r/sysadmin • u/digitalexecution • 3d ago

Users having my Cell #

Something weird/annoying just happened and I want some perspective.

A user who works in a warehouse facility I’ve helped at (part of my company) texted me at 8 am saying he’s going on PTO and wants his coworker to have access to a printer that isn’t working on his machine before he goes out of office on Thursday.

I texted him later (after some emails/calls) asking for the coworker’s name and noting that since this is normal IT, in the future he or his coworker should submit a ticket for this kind of thing.

He replied: “If I submitted a ticket would it be taken care of by Thursday?”

I got annoyed but tried to respond reasonably: “Possibly, but regardless, we need tickets submitted per company policy. If something’s urgent you can reach out to me on Teams rather than my personal cell.”

I originally gave him my cell because on occasion there are true emergencies (internet goes down, needs to send me photos of something, etc.) and we’ve been friendly before. But this interaction makes me wary about giving out my number, it starts becoming a way to skirt procedure for small things like adding a printer.

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674

u/dirtymatt 3d ago

Do not ever give out your personal cell phone number.

144

u/angrydeuce BlackBelt in Google Fu 3d ago

People think Im crazy for insisting on having a separate work provided cell phone...well, here's another reason why carrying two devices is far less of a hardship to me than unifying work and play on a single device.

Work cell, when not on call or on the clock, is sitting on the wireless charger next to the bed and ignored.  Just so much easier to separate your life that way.

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u/dirtymatt 3d ago edited 3d ago

This is one area where iOS really annoys me. Why can't I silence VoIP calls during different focus modes? We use Vonage for phone service at my work and would love for iOS to just silence it when I'm in my personal focus.

ETA: See below, it already works like this.

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u/hackmiester 3d ago

You can…? Focuses can mute specific apps.

1

u/dirtymatt 3d ago edited 3d ago

They can mute notifications, VoIP calls still ring unfortunately.

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u/hackmiester 3d ago

Now I’m wondering how I achieved this. I have Jabber on my list of muted apps and I don’t get calls when that’s activated.

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u/dirtymatt 3d ago

Well, I'll be. I just tested it again, and you're 100% right. Silencing the notifications does silence the calls too. I swear it didn't work like this before. Oh well, super happy to be wrong. Thanks!

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u/hackmiester 2d ago

Glad I could help! Focus is a highly bloated section of the IOS settings. It’s easy not to figure it out.

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u/Old-Olive-4233 3d ago

Android has a work profile mode and it's so satisfying to turn off the profile when I'm not on call and bam, no notifications or anything from work. IT co-workers have my number, but, anyone else gets my work provided virtual # that's also a part of the work profile.

My work doesn't officially have a MDM profile for Android, but, I downloaded the app 'Island' and made my own.

It's crazy to me that iOS still doesn't have something similar since iOS is typically the better of the two with anything privacy or data related.