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.
Unfortunately for the U.K. police forces, this isn’t the first time that an incident like this has been reported and investigated. Another officer, Detective Constable Niall Thubron of the Durham Constabulary, has been banned from returning to the police force after he resigned in May 2025.
“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.
Remote work has enabled increased productivity, particularly for roles that do not require physical presence. It has also reduced wasted time caused by long commutes and heavy traffic.
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.
Companies understandably want to avoid this by using tools like screen recorders and keyloggers. However, workers are also pushing back, as it would seem that their corporation does not trust them. But news like this definitely makes it harder for management to implement work from home.
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