By automatically taking a photo using the webcam

Mar 30, 2020 14:35 GMT  ·  By

Working for home is for many a dream come true, as they can spend the whole day in their pajamas, watch TV, or do whatever they want without their bosses keeping an eye on them.

But the same thing can be easily done remotely using a service called Sneek.

In essence a video conference tool, Sneek can automatically take a screenshot of whoever is working on a computer at a time that’s defined by the manager themselves. In other words, your boss can use Sneek to take a webcam photo at a custom interface to make sure you’re really working and not doing anything else.

The whole idea behind Sneek was a little different, however. The service can create a wall of people working from home in a specific organization and simply clicking on someone’s (nearly) live photo allows them to connect in a second.

Connecting remote employees

So what Sneek does is actually power the office culture at home, cofounder Del Currie was quoted as saying by Business Insider.

"Sneek was never designed to spy on anyone, we'd be the worst spy company ever considering we named our app 'Sneek,'" Currie said. "We know lots of people will find it an invasion of privacy, we 100% get that, and it's not the solution for those folks, but there's also lots of teams out there who are good friends and want to stay connected when they're working together."

Unsurprisingly (and somewhat sadly), the adoption of the service skyrocketed in the last few weeks, especially as the entire world stayed home due to the coronavirus outbreak.

And with managers still looking into ways to monitor employees, Sneek might come in handy, not necessarily for its main purpose, but just to make sure that everyone is working as expected.