Teams’ invasive Wi‑Fi tracking sparks backlash as users say Microsoft crossed a line — “There must be a team at Microsoft tasked with making Teams worse”
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-teams/microsoft-teams-new-wi-fi-tracking-tool-feels-way-too-invasive-and-people-are-right-to-be-uneasy-there-must-be-a-team-at-microsoft-tasked-with-making-teams-worseOpen linkView original on reddthat.com1067
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Only one team working to make Teams worse???
They have achieved higher productivity by not using teams themselves.
You've got it reversed. Switching to Teams greatly hastened development, as the team's newfound vitriol and frustration could be channeled toward the end user in a neverending feedback loop.
Literally! They were told to return to office to achieve higher productivity (it was circling the news around September?)
It was obviously just a corpo stealth layoff but imagine being told as a Teams developer that Teams is not good enough for remote work
Zoom did this already
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaconn/2023/08/21/zoom-gave-up-on-remote-work---but-remote-work-was-never-the-problem/
But zoom sucks worse than Teams so I don't blame them
Yes they had an all hands Teams Meeting to say that the Teams Team could no longer work on Teams using Teams remotely from home. Now they need to be part of a team by working in Teams on Teams remotely all over the world from the Teams corporate offices.
I read this in the Denholm Reynholm voice: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ejjtlnZOdgo
Just one team working on Teams, and they are doing their best to make it worse.
I for one encourage them, it apparently needs to be even worse before my work will consider changing
They're asking Copilot for help, so have achieved 10x productivity.
yaeh… team Microslop…
This is what I gathered on the subject, feel free to correct if anything is wrong:
The WiFi tracking works by scanning for nearby WiFi networks, identifying which routers are nearby and their signal strengths, matching those against their database of known WiFi access points, and using that data to estimate your location.
For now the feature will be off by default, first has to be enabled by your company, and then the user has to opt in for it to be used.
For those who are required to use Microsoft products, it can by bypassed by using a wired Ethernet connection and not using Teams on any devices using a wireless connection.
Edit: As @[email protected] pointed out, Microsoft is not using WiFi positioning systems to determine location, but rather updating your location to “in the office” or not depending on whether your device is connected to one of the organization’s WiFi SSIDs.
same go for the web browser based teams, or is this just the "app"?
The browser version shouldn't be able to access this info.
Until Edge updates and silently turns it on
Unlikely, browser vendors are very careful adding such APIs, and MS doesn't have the pull Google does.
A simple fix is, of course, not to use Edge.
That doesn’t at all match the documentation.
The organization will configure a list of Wi-Fi SSIDs. When your device connects to one of those, the Teams location would be updated to “in the office”.
That’s it. No complex triangulation, no pinpoint locating. Just “are you connected to the office network or not”.
Also, if you don’t want to be tracked in this way, just don’t participate. If your organization sets a policy to opt you in automatically, click the option to opt out. If they give the offer to opt in, just don’t.
I know it’s hip to hate on Microsoft, but we should at least discuss things based on the truth, not wild assumptions and misinformation.
Thanks for the clarification. I wrongly assumed Microsoft was using Wi-Fi positioning systems (which is used for geolocation, just not in this particular case) instead of reading their documentation.
I’ll update the comment.
I also don’t think most workplaces are going to punish you for opting out of this feature even if organizational policy requires it to be enabled.
So basically the same every Android phone does. Google has done this kind of tracking since 2007
Yes but now it reports to your employer.
I don't quite get the uproar for this.
The issue is your employees trying to force RTO. Whether this goes through or is cancelled - your employer will still want to track your RTO.
The only solution, if you are privileged enough, is to work somewhere else.
I did. I make less but I have more free time, and less stress. My employer doesn't give a fuck where I am so long as the work gets done.
Windows itself already does this type of tracking to determine your time zone.
Please add _nomap to the end of your SSID (the name of your wifi network) if you don't want Google to use it in their tracking mechanisms.
Please add _optout anywhere in your SSID if you don't want Microsoft to use it in their tracking mechanisms.
If your SSID is Network change it to Network_optout_nomap
Ridiculous as fuck, but that's what they came up with. I have no idea what other services use to block their Wifi collectors, but these 2 are very prominent anyway.
I look forward to this feature being deployed in hospitals. It's going to fail so hard and generate so many tickets.
Why?
Is it important that their team's location be up to date?
