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I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

zdnet.com

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Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#41

Post by jshmrsn »

naikrovek wrote: post #30
AnonC wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I didn’t know that. Wouldn’t larger organizations (if not medium sized ones or small ones) want to have that service anyway?

It's funny because you were talking like you knew it all, then someone with real world knowledge of Teams gave you info invalidating the key point of your argument and you just shrug it off with more assumptions. It's the entire Hacker News culture completely and wholly represented in three succinct comments.

You must be fun at parties.

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#42

Post by torbital »

arpyzo wrote: post #5

I personally find Teams to be an abomination. I asked my wife the other day, who isn't familiar with Slack or Teams, to look at the interfaces and tell me how to IM an individual. She glanced at Slack and pointed to the list of users. She looked at Teams and said "I have no idea". Slack practically invites me to reach out to people. Teams OTOH makes me want to send an email. Now you can add this tracking to the list…

Saying you and your wife find Slack superior is a bit lie preaching to the choir on these forums, no? Let me give a different anecdote.

When I open up teams, I have one account, I log in and have access to all other things in the account. Basic software behavior we're all used to.

When I open up Slack, it does or does not want me to login again based on if I've been on this server before. It may or may not want me to make a new account depending on if I've made one on this server before. I try all of my emails with all of my potential passwords to see if login works, if not new account time I guess?

Instead of Discord were you can see all of your servers, Slack separates this all out that makes the entire user experience (at least for me) completely abysmal.

Then don't even get me started with a lack of usernames and having intentionally hard-to-find ID. Again, why not do what Discord does and do Username#6789? Instead I have to search my friend 'John Doe' and hope it's the John I'm thinking of and not some random other John that I just invited to see all my business's internal discussions.

To sum up my 2 cents:

Teams is about the same as Zoom with some text-based chat functionality thrown in and some neat Outlook calendar integration.

Slack is just Discord that is way, way worse.

Comparing the two doesn't even make sense, but at least Teams does better in it's respective category.

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#43

Post by sjy »

jdbernard wrote: post #37
gonzo41 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second laptop. I know it's expensive, but if your working from home, don't do it from your own computer. do it from a computer work provides. Or at least, create a second account called work and do everything from that. Also make the theme, colors and everything you can different so there's a context shift between the two activities.

Same setup, except three laptops: personal, company-provided, client/project-provided. You would think it would be unmanageable and you'd be right we're it not for Synergy ( https://symless.com/synergy ). I've got two laptops docked and connected to external monitors. Synergy lets me use just one keyboard and mouse for all three at the same time. Makes it feel like they're just three adjacent screens on one PC. But b…

I’ve thought about this but I assumed it would be too hard to get Synergy installed on employer or client-provided computers. It sounds like you’ve used this setup with multiple clients – is it normal in your field of work to get local admin rights on corporate devices?

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#44

Post by syspec »

prepend wrote: post #6

I remember when I first started working and was surprised to learn that email admins could and would read email. When I asked HR for their policy on this they said they had none and the company can do anything they want with employee activity. This was the 90s and was true then as it is now. Same for the MITM ssl proxy stuff. This has always been legal and recorded, Microsoft just makes it easier. And I think maybe e…

> This just makes me choose my employers more carefully as while they certainly have this data to abuse, fortunately few do not.

I think the issue with this approach, which is one that I completely agree with, applaud, and also adhere to is that many people are not as fortunate to be in such a position to turn down employment opportunities.

Those are the people who need protection from "features" such as these, because those are the people who's employers WILL take advantage of them using features.

Here's an example: "'I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots'" https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54289152

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#45

Post by darksaints »

AnonC wrote: post #18

> For example, does Teams really record the actual messages a user posts in a Teams chat? I’m confused with this question. Why wouldn’t it? It’s not like Teams has (or will have) any kind of end-to-end encryption in place. Teams is a sluggish and monstrous replacement for chat that stores all messages (on Microsoft’s servers if the organization uses Office 365) to synchronize views across devices. The easiest way to…

> Teams is a sluggish and monstrous replacement for chat...

