Stop work remote wiping my devices connected to exchange server

Question

I have two devices that are my own personal devices that I connect to my works exchange server. One is my iPhone and the other my macbook. I have just learnt that this means my phone can be remote wiped and who knows what else. I'm not happy with this so want to completely remove exchange and any control they have over my devices.

For the iPhone I'm thinking I can just delete the exchange account. I just logged into OWA and can see my phone listed. It also says a "full policy" has been applied which is a bit scary. Will deleting the excahnge account be enough to get back full control of my phone?

Secondly is there anything similar on the macbook? I connect to exchange using the mail and calendar applications. I think I will just delete both accounts anyway but is there anything else I might need to do? The macbook doesn't show up in OWA so maybe it doesn't work the same.

Answer 1

If you connect an mobile phone to an Exchange server it can be managed remotly. But its not the same like a BlackBerry. The native ActiveSync Protokoll allows only a very small subset of "management features" (if not an MDM like AirWatch is involved). So an Exchange Administrator might able to perform a full reset from the device in case you lost it.

But as your question was focusing more on "how to remove" the access, then you are right. Unenrolling the device via owa (and/or removing the account in your iphone) will disconnect the device from the server.

And the reason why your MacBook didn´t come up in OWA is due to the reason that it didn´t use ActiveSync (it should use Outlook Anywhere by the way).

So summary:

• Yes removing the device via OWA
• Removing the connected Mailbox on both devices

Should be enough on your side to prevent that your administrator might interact with the device somehow.

By the way the administrator trust you that you keep your device healthy and do not install any malware. So you should also trust the administrator that he didn´t harm your phone. Its a coexistence ;-)