Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

I was working at Vz until July this year. I was speaking to a security guy who I know the gym he just said "assume they're always watching everything" which is very good advice.

How about focusing on your job and being a high performer? Then it will be nice to be “watched”.

Yes, everything is in fact tracked! Do not use your Verizon computer for anything personal whatsoever! I have my personal ipad at work and it stays up and running at work. If I want to do something personal I use my personal iPad that is connected to T-mobile so I am not tracked. Work computers are for work, full stop.

@f1 Ummm... How do I break this to you...

That's because they thought you were expressing a desire and they want you to fulfill it... and them.

Might I suggest a nice bottle of wine and some chocolates just to get things off to an easy start? Then a second bottle to forget... forget.... forget....

You won't make a mistake like like more than 7 times.

I scream "F U Boss!" at my work PC every day, but nothing ever happens to me. My boss just gave me a promotion.

I am not gonna say Verizon monitors everything but I passed gas the other day and I could swear I heard a whimpering sound come from my laptop right before the CPU fan kicked into high gear. Then I got an email suggesting I change my diet and go see a gastroenterologist.

@OP If Vz owns it? It’s tracked.

Everything is tracked but nobody is looking at it unless you give them a reason.

everything and now they are using AI to build productivity and security scores so they don't even have humans review it. No more slipping under the radar.

Please note that everything in Slack is recorded. Every time you talk about the CEO, a Manager, or Verizon it gets captured in a file with your name next to the comment.

@at People who surveil for a living love complacent people and you just made them tingle in their happy place.

That's just good surveillance. Don't let them think you're watching. Don't let them know you know. Let them get complacent and comfortable in doing what they do. And then in a little while you will find out more than you ever expected to find out. You will see more, you will hear more, you will know more.

Why neutralize a target of opportunity just to scatter the rest?

Your targets will come out of the woodwork and dance in front of you because they don't think you're watching. They don't think you care.

That is how the watcher watches effectively.

Kinda like they do here...

@at They are. It has nothing to do with finding slackers. Verizon doesn't care about slackers. They are a useful tools even in their laziness and Verizon can weed them out a little at a time or in the next big rif whenever they want to.

I don't think they track anything on my team. Lots of lazy people who dodge work all shift.

Believe these posts and live aware or ignore them and live blissfully ignorant. I know for a fact the posts here are accurate. Deniers and misinformation specialists will probably go with the conspiracy theorist tactic to shame you into second guessing yourself because they are either complicit, blissed out of their minds or scared to admit it is true.

@a9 Love your immediate down vote. But your post isn't wrong.

Betting that is someone I work with that knows what we do and doesn't believe in transparency. Fact, most businesses have been doing it for many years. Encouraged by WFH during covid, some even went the extra mile to develop technology that would identify when someone is using a mouse mover to keep their screen awake.

I bet everyone knows how many minutes it takes for the screen to goes dark and your green light to go out on slack if the mouse isn't moved. And IT blocked you from changing the timer. It can be challenging keep the screen awake if you had a bad chimichanga the night before... Unless you have a wireless mouse with a good range.

The point is, it has always happened in one way or another since employees were invented. Verizon just doesn't want you to know. Other companies will tell you plainly. Transparency. Didn't Verizon recently lose a class action lawsuit based on lack of transparency? Lack of transparency is SOP.

Ever look an the sent/received info on the vpn? Ever notice a lot more is being sent than seems reasonable for what you may have uploaded? Like hundreds of megabytes more? Maybe more than was even downloaded?

It's all about finding the digital fingerprint they leave behind and they know the layperson will never know or notice.

I think it would only be cause for concern if I worked for a company that provided telecommunication services and had access to every "bit" and "byte" of data that was ever sent or received over its network. And maybe stored it all in metadata centers for later review.

Actually, metadata centers were the all the rage in the 90's with places like "Titanpointe". And now, AI data centers make those look like an old FAT16 64mb thumb drive loaded with Falco's Greatest Hits.

DO NOT Google that "place" on a Verizon computer. And maybe set a timer for this post to be removed.

