Can Your Employer Predict Your Resignation? Inside Deepin's Employee Monitoring System

Incident Overview

A netizen reported being fired on the first day of work because their manager discovered they were submitting job applications during office hours.

The post included screenshots of a system that claims to detect employees' resignation tendencies, allegedly provided by Deepin, a company specializing in enterprise network security, cloud computing, and IT infrastructure.

Deepin's Employee‑Resignation Monitoring System

The system collects browsing behavior from employee terminals, analyzes patterns such as frequent visits to job portals, resume submissions, and keyword‑rich chat messages, and flags potential turnover risk.

Images showed logs of an employee named "Ju" who visited job sites 23 times, submitted nine resumes, and generated 254 keyword‑matched chat records, with the ability for employers to preview and download submitted resumes.

Another screenshot displayed a "Behavior Perception System" featuring modules like log center, bandwidth analysis, shutdown detection, data leakage tracing, resignation tendency analysis, network usage posture, and work efficiency, with a plus sign indicating future feature additions.

Deepin's Patent Application

Deepin filed a patent in March 2018 titled "A method, device, equipment, and storage medium for resignation tendency analysis," publicly disclosed in August 2018. The abstract describes acquiring internet behavior data from employee devices and determining whether the data indicates resignation‑related behavior.

Deepin's sales team claims the solution is legal and widely used by many companies.

Public Reaction

Netizens expressed alarm, questioning whether employees are being treated as mere tools and raising concerns about privacy violations.

Service Removal and Aftermath

Following the exposure, references to the monitoring system on Deepin's website and related case studies (e.g., with China Everbright Bank Shenzhen Branch, Sina, and East China Normal University) disappeared or returned 404 errors, suggesting the service was quietly taken down.

The incident serves as a warning to avoid handling personal matters on company devices or networks.

References

https://static.cdsb.com/micropub/Articles/202202/6a14425142c0a2b32e6f8ad9cce92767.html

http://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/gsnews/2022-02-14/doc-ikyakumy5811962.shtml

http://finance.sina.com.cn/china/2022-02-12/doc-ikyakumy5576930.shtml