fargo & Co. had fired more than a dozen employees for allegedly faking their work. “The staffers, all in the firm’s wealth- and investment-management unit, were ‘discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work,’” Bloomberg wrote, quoting from a Wells Fargo memo to the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) on May 6 2024. It is not clear from Wells Fargo’s statement whether the fired employees used Mouse Jiggler or other devices in their home offices.