Microsoft Will Remove User Names from 'Productivity Score' Feature After Privacy Backlash (geekwire.com) 37
Microsoft says it will make changes in its new Productivity Score feature, including removing the ability for companies to see data about individual users, to address concerns from privacy experts that the tech giant had effectively rolled out a new tool for snooping on workers. From a report: "Going forward, the communications, meetings, content collaboration, teamwork, and mobility measures in Productivity Score will only aggregate data at the organization level -- providing a clear measure of organization-level adoption of key features," wrote Jared Spataro, Microsoft 365 corporate vice president, in a post this morning. "No one in the organization will be able to use Productivity Score to access data about how an individual user is using apps and services in Microsoft 365." The company rolled out its new "Productivity Score" feature as part of Microsoft 365 in late October. It gives companies data to understand how workers are using and adopting different forms of technology. It made headlines over the past week as reports surfaced that the tool lets managers see individual user data by default. As originally rolled out, Productivity Score turned Microsoft 365 into a "full-fledged workplace surveillance tool," wrote Wolfie Christl of the independent Cracked Labs digital research institute in Vienna, Austria. "Employers/managers can analyze employee activities at the individual level (!), for example, the number of days an employee has been sending emails, using the chat, using 'mentions' in emails etc."
Slimey bastards (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead we'll use totally anonymous numbers. (Score:2)
Like 24601. Or Number 6. Or 0xdafa9077.
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Quote: "If you're concerned about privacy at work, then perhaps you should quit, "
WOW! I REALLY hope your work doesn't include any creative process, because, you know, creative muses ain't working 365/24 for you...
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Experian, along with nearly every other institution that leaked customer data is still around. And they didn't even need creative muses to do it. The fact that they had something worth stealing in the *first* place proves their value in the market.
The only major company I've seen in recent times that has experienced a *demise*, proper, is Purdue Pharmaceuticals for their role in the opioid crises. Corporate information security breaches being the demise of a company? Give me a break.
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You didn't understand my message at all.
I was referring to "creative muses" as in if you work as "designer", or "musician", etc. in the Arts.
If, as the OP meant, you're being tracked for what you write, e-mails you send, etc. WHEN YOU NEED MUSES (creativity), you don't have them 365/24.
Hence, you would "look" not as great worker as, let say, the "printer guy", or "the window cleaner".
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God, you corporate assholes make me sick. People need jobs. They also need dignity, and need to have their basic rights as human beings respected. That includes the right to a certain level of privacy. If a company won't respect that, it doesn't deserve to exist.
Cocksuckers like you give capitalism a bad name.
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There's a few corporate dicks needing to be sucked. Shouldn't you get back to work?
Re:Privacy backlash? In corporations? (Score:4, Funny)
Out of curiosity— did you get your elementary school hall monitor sash framed?
Gotta love this shit. Some people think that the second they give you a buck they own you. This is neither the army nor prison. If you want to control someone that much get into BDSM.
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This has nothing to do with cybersecurity. It's a productivity score.
Productivity Score is the marketing name behind an engine that reports on user activity, to include suspect activity. If you truly think statistics like number of emails sent or received, or the amount and type of traffic flowing out of corporate chat systems has nothing to do with cybersecurity, then please stop speaking on the topic now.
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Productivity depends on how many emails you send, how long you spend chatting on teams? lol are you a fuckin retard?
Office 365 is an ecosystem that specifically provides email, file, and chat services. In other words, what in the FUCK did you expect Microsoft to monitor in this service? Number of smoke breaks?
Some companies can easily track and measure certain employees performance this way. Try not to assume so hard next time, moron.
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But I don't think it's a privacy issue.
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Productivity Score in Office 365 is a corporate business tool, not something you're installing for your 11-year old cousin playing Minecraft. If you're concerned about privacy at work, then perhaps you should quit, because you're really not going to like the employee monitoring requirements listed in your HR manual, or in the IT Security Policy.
Except this isn't a security control or auditing utility, it's just spyware for your corporate nanny. The only people that want to show their bosses the piles of emails they send every day are the people that actually think sending emails is a good measure of productivity.
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Productivity Score in Office 365 is a corporate business tool, not something you're installing for your 11-year old cousin playing Minecraft. If you're concerned about privacy at work, then perhaps you should quit, because you're really not going to like the employee monitoring requirements listed in your HR manual, or in the IT Security Policy.
