Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 160 posts

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

#111

Post by studius »

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…

> It doesn’t say that the global administrator does not have access to the message content.

Slack also allows administrators to view deleted content, etc.

Slack used to let users see who those admins were in certain places; if that's still true, then finding out who those people are may give insight into who has the ultimate form of political power.

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

#112

Post by jl6 »

Teams has a really weird kind of lock-in - it’s impossible to print or export a chat session, and really really hard to even Ctrl-C copy text from across multiple pages of chat. The total radio silence from Microsoft on this issue, even after it being up on UserVoice for years with thousands of votes, is making me think it is less a technical issue and more an ulterior motive to trap data.

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

#113

Post by studius »

Without even any AI or ML:

* Average counts of emojis, messages, acronyms, etc. could be misused by a human reader to determine things like age, religion, or ethnicity. If we frequently use poop emojis, we could be considered immature. If we frequently use anger emojis, we could be considered hot-tempered. If we frequently use sad emojis we could be considered to have depression.

* Counts of specific words or phrases in each language could be misused to convey physical and mental health problems that may be affecting an individual.

* The median length of a user's messages not including URLs, things in quotes, or tick blocks could be used to assess whether the user tends to be concise or wordy.

That data could be sold and could make you unemployable because their statistics indicate that you're overly angry, when the anger emoji was just your shtick at your last job.

Even if you're using the data just to see when people are working, if you have a team of employees that are productive but don't communicate much, that data could be misused. If their manager doesn't get along with the team and wants to move to a different one, when a higher level manager is cutting headcount, the team manager could say that the team has always been lazy and never listens to them, so the higher level manager fires the manager and his entire team, based on data provided by the analysis of the IMs and the manager's account. Since the data isn't a true indicator, it shouldn't even be used as supporting evidence of lack of work.

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

#114

Post by jdbernard »

sjy wrote: post #43
jdbernard wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not ideal, but you can run the Synergy client executable (synergyc.exe) without admin rights. You lose the conveniences of having it auto-start and using the GUI configuration, but you still get all the functionality. You also can't use the installer, but you can just copy the Synergy directory from a working machine. You also need a MS C++ runtime DLL, but you can copy that too. I'm not in front of my computer at the moment. I'll edit/reply to this comment with details

For example, on my client/project-specific machine (where I don't have admin rights), I have a batch file (start-synergy.bat) that lives on my desktop with:

  C:\Users\jdbernard\Synergy-1.12.0\synergyc.exe -name client-pc 192.168.1.120

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

#115

Post by jdbernard »

maven29 wrote: post #73
sjy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10... Why not use the First party equivalent? Microsoft's Mouse Without Borders claims to do exactly this.

Because my personal machine runs Linux, my corporate machine runs macOS, and my client machine runs Windows.

If they were all Windows this might be nice as it claims to support some edge cases Synergy doesn't (primarily logon/UAC).

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

#116

Post by luckman212 »

lifty wrote: post #86
keeganpoppen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is an abject failure of OS design. If an app is allowed by the OS to insert itself in the startup list without explicit user consent first an foremost I blame the operating system. You can’t trust every app and every developer out there. I would love if there would be a Linux distro out there that would adopt some of the principles and values embodied in iOS, without the draconian Apple walled garden.

I agree: this should be part of any reasonably secure OS. One thing you can do in absence of it is install Patrick Wardle's BlockBlock[0] which adds alerts for this behavior (also open source)

[0] https://objective-see.com/products/blockblock.html

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

#117

Post by bzzzt »

LandR wrote: post #80
tannhaeuser wrote: post #19

In my experience, Teams, even with the official Linux app (Electron-based) simply doesn't work on Linux, just like Skype for Enterprise didn't work before. Had an appointment the other week with a customer, and had to resort to dial-in with audio-only. I guess you need a corporate account or something, but Teams wouldn't say. When I wanted to start a video call, an error message would flash up briefly, like 100ms, so…

IME Teams on Linux will occasionally completely freeze the entire OS on startup. Sometimes it recovers after 15 mins or so, sometimes it needs the machine to be physically powered off / on to recover.

If that can happen it's clearly an OS bug. Maybe something like an unstable driver?

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

#118

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

just had a conversation with a mate since he was convinced teams is tracking him though since he is non-technical I had to probe a little to get what he means.

turns out if you have had a conversation with anyone on teams they will see your status (online/offline/ etc) even after you've left the chat. That works across domains too. Worse the status (online|busy|don't disturb) is visible even in Outlook.

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

#119

Post by oblio »

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 imagine if the work laptop is 24/7 connected to a VPN, then this tool doesn't work.

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

#120

Post by SamuelAdams »

> Yet, as far as I could tell, employees don't have too much say in all this. They're forced onto a particular platform without much control over what that platform may record about them personally, with their employer being the potential beneficiary.

Sorry but why is the author surprised by this? I work in corporate IT. We issue company-owned laptops / desktops / devices to employees, most of which come with Teams. Anything they do on these devices is subject to company monitoring. There is no privacy when using a company asset.

All employees signed an agreement (Technology Use Policy) about this during their onboarding.

Are companies asking employees to install Teams / other chat apps on their personal devices? Or is the author suggesting companies should not be able to view their employees conversations on an employee operated platform?

Post reply on HN