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Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

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Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#151

Post by jjkaczor »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #64
bri3d wrote: post #11

Here's the actual "roadmap" feature (scroll to the bottom where the filtered list is): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?search... The actual feature brief is: "When users connect to their organization's Wi-Fi, Teams will soon be able to automatically update their work location to reflect the building they're working from. This feature will be off by default. Tenant admins will decide whether to e…

>If you decide to take a "working lunch" and connect to "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantly Can't you just rename your home wifi SSID to be whatever your Work wifi is called?

Travel router, use that to connect to the "host" wifi/network, and only ever connect your device through the travel router... always will show the same network, no?

(Or phone tether, if you have a good data plan)

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#152

Post by palmotea »

iso1631 wrote: post #125
palmotea wrote: post #113

> Microsoft confirmed that starting March 2026 (delayed from January), managers will be able to see your real-time location. And no, disconnecting from the office Wi-Fi won't save you. Is there anything more than the Wifi SSID stuff below? > If you connect to a Wi-Fi network that isn't your company's, Teams will simply display the name of that network. So if you decide to take a "working lunch" and connect to "Starbu…

SSID, signal strength, BSSID, private IP, public IP, ipv6, all trivially available to a binary running on a machine. It sounds far less than the diagnostics data I get from a small go binary. If corporate policy is you can't connect to starbucks wifi, then enforce that at the MDM mangement layer - I assume things like SCCM can do it.

> SSID, signal strength, BSSID, private IP, public IP, ipv6, all trivially available to a binary running on a machine.

So it sounds like if you want to circumvent this: get a travel router that spoofs a work access point, and make sure any kind of identification requests that would reveal a public IP are either blocked or are going through your work VPN.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#153

Post by SoftTalker »

delusional wrote: post #18
y-curious wrote: post #10

Can I kill this via pihole somehow? My wife uses teams. This is a sick “tool” that will be wielded asymmetrically by middle management to fire people

Any middle management thinking of enabling this technology will make it mandatory. If you blackhole the traffic, that's also reason to fire you.

Why would they want to fire you? And if they do, they will find a reason.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#156

Post by [deleted] »

ghaff wrote: post #136
bnchrch wrote: post #99

I truly believe our industry needs to elevate our own anti-awards, like others have (Razzies, Worst Game of the Year, etc.) to shame those responsible for building the regressive tech that corporations and governments push. There's already the Big Brother Awards [0] and EFF's smattering of Worst Government and Worst Data Breach articles each year. [1] But I think we need more. Personally I would love to nominate: - M…

>- Latanya Sweeney and Alexandre de Montjoye for their contributions to re-identification of anonymized data It seems like highlighting how anonymization is a lot harder than a lot of people assume is a really useful service. If researchers can do it, without any particular secret sauce, so can a lot of other people. (Unless I'm totally misunderstanding your comment.)

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#157

Post by newsoftheday »

ngetchell wrote: post #122

This screams E911 compliance than stalker-ware but I could definitely be wrong. I know E911 was a big deal in the telephony world and since Teams is a phone service, this makes sense. I don't like it but it makes sense.

Agree, one could imagine a scenario where a worker went to the bathroom in a not too busy wing, had an anurism, stroke or seizure which left them debilitated right when a fire alarm rings and people need to evacuate. As it is today, the person might die if not found in time, this assumes someone else knew where to look without similar technology.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#158

Post by timcobb »

varispeed wrote: post #82
samch wrote: post #74

Some of this could be related to laws that necessitate updated location data for emergency calling. Since a common component of Teams is Teams Phone, there can be a compliance gap. I’m sure this isn’t the whole story, but it is likely one facet: https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law...

Surely that means soon everyone will have to wear ankle monitor?

Think of the children!

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#159

Post by bri3d »

uean wrote: post #149
bri3d wrote: post #11

Here's the actual "roadmap" feature (scroll to the bottom where the filtered list is): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?search... The actual feature brief is: "When users connect to their organization's Wi-Fi, Teams will soon be able to automatically update their work location to reflect the building they're working from. This feature will be off by default. Tenant admins will decide whether to e…

Working on the systems/security/infrastructure side, we can already do this. Endpoint management systems already report wifi-ssid, internal-IP, whether you are using a vpn to try and hide info. SASE/ZTNA solutions provide location data, username, device used, connection details. Conditional access policies in the tenant already do checks against all of this anyway. The roadmap just makes the whole thing user-facing s…

Yeah, it's mostly just a weird feature in terms of ick-factor vs. utility.

I will say that "IT knows where I am" and "my manager / manager's manager / whatever sees where I am on Teams" would represent two very different personal annoyance levels at most companies I've worked at; at most places I've worked getting someone's location through IT required them to be doing something questionable or illegal (ie - working from an unapproved country) or breaking some obnoxious return-to-office policy, not just "hey is Bob out to lunch again or is he over in Building 6 so I can drive-by him with some questions real quick"

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#160

Post by ivell »

bri3d wrote: post #11

Here's the actual "roadmap" feature (scroll to the bottom where the filtered list is): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?search... The actual feature brief is: "When users connect to their organization's Wi-Fi, Teams will soon be able to automatically update their work location to reflect the building they're working from. This feature will be off by default. Tenant admins will decide whether to e…

It is sometimes required to know where the user is sitting due to cross border data transfer laws. It seems that Microsoft is making it more easier to implement such requirements.
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