Surely a hospital has better methods for tracking independently of teams
Lots of people will skim or hear about the feature and think something is broken when it works as poorly as intended. Hospitals have lots of people, lots of APs(some move), weird layouts and signal propogation. Great place to confuse. Colleges have the potential to be funnier.
If you require someone to opt-in, they're no longer "opting in"
But you clicked the terms and conditions popup, so you are our slave now.
So glad I only use Teams in a browser, fuck this bullshit.
Don't install Teams.
Teams comes pre installed with windows these days.
I recommend KDE Plasma on any linux distribution that comes with it for people interested in recovering their digital sovereignty.
If people moved to Linux and used FOSS software, these privacy violations wouldn't even be a problem.
Most people who use teams do so on work devices, I can't just install Linux on it.
I cant even delete a shortcut on my work microslop machine
Yeah, of course.
You think my employer would let me use Linux? Creeping on employees is how management feels important.
I wouldn't use Teams personally unless under extreme duress. Unfortunately professionally it is the norm.
Disable your laptop webcam and microphone, use headset instead. I'll be looking to see if I can switch to Teams web.
I remember how a subcontractor's company called me with a lot of private information I assume the subcontractor had spoken to them about. The subcontractor had no clue about it, which completely changed how I had been perceiving the situation. The problem is companies are using the excuse of keeping tabs on their workers to perform outright continuous surveillance on them and try to see how they can exploit any and all information they can salvage for their benefit, which becomes a problem when there is no clear division between personal and professional space.
I'm starting to feel like everything I do at work is under duress.
That's the point, under capitalism.
For the next year or so.
State law in California (and soon, Colorado), as well as UK and EU laws, are beginning to require OSs to spy on users and developers. Privacy-focused Linux and FOSS software will soon be deemed illegal in these jurisdictions. Which will make it a liability for companies, and force them back to shitty commercial offerings.
There is a difference betwen the version for corporate (MS365 Business) and the consumer version.
Yes, they have the same name.
Yes, it's confusing.
You can't even install it on Linux, they killed the native app years ago and now tell you to use the browser version
And then every link asks if you want to open in app, three extra clicks but worth it
The Linux client never worked in my experience anyway. In no coincidence, their Teams in browser never seemed to work in Linux either until a little after they killed the native app. I wonder if there were enough important clients that needed support for it and they caved and made it work.
I don't install anything that's not FOSS anymore. Pretty much all of it is spyware at this point, because they can monetize it, and because users don't give a fuck.
Good news is, most of the time, you don't have to.
I'm glad my work PC only operates in flight mode.
I swear people do not understand the point of what microsoft does.
There isn't a team tasked with making teams worse. They're tasked with extracting all possible value out of their product. Part of that value is infromation like where you are, what you're doing, what you're talking about, what you search for, what you actually do for your job, who is around you, what they talk about, where they are, what they are doing, what they search for, and what they do for their job and how everyone spends their money.
All of this is incredibly valuable data to governments, businesses and private individuals that want to advertise, suppress dissenting political voices, enhance useful dissenting political voices, and otherwise manipulate global influence.
They just don't want you to think about declining any permissions, triggering regulatory action, or switching to another platform.
That's true. Their mission is not explicitly to make it worse, but to continually maximize value at all costs. Eventually, software usability has to be one of the costs.
”Eventually”
As if Teams was ever a usable product.
Same thing with extra steps.
Which is what LinkedIn is for by the way. In terms of data gathering. And to keep you on the platform.
I thought LinkedIn was for 50 year old middle managers to post their opinions on the evils of socialism.
The various news sites out there that want to spread their own version of influence and generate their own revenue take this kind of information and use it to see how you click on things, what drives your engagement, what you will go on to share with others, and how you talk about all of it. It's all tied together.
Big money interests run basically everything in this world. We are just cattle, we will always be just cattle. I'm in countless databases like all of you, and we're all fucked by the system we think we might some day to cheat our way above the other rats. The noose is tied tight though... there's not much room left to struggle. It's too late to escape it. Palantir and Flock are here to close the loop and they aren't going anywhere, even if the street cameras are likely to be hidden in the future and more tamper proof rather than obvious to the public. Doesn't matter if the laws change to ban it or you can convince local government to not get involved with it - it's way too easy to hide cameras with modern technology. Just give it time and your credit score and auto insurance will incorporate flock data ;)
Insurance is already pushing in-car monitoring for discounts.
They're already paying all the manufacturers for the driver telemetry anyway, probably through third party brokers because everything must be obfuscated.
