Wow, what a dystopian feature. One more reason to stay away from Microsoft products as far as possible.
Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
181–190 of 312 posts
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need a reason to fire you. They need a reason to fire you and not pay unemployment benefits.
unemployment benefits are so low do they really care that much? Unemployment benefits for me would be 3% annually of my annual salary.
They don't pay the benefits directly. They pay a tax rate based on how many people who file for unemployment benefits are determined to be eligible for them.
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#183I 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…
We are way past shame being an effective tool to regulate behavior.
I'm sorry but there is no shame in our industry, where are people protesting at conferences calling out devs working on instruments of oppression? Why isn't anyone harassing the devs that take it as a badge of honor to work at companies that profit from human misery?
I don't see it anywhere.
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#184Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#185Here'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…
People should look up what features "carbon black" has, it's extremely frequently deployed (cb.exe in task manager) and can, (according to their own marketing) provide managers with live feeds of your desktop... So yeah...
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
>- 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.)
Agreed. I truly don't understand including these researchers on this list. Some of Sweeney's most well-known work in this area is from the LATE 1990s. She was sounding the alarm about problems with anonymized data in medical datasets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latanya_Sweeney#Medical_datase... Her work almost certainly contributed highly to awareness of these risks. More recently she has apparently worked on thin…
I haven't followed what she's been working on recently.
But, yeah, at some point in the 90s, Massachusetts decided to release some "anonymized" health records for research purposes (I think just state employees). One was governor William Weld who obviously had a lot of public information widely available. As I recall, Sweeney wrote the governor's office a bit later basically saying "I have your medical records."
I used this as a slide or two in some AI presentations in the mid-2000s or so pre-LLMs when I had some peripheral involvement with some of the privacy-preserving research going on (differential privacy, multiparty computation, fully homomorphic encryption). Haven't really followed most of this for a while.
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#187I don’t get it. What is this good for?
If this is for people physically working at some place they have access controls and will see if you left the building, when and for how long.
So this is only good to track when your company phone leaves to the toilet. I imagine if they want to get rid of you they just set up a WiFi access point in the toilet and track your poop time. Then tell you to "optimize" your diet so you are more productive or get fired.
I mean it’s Microsoft the king of shitty features.
If this is for catching people working from home, just clone the WiFi and Mac on an OpenWRT 5g mobile router and take it with you and enjoy laughing at your boss while brunching with the whole team on company time.
Sometimes I think people forget that you borrow the company your (life)time and skills for the agreed terms. You’re not some kind of pig that is tracked until you’re fat enough to get butchered.
If your company turns this on, just look for a better workplace immediately that is actually respecting you as a human being and not "human capital" and tell them to get fucked.
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#188I don't get it. People complain when they have to go to the office. And then some are given the option to work from home. Then they complain their boss can find out where they are during work hours. What on Earth are you complaining about?
Just go to the damn office already!!!
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#189I 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…
We are way past shame being an effective tool to regulate behavior.
Shame from the in-group still remains effective. Shame from the out-group wanes as an effective tool as polarization increases.
Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?
#190I 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…
We are way past shame being an effective tool to regulate behavior.
its hard to argue a point where your autonomy trumps, the very thing giving you a salary. We freedom are you really expecting from an employment such as this. You are working for a big tech that is in the midst of layoffs and scrutiny from all angles. One being there is massive competition that at the sightless mishaps will give an advantage to your competitor and that all starts at the bottom meaning hierarchy. Don't expect shame from these companies either. That is ship sailed along ago.