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Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

tomsguide.com

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Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#21

Post by curiousgal »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #8

Thankfully this “update” shouldn’t affect me too much. We already have well established guidelines and schedules for remote work. That being said, I feel like complaining about Teams. Who else is frustrated by its unusually short idle timer? Setting my status to “Away” after only five minutes just makes me look bad. There are definitely managers who somehow think that an 8 hour workday actually means 8 hours of conti…

I built a usb mouse jiggler. The off the shelves ones are probably detectable via their PID/VID.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#22

Post by devjab »

mongol wrote: post #5
Esophagus4 wrote: post #3

? I’m not sure who would really care about this feature. We can usually tell based on your background. And the people that have to be in office are tracked typically with badge swipes. And if you’re really that determined to work remote and your company doesn’t support it, wouldn’t it be better just to find a company that does rather than sneaking around?

I think it can and willl be used more statistically. Yes, from your background you will get a sense and form an opinion, but with this, you can generate a report that says with high accuracy where you have spent every hour. This will be more sharp ammunition in case the employer want to use it against you.

If it goes by WIFI and not the wired network it'll be rather of useless in every enterprise organisation I've ever worked in. I'm not sure I've even worked in a place where the WIFI wasn't a guest network. Don't get me wrong, I'd like the feature. I work in a fully flexible place, but part of that is setting your status to be "working from outside the office" when you're not there. If that could happen automatically that'd be great.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#24

Post by codeduck »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #8

Thankfully this “update” shouldn’t affect me too much. We already have well established guidelines and schedules for remote work. That being said, I feel like complaining about Teams. Who else is frustrated by its unusually short idle timer? Setting my status to “Away” after only five minutes just makes me look bad. There are definitely managers who somehow think that an 8 hour workday actually means 8 hours of conti…

> I feel like complaining about Teams

Brother, there is not enough alcohol in the world.for this conversation.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#25

Post by JCM9 »

I get the optics issue, but companies that want to track this stuff have long had ways to do it. Simple badge taps on doors for example. For example, Amazon has automated reporting that monitors badging in and out of the office so they track what days you’re in and how long you’re in to make sure resources adhere to the RTO5 mandate. HR is alerted in someone doesn’t have enough time badged in.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#27

Post by nerdsniper »

palmotea wrote: post #9

> Well, the main thing this brings to mind is an Amazon tactic that emerged after the pandemic. There was a big move to get people back to working in the office, and Amazon staffers who weren't happy with that could change their SSID (home Wi-Fi name) to match the company’s official office network. > Now, do not take this as advice to do the same! It’s highly likely that a more advanced application like Teams has a m…

MacBooks just provide their GPS location to Jamf thanks to FindMy. Sure, you could spoof that by keeping it in a Faraday cage and use a $10,000 signal generator to generate GPS signals.

But then you go to all that trouble and still have to VPN into the office from an IP outside of your office.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#28

Post by znpy »

> In a new feature update rolling out December 2025, the platform will track a worker’s location using the office Wi-Fi, to see whether you’re actually there or not.

I always despised Teams because it was a shitty chat app.

But now I despise it on an ideological level. So much so that I'm tempted to add something along the lines of "Do not invite me for interviews if your company (or your client's company, if you're a recruiter) uses Microsoft Teams for chat" to my LinkedIn profile.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#29

Post by JCM9 »

palmotea wrote: post #9

> Well, the main thing this brings to mind is an Amazon tactic that emerged after the pandemic. There was a big move to get people back to working in the office, and Amazon staffers who weren't happy with that could change their SSID (home Wi-Fi name) to match the company’s official office network. > Now, do not take this as advice to do the same! It’s highly likely that a more advanced application like Teams has a m…

Amazon now does this with badge swipe data, and because you must badge in and out of Amazon offices they also track and report on how many hours you’re in the office.

Re: Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance

#30

Post by palmotea »

nerdsniper wrote: post #27
palmotea wrote: post #9

> Well, the main thing this brings to mind is an Amazon tactic that emerged after the pandemic. There was a big move to get people back to working in the office, and Amazon staffers who weren't happy with that could change their SSID (home Wi-Fi name) to match the company’s official office network. > Now, do not take this as advice to do the same! It’s highly likely that a more advanced application like Teams has a m…

MacBooks just provide their GPS location to Jamf thanks to FindMy. Sure, you could spoof that by keeping it in a Faraday cage and use a $10,000 signal generator to generate GPS signals. But then you go to all that trouble and still have to VPN into the office from an IP outside of your office.

> MacBooks just provide their GPS location to Jamf thanks to FindMy.

1. Do MacBooks even have proper GPS hardware onboard? Honest question.

2. I wouldn't think GPS would actually work very well, given how cavernous office buildings are--no clear view of the sky for GPS. And if you get a GPS signal indoors at home, it shouldn't be too hard to block.

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