I think they like having multiple layers of confirmation that way if one is regulated away for some reason like 'privacy' or 'technically anyone could be driving' then they have fallbacks and legal deniability for the data being inherently flawed.
God damn it, at work they pay us to put that stuff on our personal phones... maybe I've been a bit too lenient on that, maybe I should get a work phone.
Never, ever, cross the personal/work barrier. I have seen so much abuse when those lines cross.
I agree, but some places there's simply no option. I have a state job, they will under no circumstances provide a phone, but you must have Authenticator. If you won't or can't use a smartphone, you simply don't have a job.
State jobs are interesting. 3/4 the pay of a regular job, but job security like none other, and you barely have to do anything. I spend most of my time doing my moonlighting job to supplement my income.
FYI, Microslop does support Aegis (fully open source, no spyware) authenticator.
It is buried in the options, but the option is there when adding another MFA device. It won't say Aegis, but just look for the "fuck you, Microslop, I brought my own" option at each stage of adding MFA.
They don't want to support it, but if they drop support, they will drop support for various hardware token vendors at the same time, and they should get thoroughly sued by those vendors, if they do.
In my company they allow you to use duo key as alternate. I’m guessing your company doesn’t? Could be worth asking.
What if its on your phone work account? That's totally sandboxed
It seems safer on iPhone than Android. I'd still avoid it due to subpoenas.
I haven't signed into anything work related on my phone since we switched to Google.
Anything work requires goes on my tablet.
This is illegal in Norway :)
And Germany.
Having Teams remind you that, during session recordings, your video and what you say can be used by Microsoft for whatever purpose they want, including (but not limited to) training AI.
This wasn't the line that was crossed? Seeing/hearing your likeness in the next generated AI / copilot commercial, because you needed to consent in order to work. This is "fine" /s
... but having Microsoft know that you're answering Teams messages while on the toilet... yeah, that's where "the line gets crossed" (eyeroll)
We need to wake-up and drop this technological cancer.
edit: a word
"It's okay, because it's Microsoft" is management's response when I raise a concern at work.
Heaven forbid you use an open source tool that isn't on the software whitelist yet
"It's okay, because it's Microsoft"
"You mean the mass surveillance corporation under the control of the nazis?"
I worked on a large(ish) contract (tens of millions) with one of Microsoft’s engineering teams where they were implementing an Azure managed version of software we produced. I would regularly refuse to install teams at the meetings, using teams in-browser only.
It also ensured that the technical project manager had to be the one to transcribe anything in our notes into whatever tools Microsoft was using.
While it was never said, the Microsoft engineers seemed to completely understand and never pushed back against my refusal to a) install crapware and b) not take on work that wasn’t mine.
Not using teams: win win.
I tried to do this for a safety meeting, Teams is also broken in browsers. I'm not sure if intentional or incompetence.
How about intentional incompetence
Teams in browser is the only way that I use it either, and it isn't "broken" like it used to be, but you need to use a Chromium based browser. This is typical Microsoft bullshit with only truly supporting "their" browser, luckily they don't actually make an actual browser anymore so you can use any of the better Chromium browsers.
so, it's broken. Either buggy, or just straight up not follow common web standards
Well, it used to be broken on ALL browsers in Linux, so let's just go with less broken, which is a high mark for most MS software. MS and following standards are like oil and water.
I surprisingly haven't had any issues using Teams on Firefox but maybe I'm just lucky...? Been using it for months now after uninstalling the app.
I had nothing BUT problems with it, but I haven't tried it in about six months as I started using Teams it in a chromium based browser. I only need to use Teams when working with strictly MS focused companies (i.e. not ours), so it isn't a daily hassle anyway.
I too had problems and used a chromium just for teams, but those problems seem to have gone away. It's terribly slow to load up and join in a Firefox but perhaps that is normal, and then it works
They've crossed the line a long long time ago. All microslop products are straight up unusable.
Microsoft: Our product is not our software. It's you!
I'm their software?
The users aren't the customers. The customers are the users' bosses.
And or some random dude in procurement.
My employer has the usual setup of M365 enterprise shit running on Dell laptops.
Fortunately we devs are able to "dual boot" to run Linux on our machines, since our product is an embedded Linux system. (has anybody seen my Windows partition btw? I can't even find anything NTFS formatted, whoopsie!)
