Following the October cyberattack, Free put an end to teleworking for employees in its call centers. For unions, the data leak is just a pretext to deprive employees of remote work. This is why a strike was organized within the centers concerned.
Free has decided to prohibit teleworking for employees of its call centers, Free Proxi and Free Network. Since the end of November, employees responsible for supporting subscribers are no longer authorized to stay at home. They must go to the operator’s premises.
This decision is a direct result of the cyberattack that hit Free in October. Cybercriminals have in fact managed to penetrate the group’s systems to exfiltrate the personal data of 19 million subscribers. In the process, the hackers were able to collect the IBAN addresses of five million customers. Some of this sensitive data ended up on a black market, the essential BreachForums.
Recently, an investigation was able to determine that the attack was based on collecting OpenVPN credentials from one of the customer service employees. With these identifiers, the hackers were able to trap other employees, which opened the doors to Free’s data directories. It is in reaction to this major offensive that Free put an end to teleworking. Xavier Niel’s operator obviously believes that stopping remote working should improve the security of its infrastructures.
Also read: Free launches its very high-speed 5G Wi-Fi 7 Box with TV for €29.99 per month
A strike against the end of teleworking at Free
The turnaround of Free, who had widespread teleworking in 2021 in the context of the health crisis, provoked the anger of the unions. As reported by our colleagues from France 3, the CGT encouraged call center employees in Marseille, Paris and Bordeaux to strike dated Monday December 9, 2024 to show their disagreement. For two hours, employees stopped working and answering calls.
In a press release shared on X, the CGT regrets that “the group’s inability to set up secure VPNs” ends up penalizing employees, in a context of “drastic drop in staff”. The union believes that cybersecurity is just a pretext.
Questioned by France 3, Mohamed Ennourine, CFTC union delegate, affirms that “management stopped us from teleworking for cybersecurity reasons”. According to the unions, remote work “was still a social achievement which brought a lot of comfort to employees in their private and professional lives”. At Certicol, the Free subsidiary in Marseille, it is estimated that Free removes “all the advantages little by little” and exercises “a form of pressure, of blackmail” on employees to push them to “leave ship of their own accord or seek something elsewhere”.
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