Wells Fargo employees using ‘mouse movers’ are getting caught and fired

according to a From the report Bloomberg Based on “disclosures filed with” Financial Industry Regulatory AuthorityLast month, Wells Fargo fired “more than a dozen employees” after an investigation found they were using devices or apps to simulate productivity on their computers. It is not known how more than a dozen employees had jobs where their productivity could be measured by mouse movements.

FINRA’s disclosure did not reveal whether the terminated employees were caught using these tools while working remotely. According to BloombergBut they were all part of Wells Fargo’s “asset and investment management unit.”

The devices and software in question have existed for years, but their popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic, when many employees suddenly found themselves working from home without any personal supervision. Readily available online, the devices and apps are often referred to as “mouse movers” or “mouse jigglers” because they can autonomously move a computer’s cursor or trigger phantom keyboard entries without any human intervention.

Many companies rely on software to monitor these inputs to ensure that remote workers are actually at their computers and being productive, and as remote work continues even after the pandemic, these monitoring tools have now become more sophisticated with the ability to recognize patterns, no matter how random, that a “mouse jiggler” is in use.

It’s a cat and mouse game (no pun intended) that will continue to evolve as both the “mouse jiggler” and the detection tools get better. There may never be a clear winner, but as remote work continues to grow in popularity, companies will have to redefine how they measure productivity for employees outside of the office.