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Cybersecurity Law & StrategyFeatures

Less Is More: The Risks of Excessive Data Collection from Mobile Devices

By Matthew Rasmussen
November 01, 2024

At virtually every organization, work is now spread out across phone calls, texts, emails, third-party messaging apps, and productivity tools on personal devices. Smartphones have, in many ways, become the nucleus of professional life. As a result, companies face the critical challenge of managing this new activity center and the vast amounts of company data flowing through it.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently declared that companies are officially responsible for all business-related data on personal devices, regardless of whether it's a company-issued device or a bring-your-own-device (BYOD). Failure to properly preserve required data for an investigation can lead to significant legal trouble and nine-figure fines. In their rush to comply, however, many companies and their legal teams are overcorrecting by over-collecting data, exposing themselves to even more risks.

Double-Sided Privacy Concerns

To meet requirements for legal hold, corporate compliance, and internal investigations, organizations must extract company data off personal devices. For employees, however, mobile phones are not just an activity center for work, but also for their daily lives. Mixed in with all that company data is a trove of sensitive personal information — photos, medical records, private messages, passwords, and more. Consequently, when companies scrape employee phones, they risk invading personal privacy.

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