'I Looked at All the Ways Microsoft Teams Tracks Users and My Head is Spinning' (zdnet.com) 81
An anonymous reader shares a report: As far back as June, Microsoft explained in somewhat legalistic terms that it's happily recording so much Teams activity for the benefit of employers and it's up to them what they do with it. Sample wording from Redmond's fine lawyers: "Our customers are controllers for the data provided to Microsoft, as set forth in the Online Services Terms, and they determine legal bases of processing." From what I could see, Teams hoovers up all your chats, voicemails, shared meetings, files, transcriptions, your profile details including your email address and phone number, and a detailed analysis of what you were wearing on the call. (I may have made up that last one.) Cut to September and Microsoft offered a little more about the Teams Activity Report (since updated). Here's a sentence that's unsurprising but still a touch uncomfortable: "The table gives you a breakdown of usage by user." Everything from how many meetings that user organized to how many urgent messages they sent is recorded. Separate numbers are given for scheduled meetings and those that were ad hoc. Even individuals' screen-share time is there. It's remarkably detailed. But, I hear you cry, is it detailed enough?
In October, then, Redmond offered "a new analytics and reporting experience for Microsoft Teams." (This was updated last week.) I confess that just staring at this made me swivel several times in wonder. Microsoft is measuring privacy settings, device types, time stamps, reasons why someone may have been blocked, and "the number of messages a user posted in a private chat." I know you'll tell me this is all normal. This is entirely what's to be expected in today's techno-marvelous world. Yet, as far as I could tell, employees don't have too much say in all this. They're forced onto a particular platform without much control over what that platform may record about them personally, with their employer being the potential beneficiary. I imagined an individual -- or even a whole team -- being summoned by their boss and told: "You didn't respond to 47 Teams messages last month." What do you say to that? "Well, I suspect those 47 messages were sent by brown-nosing halfwits who send as many Teams messages as possible, so their innate industry shows up on your Teams analytics reports."
In October, then, Redmond offered "a new analytics and reporting experience for Microsoft Teams." (This was updated last week.) I confess that just staring at this made me swivel several times in wonder. Microsoft is measuring privacy settings, device types, time stamps, reasons why someone may have been blocked, and "the number of messages a user posted in a private chat." I know you'll tell me this is all normal. This is entirely what's to be expected in today's techno-marvelous world. Yet, as far as I could tell, employees don't have too much say in all this. They're forced onto a particular platform without much control over what that platform may record about them personally, with their employer being the potential beneficiary. I imagined an individual -- or even a whole team -- being summoned by their boss and told: "You didn't respond to 47 Teams messages last month." What do you say to that? "Well, I suspect those 47 messages were sent by brown-nosing halfwits who send as many Teams messages as possible, so their innate industry shows up on your Teams analytics reports."
Unsurprising (Score:5, Interesting)
"The table gives you a breakdown of usage by user." Everything from how many meetings that user organized to how many urgent messages they sent is recorded. Separate numbers are given for scheduled meetings and those that were ad hoc. Even individuals' screen-share time is there
This is from a company that used to have (and still may have at some level) a review process that basically pitted employees against each other [linkedin.com] in their evaluations - it's not surprising that the exec-level mindset still exists and is reflected in their products.
Meanwhile (Score:4, Interesting)
As a normal user there's no good way to copy a thread to a word document or save a chat to a file.
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As a normal user there's no good way to copy a thread to a word document or save a chat to a file.
This is actually a thing that drives me nuts with Slack - I use the macOS 'Use selection for find' (Cmd-E) function a lot to search for code referenced in discussions - and it doesn't support that (a basic function already setup for you in Apple's dev templates). I always end up having to go back and first copy, then paste the text I want to look up.
Don't know (and don't want to) if Teams is as bad that way.
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And the search 'functionality' in Teams is haphazard at best in my experience.
As in maybe you'll find that comment, maybe you won't. Monday it finds it, Tuesday it doesn't. But it's not a bug, no no no.
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Next thing you know you're going to tell me that Microsoft also allows employers to read company emails on their mail server!?!?! OMG someone call Orwell it's dog against dog, cat against cat.
I also bet these scumbags pitting employee against employee look at timecards to see when employees showed up and left!
Re:Unsurprising (Score:4, Interesting)
it's not surprising that the exec-level mindset still exists and is reflected in their products.
Products for enterprises are built on requested features. You seem to think MS is some kind of odd ball rather than a company whose mindset makes up a significant portion of corporate America. They build this functionality because it sells and because companies go out of their way to buy employee tracking tools. Some of it is useful, some of it is not, and some of it is just for bad managers who think its useful when it's not. In any case the point is the same, the product sells.