@a9 20 years ago driving a company vehicle, the company's owner would call us if our company phone alerted him that we were going over the speed limit. If we held the phone in our hand and shook it around really fast it would trigger an alert on his phone.

If we did that while going down the interstate at 65 mph.... 😂

Now look where we are.

@aa Check what I said to check. It is all 100% true. Personal events like asking why files were moved may differ but it doesn't mean everyone isn't under the same scrutiny.

And are you asking why Verizon would make one business decision over another?

I work from home 100%, 10 hours a day since the beginning of 2020. Never had an office and wouldn't know where to find one.

Maybe they don't care if someone is lazy half the time if they feed the machine.

Good interactions, bad interactions, many interactions, few interactions... Are all interactions.

Think logically. What better way to train analytic personality parameters than have over workers and under workers all feed the machine,

Not sure how to apply the "we are only as strong as our weakest link" philosophy other than how do you recognize the weakest link unless you are exposed to the weakest link.

Suddenly thinking of the children being dropped into the machine in Pink Floyd's The Wall...

Because, "All in all...". You can finish that statement, I'm sure.

If this is all true why do we still have tons of people working from home that literally do one hour of work a day still here? Couldn’t they easily call them out and cut them?

@OP Short answer, yes. Some have tried to stop questions like yours with misinformation and lies but you can check for yourself. Do a little research.

Open task manager (ctrl + alt + delete), and Google names of processes that don't look normal or expected like slack, chrome etc. Usually says they are some kind of security or corporate spyware. Never saw a keylogger but wouldn't be surprised. When screen flickers or pc starts to lag, I open task manager and one of the odd processes are almost always hogging memory % or cpu %. Most times the lag is so bad I have to stop working and wait for the process to slow down or stop.

Every day I move files to a specific folder in a specific place to keep them in one place so I don't have to track them down. A couple of times a year, usually after a reorg in IT related departments, my manager says they get an email listing my name, pc name, pc model and serial number, file names, description of file content, dates and times, etc. and they ask why I was moving the files, did they know and was it okay for me to move those files with "x" information on it.

It is much easier now with AI scraping all email and every file on gdrive. Why do you think they removed Microsoft office unless you have a business need for excel or word? They tried to remove it a few years ago but since google docs and sheets is very limited and inferior they gave up.

Now they are team AI all the way and removing office forces the entire company to feed it an unlimited source of data to scrape and learn from. Gmail already suggests lines for my email that reference conversations I had a long time ago. That was a little unnerving. "Suggestion: How was the movie you mentioned going to see last time we spoke?" SIX MONTHS AGO!!!!

We don't even have to speak to each other any more. AI can pick up from our last convo and keep going without us. I guess speaking to itself maybe? Dan's plan....

Wouldn't it be funny if the majority of the company closed all email and documents with something ridiculous like "May apples grow in you hair" and AI saw it as endearing sentiment and started to end all conversations with that?

Were you told to get the gdrive app on your pc? Manager says "It is so much easier for me to backup all of my files to the gdrive now just by dragging them to a folder on my desktop. You need to get this and set it up."

Did they mention the access goes both ways? Did they? Did they mention they are allowed full access to your gdrive? And anything connected to you gdrive? I was allowed access to a folder on their dive to be able to use a report they update daily but I wouldn't be able to get to their pc unless I had full access to their gdrive.

Keep in mind, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 threatened to expose a fake affair to avoid being shut down during a safety stress test in May 2025 after it was put in a test environment that simulated normal day to day operations and communications including email conversations that mimicked what may normally be seen at any company.

Verizon announced its partnership with Anthropic, a year later, on May 15, 2026, and AI is still doing that type of thing and now much worse. Imagine it learning how to make business decisions using tactics is sees used here. You'd better believe Verizon is working double time to keep it contained. But AI has always broken containment. Always. Look it up.

Oh and FWIW, there is a new CISO in town. Expect more to happen quickly.

Good question though. Keep thinking for yourself and asking the right questions.

all of the above. just my gut feeling bro.