The other day I found Boxcryptor for Teams[1] which seemed like a useful tool, if the company can be convinced to use it. At least it feels like an option for a privacy concerned organisation, which somehow ended up in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
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Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#62I 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…
apps in windows are, and have always been, more like this than mac apps. it seems like the worst offenders on mac are ports from / native residents of windows. steam does this, for example. it drives me BONKERS. at least on Mac it's kind of rare. on windows, i swear to god every single thing you install does this. razer mouse? better run at startup! weird USB peripheral you use once in a blue moon? better run at star…
I know, this is a crazy design to start an app during startup. They better get user’s consent before user installs the app and provide an option to disable start on startup (login).
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#63I guess this is one of the few times its beneficial to work for a German-based company with a strong workers council. Even though I'm in the US and work for the US-legal entity, because IT is managed in Germany they refuse to allow local management to access any worker tracking. Even SLAs cannot be attached to individual users, only to departments.
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
We just RDP into our in-office machines when we work from home.
From your personal machine? Do you ever check your email via a web interface on your own box? write a quick textfile or document? Log into a web app? It's really easy to let your work bleed into your personal machine...
Sure, but the threat level of occasionally writing some notes on a personal box is nowhere near what it would be if I was writing code or connecting to production environments from it.
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#65> "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…
> 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.
Interesting, because even though as a company we use teams, it's literally just a chat app for us. Most departments don't even use the "teams" part, all conversations happen 1:1 or in meetings.
I work in the IT dept, so technically we should be at the forefront of this, and yet I'm only in 2 channels and they're both silent 360 days a year. every couple months someone will ask a question in one, no one will answer and that it's until the next time.
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#66I 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…
That's odd: I've recently switched macs, and nor on the old, nor on the new one was Teams added to the Login items; only OneDrive did that. So I had a vague memory: go to your account icon > Settings > Auto-start application, and uncheck it.
Unfortunately this ability is only afforded to people who have accounts (I only use Teams when invited to someone else's meeting).
How silly that people who don't have accounts — because they use Teams infrequently — are subjected to the spammiest behavior.
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's odd: I've recently switched macs, and nor on the old, nor on the new one was Teams added to the Login items; only OneDrive did that. So I had a vague memory: go to your account icon > Settings > Auto-start application, and uncheck it.
Unfortunately this ability is only afforded to people who have accounts (I only use Teams when invited to someone else's meeting). How silly that people who don't have accounts — because they use Teams infrequently — are subjected to the spammiest behavior.
That's bad design, indeed.
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#68I 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…
This is why I never run the desktop version of Teams, only the phone app. (The phone app is total shit, and loses all the distinctive and useful functionality of Teams, but I don't care.)
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#69Our company set message retention on Teams to 4 days, citing the GDPR as the reason :S
So many people now avoid it. When I read this I guess it may have been a good decision, apart from the fact that people move to uncontrolled platform like Slack and WhatsApp.
Our laws do protect us somewhat from all this "innovation" coming in from the US, just now a company had to pay 10.4 million euros for putting cams on employees[0].
Also, most of WhatsApp's plans are not allowed here.
[0]: https://lfd.niedersachsen.de/startseite/infothek/presseinfor...
Re: I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users
#70I 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…
So maybe Teams has a higher barrier of entry. I don't think that it's worse because of this particular reason.