The perfect way to summarize the situation no matter what problem you're talking about.

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#46

Post by m463 »

torbital wrote: post #42
arpyzo wrote: post #5

I personally find Teams to be an abomination. I asked my wife the other day, who isn't familiar with Slack or Teams, to look at the interfaces and tell me how to IM an individual. She glanced at Slack and pointed to the list of users. She looked at Teams and said "I have no idea". Slack practically invites me to reach out to people. Teams OTOH makes me want to send an email. Now you can add this tracking to the list…

Saying you and your wife find Slack superior is a bit lie preaching to the choir on these forums, no? Let me give a different anecdote. When I open up teams, I have one account, I log in and have access to all other things in the account. Basic software behavior we're all used to. When I open up Slack, it does or does not want me to login again based on if I've been on this server before. It may or may not want me to…

that sound exactly the opposite of teams in my experience.

Slack I have one account and it logs in through SSO. sidebar, message window, thread. It seems pretty cohesive, and mostly customizable.

Teams I have the kitchen sink navigation experience, full of dark patterns and mediocrity.

One thing I will say for teams - since they were competing with other meeting software, they did add a good direct link from calendar to teams meeting.

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#47

Post by gnicholas »

I can't believe how aggressive Teams is at inserting itself in my login items (on a Mac).

At first, I thought it just happened when I installed the application. But nope — any time I open Teams, it will re-insert itself in my list of login items. This happens no matter how many times I have manually removed it.

I think it even happens more than once per launch because I recently launched it to join a call and then immediately removed it from my login items before the call even started. But after the call, there it was again in my login items.

I have never seen an application behave this way that was not widely considered to be malware.

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#48

Post by propogandist »

015a wrote: post #28

> "Teams could soon be a digital platform as important as the internet browser." - Satya Nadella Every person reading this should be scared, because he's not wrong. Ever since the pandemic started, 90% of our B2B SaaS platform customers (current and prospects) have asked "do you have a Teams app". Its sudden ; it was not like this a year ago. Its an "end the conversation" question for maybe half of them, similar to h…

Good intel. They've been throwing throwing in Teams as a free service and building a massive enterprise moat that will be impossible to disrupt. Slack, which started out with a NY Times full page advert welcoming Microsoft Teams, ran to Salesforce unable to compete.

Imagine Microsoft being able to connect your Teams activity, Edge browser activity and Windows 10 usage to your linkedin profile, github profile (all owned MSFT properties) using a singular Microsoft account, within an enterprise. Microsoft, as a corporation, will have the ability to see the inner workings of a company and build an inter-enterprise social graph.

A very ripe target for NSA fusion technology.

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#49

Post by kerng »

gnicholas wrote: post #47

I can't believe how aggressive Teams is at inserting itself in my login items (on a Mac). At first, I thought it just happened when I installed the application. But nope — any time I open Teams, it will re-insert itself in my list of login items. This happens no matter how many times I have manually removed it. I think it even happens more than once per launch because I recently launched it to join a call and then im…

What is a "login item"? Sorry, I dont know about Macs

Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

#50

Post by kerng »

gonzo41 wrote: post #24
leipert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s why I have personal property that the company isn’t able to access so I can conduct personal activities with some level of privacy. The problem right now is: due to Work from home, you basically have blurred the lines between the digital company and private assets. Either you have a company device; or even a personal device running this software in your private networks doing and telemetering you don’t know…

Second laptop. I know it's expensive, but if your working from home, don't do it from your own computer. do it from a computer work provides. Or at least, create a second account called work and do everything from that. Also make the theme, colors and everything you can different so there's a context shift between the two activities.

Good advise - I know people who got fired because all of a sudden during a zoom session on their personal device some content showed up that would not have been on a work computer.
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