Recapping with my boss after vacation and he jokingly gave me a hard time for working during vacation. I told him that for once I did not do any work on vacation, even left my laptop at home. He said that I.T. sent him a Teams messages asking if I was in the Dominican.

How would they know that ?

- I do email via my phone and iPad
- I never logged into VPN
- It’s my phone, not company issued

That's creepy.

Doesn’t sending email include the IP address of the device that was used to send it? Sounds like IT is on the ball looking at where incoming emails are coming from and verified with your boss that it was really you sending them. If you didn’t send any emails to work, then I have no idea.

Most likely done with your phone. If it is an iPhone, go into settings, find the privacy and security tab, the. Location services. You will then get a list of all the apps that have your location shared. There will likely be a work app that is getting that information for your IT department.

If you sent any emails while in the Dominican, they can tell from there as well.

We are the Borg. Resistance is futile!

Many IT departments now look at email login location information to prevent fraud. One department I know of walls off all nations except the US. If you leave the country on vacation, they will remove the block on the country or countries you will be visiting so that you can maintain communications. Essentially, it is a strategy to limit email hacking.

It is probably from the emails you sent. Your IT people are on top of things. Do you have an app on your iPad to access your company network?

My iPad location is tracked my my company. we have a world wide security group (WWSG) that monitors, well, the world, and has contacted me through my iPad asking me if I was safe or if I needed assistance when I stayed home during a hurricane. My old boss was in France during some riots and got the same query.
But its not like just anyone including my management can just check my location. It is a highly restricted function. When i worked in our mobility program I had super-user access to our mobility management software to enroll and manage devices into our system and I couldn’t see any of that info. It required administrator access to assign those permissions and in the 3 years I was involved with mobility across the company, I never knew of anyone who has that access.

The email application that you use to access company mail from your personal phone and/or iPad, was it provided to you by the company? If so, that's how.

I worked for a financial services company. Employees could access corporate email on their personal phone/tablet only through an app that was "ringfenced". Think about the app as a sandbox, enter the borders of that sandbox and it is controlled by the company. If your device is stolen or their is questionable activity, the company can prevent access from the sandbox. While in the sandbox, the company will use IP addresses and other network identifiers to determine location. All Caribbean Islands are suspect and therefore would generate an alert to the IT staff. In the case of my company, access from locations outside of the US was blocked.

FWIW, most companies set the app to track only if the app is used, a reasonable compromise that allows employee access without overreaching. The sandboxes do have the capability to track full time. I have worked with a few Cybersecurity zealots that would track 100% of the time. Typically legal staff will reign them in.

outlook tracks your IP when you use it.

You used your phone and iPad to log into work email. This is easily tracked.

quote:

He said that I.T. sent him a Teams messages asking if I was in the Dominican.

How would they know that ?

Could have been an inadvertent slip of the tongue that someone overheard, then it got around. Nothing to do with any hardware.

I left the country and IT sent me a message asking if I was out of the country. Outlook on my phone connected. They actually sent me an email asking if I was in XXXx country and if I wasn’t they were locking my email address. Apparently IP addresses from out of the country trip alarm bells.