Re: Unsurprising (Score:2)
You know that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, GitHub, Bing, and Azure, right? How are they significantly different than the companies you named?
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So you’re saying that if Facebook merged with Oracle, the end result would be less evil, because they wouldn’t be wholly dependent on advertising?
I would argue that all the data collection by Microsoft is worse because their business model doesn’t depend on it. As you point out, it’s a matter of survival for those other companies.
Final thought (sorry this is rather disjointed): I don’t think that advertising is evil. You point out that if advertising were to go away, so would t
It was hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
This is from a company that used to have (and still may have at some level) a review process that basically pitted employees against each other [linkedin.com] in their evaluations
I lived through Stack Ranking and all the horror it entailed, but for me it was hilarious because I was a contractor and it had no power over me. None, zero, zip, nada.
My contractor buddies and I used to enjoy watching The Yearly Purge and the mountains of destruction it left in it's wake. It was so sweet to see the backstabbing and sabotage running wild.
Occasionally (if you were unlucky) it resulted in your project being cancelled but most the time there were just fewer people at work the next Monday. :)
But even if you did end up as collateral damage there were alsways 50 other gigs at Microsoft with open reqs and you'd be working again in a few days, just as fast as they could approve the paperwork.
These people poured their hearts and souls into Microsoft and ended up getting booted for no good reason whatsoever. The crudest algorithm in the world (>) cost them their job. It was bullshit.
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Mine's not (Score:2)
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I mean, was this fellow gullible enough to expect otherwise?
Well, given that Teams evidently "hoovers" up all of the things that you explicitly use it for, it's pretty clear the fellow is sensationalist. It's a chat program. By definition it holds your chats. It's a meeting program. By definition it holds your meeting. It's personal, so by definition it holds your profile including e-mail address and phone number (if entered).
I mean... this is like complaining that Outlook "hoovers" up all of your e-mail, contacts, calendar items and ToDos. The only interest
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Re:Mine's not (Score:4, Funny)
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TFA and this conversation are about the data employers have access to, not aggregated date sold to third parties. While your comment has merit on its own, it's not at all responding to the point GP was making.
As long as it can't record or report (Score:5, Funny)
eye rolls, and when I have to bite my tongue when talking with marketing/sales people or managers who clearly have absolutely no idea what they're talking about...
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Re:As long as it can't record or report (Score:5, Funny)
"That last bit was redundant" was redundant.
Any time you show as "away" (Score:2, Insightful)
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> I'm running a mouse-jiggler program so I can go to the bathroom, go grab a snack, get the mail, etc..
You might want to run a job search too.
Ideally with a career plan, so your move is taking you in the direction of where you want to end up.
if your employer uses this against you... (Score:5, Interesting)
then youâ(TM)ve got other issues. IT gathers & HR only uses this kind of data when HR needs to build a case against an employee thatâ(TM)s already having issues. If you happen to work for someone thatâ(TM)s going to micromanage you with this kind of data then you shouldnâ(TM)t be working for them in the first place.
T for tiny (Score:2)
"Our customers are controllers for the data provided to Microsoft, as set forth in the Online Services Terms, and they determine legal bases of processing."
I.e. you clicked ok on 257 pages of tinyfont.
See also "we require your phone number as an ultimate fallback for pw recovery and not because we use it as a pseudo-guid for you in a monster advertising database."
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Stop the presses (Score:2)
Yet, as far as I could tell, employees don't have too much say in all this. They're forced onto a particular platform without much control over what that platform may record about them personally, with their employer being the potential beneficiary
Employer dictates toolchain for benefit of employer, film at 11.
I wonder (Score:3)
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Does it measure the number of molehills made into mountains?
Yes, in private preview now and scheduled for GA by the end of the first half of the year. It was in development a long time and supposed to ship in late 2020 but due to a miscommunication, the dev team spent ages working on AI and photogrammetry algorithms before everyone realized they were not supposed to be trying to measure breast size from teams video. Woopsie!
I'm surprised they don't track you more (Score:5, Interesting)
I started a new job around the middle of last year where we use Teams, and one of the first things I did was look up how much information was visible from the system, turns out it was less than I expected, the contents of private chats are even protected. It's a dedicated work PC that I don't really do anyhing non-work-related on for security reasons and so far there's no hint that management cares about the Teams stats.
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so far there's no hint that management cares about the Teams stats
Yet. You are just one micromanager away from it. My non-profit org is getting teams this year. I have no doubt that it will be used against staff at some point, if only at the urging of a board member with "corporate" experience. Never mind that despite COVID and many staff working remotely, programming and fundraising continue with only a relatively minor drop-off in attendance as programs shifted to online and fundraising improving.
