Bosses can not only legally monitor your company email and internet browser history, they can also log keystrokes to check your productivity and even see what you type on private services like Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter. If you have a work cellphone, your employer can pinpoint your precise location through GPS. A survey from the American Management Association found that at least 66 percent of U.S. companies monitor their employees’ internet use, 45 percent log keystrokes, and 43 percent track employee emails. In 2009, UPS fitted its delivery trucks with about 200 sensors that track everything from driving speeds to stop times. This allowed the firm to find out which drivers were sneaking breaks, and to determine how many deliveries could be squeezed into one day. Within four years, the company was handling 1.4 million additional packages a day with 1,000 fewer drivers. Employees, of course, resent the relentless monitoring. One UPS driver told Harper’s that the company used performance metrics like “a mental whip,” adding, “People get intimidated and they work faster.” A 2013 study of five chain restaurants found that eateries that used point-of-sale surveillance systems saw a 22 percent drop in theft on average, and a 7 percent increase in revenue.

All this monitoring is done automatically: software programs scan employee’s email accounts and computer files and alert supervisors to anything inappropriate, such as an employee visiting a pornographic website. The American Management Association says a quarter of large and midsize firms have fired employees for misusing office email or the internet. There are effectively no restraints or legal protections against prying employers. Employment experts say workers should avoid doing anything on their company computer or phone that they wouldn’t want their superiors to see. You have to assume you’re being monitored.

On the other hand, it’s a tricky balance — if employees discover their boss has been spying on Google searches they thought were private, office morale can plummet. “Right at the heart of all of this is trust,” says Ken Oehler of Aon Hewitt, a human-capital consulting firm. “What sort of message does it send that they need to monitor [workers’] desktops?” Companies might treat workers as mechanical ciphers, but in the end the workers has the last laugh – the bankruptcy of the company.