<story><title>Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?</title><text>I work from home in the EU as a freelancer for a US startup.&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, an email came out of the blue, demanding that I install an &amp;quot;agent&amp;quot; from a company named &amp;quot;Drata&amp;quot;* on my laptop. The motivation is that my client badly want a SOC 2 certification.&lt;p&gt;I have worked as a developer for more than 30 years. Tiny shops. Startups. Major league. I have never even heard about someone putting agents on developers laptops.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pretty pissed off. So are the teams I work with.&lt;p&gt;Is this the new normal now?&lt;p&gt;Just for the record: I don&amp;#x27;t have credentials to production systems, and I don&amp;#x27;t work with production data. I just figure out how to transform dreams into code, I write parts of that code, and then I fix it as needed.&lt;p&gt;* Drata (https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drata.com&amp;#x2F;about) is on a &amp;quot;Mission to Help Build Trust Across the Internet&amp;quot;. Their business model (in my case) seems to be to take money from companies to spy on their employees&amp;#x2F;contractors, and then they sell the employees&amp;#x2F;contractors private information to &amp;quot;targeted advertising&amp;quot;. When I confronted them about this, they replied: &amp;quot;Feel free to reach out to your Drata administrator internally with concerns. Do note, that when your company contracted with Drata, any edits or redlines they provided will prevail for all employees of your company.&amp;quot; - basically to just bend over and smile.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>byron4242</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a widespread practice that companies provide laptops to contractors to compartmentalize the way they interact with the company&amp;#x27;s IT.  But I&amp;#x27;m really quite opposed to it.&lt;p&gt;At one point I had 3 sets of machines: Two different 14&amp;quot; laptops from two different clients and my own machines.  At some point you simply run out of space on your desk and end up constantly either working on screens that are too small (14&amp;quot; really isn&amp;#x27;t enough to be productive), or plugging laptops in to and out of screens as you&amp;#x27;re context-switching.  Carrying three laptops with you when you&amp;#x27;re travelling if you anticipate having to work for both clients during that timeframe is also not exactly my definition of great fun.  And you end up duplicating a lot of effort around managing that IT, like tweaking settings the way you like them etc.&lt;p&gt;The argument &amp;quot;we own this laptop, so we can do with it whatever we want, including spying on you&amp;quot; is just not valid.  They&amp;#x27;re either doing things that I&amp;#x27;m okay with, in which case I&amp;#x27;m okay doing it on my own hardware.  Or they&amp;#x27;re doing things I&amp;#x27;m opposed to, in which case I&amp;#x27;m opposed to it no matter who owns the hardware.&lt;p&gt;Also: In many European countries, authorities are clamping down hard on practices whereby companies pass people off as contractors who really are employees.  They usually work off of lists of criteria of what makes an employee, and if you fit too many of those criteria while, on paper, passing yourself off as a contractor, then you and your client can be in for a world of pain.  One of the criteria that makes you look more like a contractor and less like an employee to the government is providing your own facilities like the computer you work with.&lt;p&gt;And, last but not least, it&amp;#x27;s just not a good way of dealing with the planet&amp;#x27;s resources.</text></item><item><author>SkyMarshal</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;  If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t offer this.  You&amp;#x27;re still going to need to login to Github&amp;#x2F;email&amp;#x2F;wherever with your personal password, manage private keys, and stuff like that.  Just say no.</text></item><item><author>gnfargbl</author><text>If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be &amp;quot;Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can&amp;#x27;t let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>everforward</author><text>I think there are absolutely a list of things that I don&amp;#x27;t want the company doing on my hardware, but I&amp;#x27;m okay with on their hardware.&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, remote wipes&amp;#x2F;resets make sense.  Frankly, I prefer the company has that option, just in case I lose my work laptop.  Encryption should cover it, but I&amp;#x27;ll take the backup.&lt;p&gt;Compliance agents also have a legitimate reason to exist, but I don&amp;#x27;t want them on my personal PC.  Some places maintain lists of allowed software (I think in part so they can track&amp;#x2F;inventory them for compliance stuff).  