Specifically, Teams will detect if the user has connected to the company’s own Wi-Fi and automatically set the work location accordingly to the respective building.
The fact that Cisco has been able to triangulate your phone’s wifi mac position in 2d space for a decade is unrelated. It’s how protesters are being tagged and tracked on the day.
Fun fact, you can use most of teams through
teams.microsoft.comDo yourself and your coworkers a favor and minimize how often Teams is running. If anyone asks just say the desktop version was buggy - no one who has used teams will deny it.
Implementing useless features and fixing nothing since 1975.
Actually true. I have no idea what features that were actual improvements, at least since windows 7.
Windows is the same shit it always was. A total mess of slow, ugly programs and lots of annoying notifications and stream of updates that makes the system slower and slower.
Dont forget the constant shuffling of buttons and menus so that you are constantly learning everything for the first time and can never become proficient at using their software.
Where in the FUCK in Outlook currently is an option to use preformatted text? It’s not a style I could pick nor I could find an option to make my own. I send copy-paste from terminal every now and then and if it’s formatted like normal text it’s nearly useless. It used to be a text style I could pick, but this new-new-new-classic-new outlook doesn’t have it anymore.
Select all, change to consolas font. And cry.
Change it to WingDings and sit back while the world burns around you.
Why are we pretending like someone working hybrid needs to hide their office status during work hours? Its not a privacy issue for your work to know where you are while you’re working for them.
Plus there is already a ton of ways your employer gets this data its not like any new ground is being broken here.
I dont get the outrage with this one NGL.
Slippery slope surveillance.
I worked at a shop where the boss was very curious when people went idle. So, if you were white-boarding a problem with a peer, you’d both get asked later where you were – since your mouse was idle.
It got tiring. it was one of the reasons why I left.
But those people are out there, and they’re hindering the career of people who appear idle because #goodhartsLaw, and sometimes you don’t know they’re doing it.
That to me seems like micromanager issue more than an issue with thr software. There are plenty of good managers and teams where they get great benefit from being able to at a glance see if you’re in office that day. In every team ive worked in its expected to update your status to display where you are working.
I’d like to not have to update my status as often and have it update automatically, save everyone a bit of hassle.
If we think about the bad micromanager situation a bit more without this they might be less comfortable with the idea of having people work from home so giving them this info helps them keep track better which allows them to give their team the freedom to remotely work.
the only people in uproar about this are the same people who use those auto mouse pads or whatever they are called.
just wait till you learn about how accurate hot desking software is.
Jesus Christ, if you didn’t think your company knew if you were in one building or another before today, you’re a fucking idiot.
I mean, it’s a useful feature… But only if you have a good company culture.
if you have a good company culture you don’t use teams
Which is as probable as winning the lottery.
They exist, but people don’t leave them once there, so new jobs don’t come up as often.
I’d argue they evaporte more and more every year as companies are acquired or if they get a new CEO that’s all about cutting costs blindly without any regard for quality or quality of life.
Not many left.
Yes, I worked at one of those pre-covid. I remember my colleague leaving her laptop and work phone on her desk at the end of the day around 4pm. We also had small offices with 2-4 people in a historical building right in the city center.
Then we merged with a bigger company, their culture ate us, and all the best people left, the rest are sitting in an open office at the edge of the city. Funny enough, I worked on the merger as one of the leads, I was so happy getting an oportunity like that while young. Now looking back I realized that it was a bad thing we have done (not that we had a choice), and the end result is worse for employees, customers, and even shareholders.
Agreed. I feel like I’m in one, and the things that make us thrive are being tested like an immune system, against what feels like a deliberate Maek Number Go Up infection. It’s stressful and I can only try to trust that it’s necessary. I guess we have to keep that stock number up or else we get bought and destroyed by a competitor.
Not a fan of this whole system sometimes.
I have an awesome job. But its probably because of the union.
Teams is so slow and is missing so many quality of life features.
Luckily this kind of data is illegal to use in Norway
I mean… Is it really spying? Your company can detect which AP or Switch you’re connected to (or if you’re using a VPN from home), so they do have that data anyways.
There’s a huge difference between a piece of data being recorded in a SIEM somewhere and the data being displayed up front all of the time for micro managers to pounce on.
It’s just like ai photo generation. Yes it could always be done with photoshop/checking network logs but making it easier for more people/managers to see encourages more bad behavior and micromanagement.
if they bother setting it up
Yeah this is shitty managers wet dream coming through.
Shitty managers are already breathing down your neck though, they didn’t exactly wait for this piece to be major annoyances….
Now they can breathe down your neck from the comfort of their own home!
Well, surely someone will set it up for you… For a fee
Maybe even a subscription, why not
yeah and possibly that’s microsoft’s plan
yes
This seems like surveillance disguised as a mostly useless feature. If you are in the office and logging into a video call, you’re probably using the hardware in a conference room and not your own laptop. That hardware will already display the room you are calling from to everyone on the call.
The only reason for this feature is to tattle on people who aren’t where they say they are.
Teams usually always runs in the background
All it does it checks in which location/building you are. While moderately intrusive I cannot really see a straightforward relation to home working - surely people don’t pretend to be in the office when they are working from home?
Situation may be different if you wish to go longer term abroad without informing your employer who thinks you are still in the country, just working remotely. But I can see it as a potential legal issue anyway.
Those are all thing that can be controlled by the direct lead on any well run company.
I know from my own work that some mediocre middle managers wanted a rigid technological enforcement of the hybrid work framework and are probably dreaming about rolling out a “feature” like this.
Yeah, that’s so much effort, I’d want to be paid extra for it.
Just keep moving the Wifi APs for maximum chaos and open bug reports to Mircosoft since location service is unreliable.
So if I’m reading this right, won’t a VPN totally fuck with the system? Cause its a nessessity for some to get into local networking.
No, because this isn’t looking at networking, it’s looking at wifi access points
So if I’m using something lime Cisco secure client this bypasses the default security? I’m still missing something here.
Yes. Teams is software that runs on your computer. Based on what’s described here, it’s now going to ask the wifi driver what access points are available
Then it will send that info through the VPN along with the voice and video
How does that work when I remote into a Windows Virtual Desktop in Azure and use that for teams? This is probably 80% of my teams use.
Or use a Linux device? Will it tell teams my networking information?
It theoretically could through the azure remote desktop client since Windows owns every part of that stack and has no concept of not stealing all data. It probably doesn’t because it would involve coordination between several teams
It could work on Linux, but probably doesn’t because the Linux version of software tends to have more autonomy and better priorities
Guess we will find out!
There’s a whole bunch of ways to do that already. This isn’t really new
Not for the average spineless middle manager. This puts the data in their hands without having to get any approval from anyone in IT
The manager should know if you are at home or in the office. I cant think of a reason why that information would be out of the ordinary.
Just create a wifi mirroring the one you use at work at home, done.
That’s what I do to get our company ”protection suite” to open up the firewall when I’m outside company network - just set the same Wifi SSID and IP range.
I feel like they would at least do it by the interface MAC address.
Yeah, I was also thinking that cloning the Gateway or AP MAC address would help obscure what we’re doing 🤣