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In private chats?
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Do you know if someone in the private chat reported the content to someone who was not in the private chat, or if someone who was not in the private chat was able to see inside the private chat? The latter should be impossible (through any Teams feature) from what I've read.
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I'm just not seeing the outrage here. We use it specifically to track what was communicated in field support. Everyone knows we're using the actual content of chats to track how well we handle certain situations. And we actually have a record of how much time we spend on support activities, which we can take back to management.
I just don't understand this mentality of using a company's provided tools for private, sensitive conversations. I grew up in a time when chat was something you did face-to-face
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Same. I'm still going to use teams with the assumption that my boss can (but probably doesn't) read my messages.
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My company is much the same, careful to make sure to maintain a balance between archiving paperwork ("when did we discuss this?") and making sure everyone on the system knows that legally, even off topic discussions are archived and could be subpoena'ed in worst case scenarios (if, say, a customer sues for libel and claims we were trash-talking him). We are also drilled in that company equipment should not be used for private surfing for the same reason, that you should not have sensitive info like personal
Yep, and Windows 10 has a key logger! (Score:5, Informative)
Oddly enough people are almost proud that they make use of Microsoft products, to spite the known and very real threats to their privacy. When people started wearing badges of pride surrounding how much data they hand over to corporations without a second thought for what's going to be the end us of that data, the industry took notice and just decided to run as far and hard with that collection as it's possible to do.
Companies collect so much information that they require AI systems to sort that data and analyze it, just so they know what data they're missing and can collect that also. Very few people care about their digital rights, and it's not going to get better without governments stepping in and passing laws to stop them, which thanks to kick backs is never going to happen.
If companies are going to collect data, we may as well put statements of our disapproval inside of that data and of course lots irrelevance!
Re: Yep, and Windows 10 has a key logger! (Score:2)
A lot of companies do screen captures too. Has been this way long before Windows 10.
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Re:Yep, and Windows 10 has a key logger! (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft put a keylogger inside Windows 10 that can turn itself on without notice and that is a black box on what it collects.
Keylogger is so 2000s. For my perspective, Microsoft being so modern has put all sorts of spyware in addition to a keylogger into Windows 10. And they have embedded these things deep in the core of Windows so they cannot be removed. For example the two I know of are Cortana and Text Input Application. These seem innocuous until the ramifications of how they work is explained.
Cortana which MS has tried to market as a Siri counterpart is tied to every search functionality and cannot be removed from Windows. While you can "disable" it, it will still run in the background. MS says it does not send all your searches to them but that can change. Also while settings say you supposedly can limit Camera and Microphone access, Windows core components may be able to access it without permission or settings options. You can see Windows host process (Rundll32) access your microphone at times. I would not put it past MS to have Cortana listening all the time with the ability to turn on your camera when it wants.
Text Input Application is another seemingly innocent core component with larger ramifications. The description says it is the on screen keyboard for touch screens. Like Cortana even if you have no use for it, it is always running and cannot be disabled. Thus it is can be always monitoring your screen even if your screen is not a touch one. Here's where the nefarious implication: Most application inputs are designed around the idea of focus, tabs, or windows. If you are playing a game, key strokes and mouse clicks in game are not copied to your browser in another monitor. However if you have an always-on screen monitor for a touch screen, it should ignore focus and could capture all your screen and mouse clicks. I could be totally wrong about this but I do not like the implications.
Re: Yep, and Windows 10 has a key logger! (Score:2)
Is it really as hidden and obscure as you claim?
https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-disable-hidden-keylogger-in-windows-10-3639643/
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Why does anyone trust Microsoft?
Sorry is this a trick question? You're talking about a specific service provided here to organisations. It's an advertised feature that you can look up this information on your employees.
Microsoft doesn't care about the safe or private handling or your data and it's collection, it wants to show the world, much like Google, how much data can be collection and how little security can be associated with that data.
Good analogy given how in both MS and Google's case neither has shown to have exposed user data en mass in the past.
Oddly enough people are almost proud that they make use of Microsoft products, to spite the known and very real threats to their privacy.
You have a very angry end user consumer view of this relationship. Corporate privacy is protected by very lengthy legal contracts. You as Joe Blow's Windows 10 Home Ream The Customer Edition are getting a ver
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Users of Team and other Microsoft products are NOT its customers. If your employer paid for the Microsoft products, the company will serve the interests of the employers.