I respect that they have the right to restrict what I install on my work laptop, but I reserve the right to install whatever I please on my own computer.&lt;p&gt;It would also not be insane for a company to do automated backups of company laptops to company servers.  You want a way for Joe in marketing to get his data back when his cat pees on his laptop.  I do not want all my personal documents on company servers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?</title><text>I work from home in the EU as a freelancer for a US startup.&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, an email came out of the blue, demanding that I install an &amp;quot;agent&amp;quot; from a company named &amp;quot;Drata&amp;quot;* on my laptop. The motivation is that my client badly want a SOC 2 certification.&lt;p&gt;I have worked as a developer for more than 30 years. Tiny shops. Startups. Major league. I have never even heard about someone putting agents on developers laptops.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pretty pissed off. So are the teams I work with.&lt;p&gt;Is this the new normal now?&lt;p&gt;Just for the record: I don&amp;#x27;t have credentials to production systems, and I don&amp;#x27;t work with production data. I just figure out how to transform dreams into code, I write parts of that code, and then I fix it as needed.&lt;p&gt;* Drata (https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drata.com&amp;#x2F;about) is on a &amp;quot;Mission to Help Build Trust Across the Internet&amp;quot;. Their business model (in my case) seems to be to take money from companies to spy on their employees&amp;#x2F;contractors, and then they sell the employees&amp;#x2F;contractors private information to &amp;quot;targeted advertising&amp;quot;. When I confronted them about this, they replied: &amp;quot;Feel free to reach out to your Drata administrator internally with concerns. Do note, that when your company contracted with Drata, any edits or redlines they provided will prevail for all employees of your company.&amp;quot; - basically to just bend over and smile.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>byron4242</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a widespread practice that companies provide laptops to contractors to compartmentalize the way they interact with the company&amp;#x27;s IT.  But I&amp;#x27;m really quite opposed to it.&lt;p&gt;At one point I had 3 sets of machines: Two different 14&amp;quot; laptops from two different clients and my own machines.  At some point you simply run out of space on your desk and end up constantly either working on screens that are too small (14&amp;quot; really isn&amp;#x27;t enough to be productive), or plugging laptops in to and out of screens as you&amp;#x27;re context-switching.  Carrying three laptops with you when you&amp;#x27;re travelling if you anticipate having to work for both clients during that timeframe is also not exactly my definition of great fun.  And you end up duplicating a lot of effort around managing that IT, like tweaking settings the way you like them etc.&lt;p&gt;The argument &amp;quot;we own this laptop, so we can do with it whatever we want, including spying on you&amp;quot; is just not valid.  They&amp;#x27;re either doing things that I&amp;#x27;m okay with, in which case I&amp;#x27;m okay doing it on my own hardware.  Or they&amp;#x27;re doing things I&amp;#x27;m opposed to, in which case I&amp;#x27;m opposed to it no matter who owns the hardware.&lt;p&gt;Also: In many European countries, authorities are clamping down hard on practices whereby companies pass people off as contractors who really are employees.  They usually work off of lists of criteria of what makes an employee, and if you fit too many of those criteria while, on paper, passing yourself off as a contractor, then you and your client can be in for a world of pain.  One of the criteria that makes you look more like a contractor and less like an employee to the government is providing your own facilities like the computer you work with.&lt;p&gt;And, last but not least, it&amp;#x27;s just not a good way of dealing with the planet&amp;#x27;s resources.</text></item><item><author>SkyMarshal</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;  If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t offer this.  You&amp;#x27;re still going to need to login to Github&amp;#x2F;email&amp;#x2F;wherever with your personal password, manage private keys, and stuff like that.  Just say no.</text></item><item><author>gnfargbl</author><text>If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be &amp;quot;Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can&amp;#x27;t let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>300bps</author><text>I have a dedicated laptop for a client that is in a room of my basement. I remote into it from my personal machine whenever I do work for them. Works very well!</text></comment>