Corporate surveillance

[1] This information may consist of online browsing history, email correspondence, phone calls, location data, and other private details.

Acts of corporate surveillance frequently look to boost results, detect potential security problems, or adjust advertising strategies.

Critics and privacy activists have called for businesses to incorporate rules and transparency surrounding their monitoring methods to ensure they are not misusing their position of authority or breaching regulatory standards.

[3] Employers may be authorized to gather information through keystroke logging and mouse tracking, which involves recording the keys individuals interact with and cursor position on computers.

Millions of sites place Google's advertising banners and links on their websites, in order to share this profit from visitors who click on the ads.

[16] In 1993, David Steingard and Dale Fitzgibbons argued that modern management, far from empowering workers, had features of neo-Taylorism, where teamwork perpetuated surveillance and control.

They argued that employees had become their own "thought police" and the team gaze was the equivalent of Bentham's panopticon guard tower.

"[20] Furthermore, about 30 percent of the companies had also fired employees for usage of "inappropriate or offensive language" and "viewing, downloading, or uploading inappropriate/offensive content.

[20] In addition, most companies use software to block websites such as sites with games, social networking, entertainment, shopping, and sports.

The American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute also stress that companies track content that is being written about them, for example by monitoring blogs and social media, and scanning all files that are stored in a filesystem.

The Department of Homeland Security has openly stated that it uses data collected from consumer credit and direct marketing agencies—such as Google—for augmenting the profiles of individuals that it is monitoring.