Except this isn't a security control or auditing utility, it's just spyware for your corporate nanny. The only people that want to show their bosses the piles of emails they send every day are the people that actually think sending emails is a good measure of productivity.
Perhaps you could join the rest of the naysayers here, and do a little RTFM.
"...we identify patterns for key activities that are indicators for how people use Microsoft 365 products to collaborate, communicate, and work across platforms....We also provide supporting metrics that are not part of the score calculation, but are important for helping you identify underlying behaviors and settings that you can address."
Regardless of the shitty name that triggers many, this can be used as a cybersecurity tool, and is touted as such. Anomaly detection is becoming more and more critical when talking about massively interconnected systems with hundreds or thousands of users. Replace "people" with "hackers" in the paragraph above, and you'll see what I mean.
What it's used for matters (Score:2)
I understand where you're coming from. As a security professional, I know I can see some things about what's happening on company computers. To protect our assets, I *need* to be able to check whether a particular alert is actually malware running or not. In order to do that, I have to be able to see which process ran foo.bat. Also which process started that. To assess the damage, I need to be able to see whether foo.bat spawned ransomware.exe. I pretty much have to be able to see everything going on in t
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Nah, the workers are the majority. Don't like it become more politically active and change the rules. Just like corporations change the rules to feed the psychopathy in their executives, this is not about productivity, this is about control.
M$ we will remove the tool to monitor corporate serfs (executives have this feature disabled by default) but here is the different places you can download the macro to do it, mwah hah hah.
It anal retentive control freaks at work, the sicko psychos, they must control th
But backlash ignored (Score:2)
Keyloggers (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was an intern at a national lab, they were very explicit about digital surveillance on the computers. All the login screens had an acknowledgment for a variety of tools, including possible keyloggers (I think they actually used those).
When I work for private companies, this was usually implied, or included in the original work contract.
If you are an employee, during the working hours, using company devices, expect to be under surveillance. Any semblance of privacy is an illusion.
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Don't forget things away from the desk. One of my co-workers has cerebral palsy and even making a cup of tea takes him 3-7 minutes with a boiled kettle depending on how bad a day it is for him. If he was to get pulled up for his "productivity" the garage I work at would be immediately converted into a parking lot.
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Re:Keyloggers - True... But... (Score:1)
True... But this data is not usually used by managers to track employee's performance; that data would usually be used by security teams instead--although it can be used in various investigations after the fact. Using this type of data to measure and manage employee productivity usually ends in disaster: the wrong employees are pinned as the under-productive employees, employees find other ways to fake productivity while decreasing productivity, managers turn into micro-managers and hurt employee moral, et
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It's one thing to use it for security purposes (which is often why it's logged and monitored) and quite another for monitoring "productivity". Because the latter means you get a metric as to how well you do documents, spreadsheets and emails.
Oh, you wanted to work on CODE? Sorry, your editor reduces your productivity score. Oh, you asked a question to Slack? Lowered score.
Oh, you needed time to THINK? Press those keys, bub, because thinking is off the clock time.
Bathroom breaks? Use a bottle, like an Amazon
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A Bit Surprised (Score:2)
I honestly expected nothing to come of this, and maybe that's the actual outcome, but maybe it will be a change.
It is as if organizing people that work and standing against things that are designed to put workers against each other is a useful thing.
This is backwards (Score:2)
This could all work for the employee, if it was designed to provide that feedback solely to that employee. *No, none, zippo, nada, mulch* network access for this application/service. The employee can review their own activity during specific intervals and over time, save to disk (with mandatory password-based encryption), trend it, whatever, but *zero* information about their activity on their PC is sent to anything but local disks without an explicit action by the user, and no such off-PC export function
How best to game the system? (Score:2)
The victims (labor and management are adversaries in the US and never forget it) are going to get screwed one way or the other so best for those skilled enough to game the system.
A fair and just world was never an option so learn how best to deal with reality.
Makes sense (Score:2)
Productivity Score will only aggregate data at the organization level
A principle adopted from the military. One or two people screw up, the entire squad does push-ups and extra laps. They will identify and take care of the laggards themselves.
Riiight! (Score:4, Insightful)
There won't be usernames attached. But really how hard is it to deanonymize the info?
I don't have any idea who the slacker employee is that punched in and out at the same time as Charlie.
I doubt they are removing it..... (Score:2)