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.
I don’t connect to the company wifi at all. No good can come from that.
I love company Wi-Fi. I love company. pays my money. connect directly to my tight holes
Teams is so slow and is missing so many quality of life features.
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.
Luckily this kind of data is illegal to use in Norway
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.
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
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.
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!
Just keep moving the Wifi APs for maximum chaos and open bug reports to Mircosoft since location service is unreliable.
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 🤣
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
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.
I guess the only part of this that is remarkable is that they are doing it with Teams.
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
Teams isn’t the program actively spying on people (yet), that’s Viva engage.
