UK cops busted for faking productivity while working from home by holding down keys on keyboard — 26 officers and staff reportedly caught trying to trick keylogging software

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The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in the U.K. has recently suspended work-from-home privileges for the entire department after several officers, staff, and contractors were discovered to be cheating the system. According to The Register, at least 26 people are accused of misconduct after an anti-corruption investigation found that they were likely “key jamming” — using an object to hold a key down on the keyboard — to fake productivity.

“The abnormal keystroke behavior comes from repeated key presses and could be from an item left on a keypad, pressing down one key,” GMP Chief Constable Terry Woods said in a statement. “Our communities deserve to see value for money, and where deliberate behavior is proven, you can be confident we will take decisive action in this matter.” These instances were discovered after the department installed keyloggers to ensure that work-issued laptops and other devices are only used for official business.

“The data from the FO’s (former officer’s) laptop shows lengthy periods where the only activity is single keystrokes,” the report on Thubron’s misconduct hearing said. Before his resignation, Thubron reportedly pressed the H key over 30 times and the I key over 16,000 times across different occasions between December 2024 and January 2025.

However, it’s also more prone to abuse, mainly as staff members working outside the office aren’t observed by their colleagues and supervisors. For example, Wells Fargo fired more than a dozen employees in 2024 after they were discovered using mouse jiggers and keyboard simulators to evade monitoring software.

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

4 Comments Comment from the forums

KennyRedSocks

Companies understandably want to avoid this by using tools like screen recorders and keyloggers

Or they could just review their work.
Reply
USAFRet

KennyRedSocks said:
Or they could just review their work.
In the eyes of the company, Why not both?
Reply
jg.millirem

But news like this definitely makes it harder for management to implement work from home.

Remote workers usually employ evasion methods like this because of arbitrary management policies about how long or often someone should be typing, rather than judging employee performance based on their output. Note, critically, that the reporting doesn’t say if the employees were actually underperforming.

It’s another dumb control-freak escalation path against workers initiated by owners and managers.
Reply
USAFRet

jg.millirem said:
Remote workers usually employ evasion methods like this because of arbitrary management policies about how long or often someone should be typing, rather than judging employee performance based on their output. Note, critically, that the reporting doesn’t say if the employees were actually underperforming.

It’s another dumb control-freak escalation path against workers initiated by owners and managers.
And other remote workers employ evasion methods so they can just screw off all day.
Reply