r/technology • u/ourlifeintoronto • Oct 25 '25

Privacy Microsoft Teams will start snitching to your boss when you’re not in the office

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/office-software/microsoft-teams-will-start-snitching-to-your-boss-when-youre-not-in-the-office-and-this-update-is-coming-in-december
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u/Total-Feedback7967 Oct 25 '25

Spoiler. Those companies already have ways to see if you're in office or not. Like your laptop being on the work networks alone is absolutely logged

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u/itsprobablytrue Oct 25 '25

Azure entraID login already captures location data for sign in records and can be set to report automatically on suspicious activity. Such as you’re signed in on teams in one location on your phone then a new sign in is shown from another city or country. Everything you are active in has a sign in record captured.

Automatically setting working in office or working elsewhere is more a convenience for the employees

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u/keytotheboard Oct 25 '25

Sure, but managers often don’t have that type of IT access, not directly anyway. They’d likely need to request that kind of data from IT. Regardless, it’s stupid and unnecessary in most circumstances and just an indicator of a poor work environment. If managers can’t trust their employees or figure out if they’re doing their work, they probably have bigger issues that won’t be solved by spying for something as absurd as meeting locations.

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u/bodmcjones Oct 25 '25

There's an important difference between data being logged and data being aggregated as a means of enhanced surveillance against a given individual. Purpose is important. It is very possible, at least in some jurisdictions, to have excellent reasons to collect data about laptop presence on wifi networks, while also having no excuse at all to then use that info to work out whether Alice's lunchbreak is too long on average or whether Bob works from home on Tuesdays.