And employers think this is a good idea. [youtube.com] So they demand it. They want to know how many minutes the employees were "not productive"
Managers who know how to measure productivity measure productivity. Managers who cant measure butt-on-seat time. Now Microsoft is saying not only butt-in-seat time but also
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I am proud about using microsoft products in the work environment because its well supported and you can always find a crowd sourced solution when you are stuck. Its easy, people know it, people learn it in schools. When hiring new employees, there is less training..
This is what matters to companies and IT departments. Not your privacy at work. You have no privacy at work. They aren't paying for that. Privacy of customer data, and good security, they will pay money for. But protecting your data from your ow
Oh noes (Score:3)
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Yeah this. Whoever wrote TFA seems to think companies haven't tracked their user's ever click since the first network account was created.
So the pedantic in me... (Score:3)
A frequently used template: (Score:2)
"I Looked at All the Ways Microsoft $x Tracks Users and My Head is Spinning"
This person doesn't understand business (Score:1)
Any large corporation tracks all its users with a fine-toothed comb. There are many reasons for this:
* Effectiveness. When you have a lot of users, you need to make sure that the tools you give them are effective. You need to be able to measure if they're actually useful, if they're solving problems, etc, or if they're creating them. You have to have data to do this. You can't stop every single employee every day and ask them 100 questions. And anyway it's unreliable. You need to look at the data.
* Efficien
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"* You literally don't have a right to privacy while doing your work."
So an employer can demand that you strip naked and submit to a cavity search while you're actually performing your assigned duties in order to ensure you aren't stealing company pens and paperclips?
With so many ignorant, powerless drones willing to submit to any indignity in order to brown-nose their way up the corporate ladder, no wonder your country is such a mess.
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If you work for the federal government (Score:2)
I agree with you that the post you replied to is silly.
Perhaps they were being ridiculous on purpose.
It's also worth noting the the constitution of the US federal government describes how the US federal government is constituted. When it says the president is elected on a Tuesday in November, it means the president of the federal government, not the president of your company. The federal constitution creates the federal government and describes what the federal government can and cannot do. The Texas Con
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Kind of weird how we can't keep drugs out of maximum security prisons but we think we can keep them out of the country.
I want everything online to be free (Score:2)
Seriously, how to people expect this stuff to get paid for?
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Prove it to them. (Score:3)
This is how the conversation goes:
Boss: "You didn't respond to 47 Team Messages."
Me: "Pick one of those 47 at random."
Message: "Just a reminder, please get X by 4:30." sent at 4:15.
Me: If you check my message sent at 3:50, you will see "X is done." Do you feel it necessary to go through more of the 47 messages that were sent solely to make their metrics look good, or are you satisfied that I am doing a superb job?"
Doesn't bother me (Score:2)
If your boss is going to determine your performance solely from analytics, then they probably don't know exactly what you do. A good boss know what thier employees are doing with or without analytics. If you have a bad boss maybe it's time for a new job
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If your boss is going to determine your worth through analytics, great, just game the analytics.
If you'd like to do something more meaningful with your life than game analytics, quit.
I highly recommend quitting. It's very rewarding.
Telemetry overload (Score:2)
This is just going to cause big problems in the workplace, make good employees look bad, bad employees look good, cause managers to run around screaming "chicken little", cause more mistakes amongst employees who are more focused on looking good in the stats than getting the job done properly, ad nauseum.
This whole making people operate as precice machines fantasy is really what all this is about. Except like all attempts at 'utopia' throughout history, this too will crash and burn, and likely take
Consume micro$haft products Goyim (Score:1)
Microsoft knows no limits (Score:1)
as to how deep they will sink to get your data.
At my office we use Teams but IT mandated months ago that we had to use a VM for all Teams work. They supplied us with a VM to use. Anyone caught not using the VM is warned and if they do it again, they are fired.
We use all sorts of VM's for 'stuff' because of worries about slurping. We went to an MS-365 only VM last November.
We work on stuff that is sensitive to our industry and we really don't want anything to get to our competitors.
Once our management gets w
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"Once our management gets wind of this, they might just pull the plug on MS once and for all. They are really the pits."
So make sure they get wind. They shouldn't be using Windows anyway if they care about security. That's like fire-walking in a gasoline-soaked jock strap.
Duh, and or... Hello? (Score:1)
Search Engines (Score:1)
"employees don't have too much say in all this" (Score:2)
The have the absolute maximum amount of say they should be allowed: They can agree to this, or they can find another job. I hear McDonald's is hiring.
Anybody want to start a Microsoft Teams Analytics (Score:1)
Hoovers up? (Score:2)
"Teams hoovers up all your chats..."
Aaaah yea... it's a chat program.
You enter data into the thing. They store your data.
Where's the story?