All that background info is just so I can pay Microsoft a compliment, even if it has asterisks all over it:
The entire Microsoft suite works just fine in a browser, and in LibreWolf too! I do typically add some permissions for those sites for convenience, since librewolf is privacy/tracking hardened (firefox fork) out of the box. I use Teams and Outlook every day, and occasionally will drop a file into OneDrive or edit something in MS Office. I don't write many office-format documents though, so I'm more likely to be in LibreOffice or a PDF viewer just reading a doc.
You know how in media streaming and gaming there's that balance of whether it is more convenient to be a paying customer versus pirate everything?
Microsoft's stuff is literally better to use in Linux. Even if I need to test the Windows build of something, a VM is SO much more convenient. And I'm not even logged into the microsoft shit on that. If I need something from OneDrive, I go to the browser there too.
Honestly, I would screen potential employers by whether they are a Microsoft shop or not. Fuck ‘em.
nice to have that sort of freedom, since the majority of companies use some Microsoft products
i thought the same, but now working at a place using google/slack/zoom isn’t much better. pretty much all corporate software is feature creep bloated slop these days.
Literally zero problems with slack and goog (at corpo). Security opted out of AI shit and that was it.
Riiight. And what makes you trust Googles word so fervently?
Yesterday I read on here that Microsoft doesn't let their teams use Teams.
They are called stakeholders.
Of course there is, this guy leads it
And is why we don't use Microsoft products.
Probably the same pick me they put in charge of Xbox.
Teams can be worse?
You’re doubting Microsoft’s ability to make a product worse?
No, they have shown again and again, that they are capable of the impossible, if it comes to making things worse.
But still, we are talking Teams.
"Scientist invents new, even smellier, dog poo."
Just add more rotting eggs.
Oh!
There have been teams at Microsoft making everything worse since 1998. Why is this news?
Employees arent the ones paying for Teams, so why would they care? Teams could openly market itself as remote work surveillance tool for employers and they'd gobble that shit up.
So many other apps do this already, including the OS. This is changing your Teams status for you, so coworkers can see if you’re in the office or not.
If your hybrid wfh office has any sort of reservation system then this is likely already happening.
I was gonna use teams for a few groups of people, but fuck this noise. What are the best alternatives? Something like slack or discord but those have their issues too
There are tons of alternatives. As for how good they are I have no idea. It feels like every other day a new discord alternative is highlighted here. But as of now I don't believe there's any drop in replacement for discord/teams, but that is not to say you shouldn't seek out something that is good enough.
The closest drop in replacement for discord is fluxer, when his servers aren't being overwhelmed that is.
Try Stoat, or Matrix.
To be fair, this is barely a feature. If you are on WIFI anyone that really cares knows where you are already
Exactly. I already don't use the work wifi because they don't need to know how much I use Lemmy while at work.
you could use a VPN though. protonvpn has measures to work around network restrictions, or set up a wireguard at home, and if they would block it, tell them you need it for work. your own notes related to the trade and your task planning tool stored on your homeserver, or something like that.
but this assumes you work in tech
Before Teams when Evilcorp was using Skype for business the app would update our location within the building.
Microslop
This feel like 1 office shooting away from a huge settlement....
This is their promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ
There’s a web client. I’ll use that from now on if I have to. Should I use any particular browser that prevents access to WiFi details?
I wonder if the web client can be bookmarked to my desktop with the Teams icon.
I've been using web client for work because the app takes seemingly over 50% of my laptop's resources. Went from waiting 2-3 minutes for Teams to open at the beginning of the day to 10 seconds. Highly recommend.
firefox or a fork of it, but I would be surprised if teams could read wifi info even in chrome. this is about when you install it as a desktop app, so that it can collect more data and consume more memory than it would otherwise.
Productivity boosters and surveillance go hand in hand.
Linux Mint is very easy to use.
I had the unfortunate requirement to use Teams for about 3 months. I seriously cannot comprehend how a business exec has the audacity to approve it to be used as a company's chat, specially with Slack being the other obvious option, as well as the few open source and self hosted ones. I really wish Teams was nuked. The worst experience I have ever had with a software.
And the name of that team: Microsoft
There are ten thousand teams at Microsoft making Teams worse.
No worries, I use Linux for work and privately :)
Corporations have done this for decades. Literally.
This is you getting extra pissy because someone wrote an article you only half understand to rile you up.
"Everyone else is doing it" is not a good excuse.
This entire thread is "tell me you've never worked with an ocio in operations" without saying the words. Clearly none of you work in technology and probably screech every time there is a big privacy breach. Location contextual requests are basic shit that nearly every company dealing with any sort of technology compliance does.