I'll share my experience, even though it's on the pro-monitoring side:

I run a small e-commerce company. It's myself, and two customer service/operations team members that I have hired out of the Philippines. I live in Indonesia (I'm American) and my company serves those in the US.

I made my first hire back in November 2019, and originally just had her paid salary and an expectation of 40/hours a week.

After a while, she started occasionally disappearing for a day or two at a time. Always having some excuse - which I try to understand. But when I'm running a business on US-hours and my only person working in that timezone disappears, it gets hectic quick.

She was doing phenomenal work, but these gaps caused me extreme stress and were affecting my business. I also felt my trust for her disappearing every time left and then came back with an excuse, that sounded legitimate enough, but nevertheless - it was becoming unacceptable. I felt like my payment was not being justified, and that I also was beginning to resent her as my business would suffer and my own mental health was deteriorating. I couldn't rely on her. We had multiple discussions, but when there's an excuse - it's hard to debate that.

In addition, I was finding that some tasks that I could complete very quickly myself - would take her forever or be incomplete.

But I also wanted to be understanding - I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt, and assume her excuses were legitimate.

So I had a two-fold plan:

1) Setup time-tracking software and switch her pay to hourly. I gave a small raise, as well as paid vacation time based on hours worked, as an incentive. I wanted to make the switch, but still make it fair - and if anything, for her to come out ahead.

2) Begin to make headway on hiring a second person so that when these legitimate use-cases pop up, that we're still covered.

I ended up choosing HubStaff - which looking at the chart on the article, appears the least invasive - which makes me happy with my decision.

I have it configured to track applications and websites monitored, screenshoot every 5 minutes or so, and logs keyboard and mouse activity levels, but not actual data. 99% of what I use it for is just the time-tracking, but sometimes when things aren't completed on time - I can take a quick peak and see that yes, it does appear she was busy all day (Or enough - I don't expect people to hammer out 100% productivity - her activity levels usually hang between 30-60%) and was being honest. In addition, now that I've hired a second employee - I can compare their activity levels together to get a better idea on what's normal.

And as for my original experience of her disappearing. She still does that on occasion. But now, since she's not logging in - she's not getting paid, so I can assume it's legitimate. And I have another employee logging on later during the day to ensure there's not a backlog.

I guess my point here is that the tools are only as nefarious as your employer. I'm not looking to infringe on privacy, or micromanage. I very rarely even bother looking at the information it tracks - but it's a reassurance I'm not getting cheated when something awry pops up.