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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?

#201

Post by dmantis »

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…

Publicly reproducible attacks are great, because now we know where there the problem is and how to fix it.

You can be pretty sure some three-letter agency trash had been already using it around the world along with shady spyware startups.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#202

Post by SoftTalker »

cheema33 wrote: post #188

I 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!!!

It's pretty amazing to see the bubble many people here seem to work in. A guess, but probably 90% of employees have to go to work. Either they physically cannot do their job remotely or the employer demands that they be present.

A lot of people are coming across as whiny children here, "Oh no I might have to go to the office for my 6-figure paycheck." Grow up and go to work, as George Carlin might say.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#203

Post by imglorp »

cheema33 wrote: post #188

I 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!!!

It's about trust and empowerment.

It's about hiring adults, respecting and trusting them to do the job and support the team, and be responsible for their methods. The details are not important to that goal.

If an employer instead treats people like toddlers needing supervision, spoon feeding, and metrics around methods, not work, they will get only that.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#205

Post by zamadatix »

rblatz wrote: post #127
zamadatix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if there was more Microsoft has said/used to say about this feature because it leaves a gap between "connect to your organizations Wi-Fi" and "will show you're connected to Starbucks/Home and what that SSID is". I followed several articles and the tree I found seems to end with this Neowin article https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-delays-controversial-l... but it doesn't actully clear up the sourc…

Is the answer to buy a travel router and give it the same SSID as another network, either work or home? Or is this doing something more sophisticated than SSID snooping?

More on this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46827756 but the short of it is where is this talk of SSIDs even originating and, if it is really the approach, how does it work right at all?

That aside, if it is SSIDs it's dead simple to fake. If it's BSSIDs it's a little more difficult and not every AP may expose a way to spoof it (but it's not too difficult to find ones which will).

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#206

Post by charles_f »

I work on Teams (I know, I know... please don't hit me, it's not my fault)

1. I don't speak authoritatively and

2. I don't have knowledge of the whole product - there's always a rogue team here and there doing stuff.

We've had that feature turned on at MSFT for some time now. It does not allow your manager to see that you're at Starbucks, at home, on the shitter or anything like that. There's a new toggle in the calendar settings called "Share location with my organization", and the settings are: "all details: building, desk, etc.", "general location: office or remote", "can't view any location information". What it does when turned on is just adding, at the top of your calendar, icons that tell you which of your colleagues are in office, and if they share and you click on someone's picture, what building they're in (when it works).

The whole "it will tell your manager what your wifi is" is just baseless extrapolation, and plainly false from what I can tell.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#207

Post by NegativeK »

reaperducer wrote: post #164
uean wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Working on the systems/security/infrastructure side, we can already do this IT having the information for security is one thing. In the hands of power-hungry lower middle managers, it becomes a weapon.

I think that's the difference.

First security job I had, the CISO had already declared that enforcing "no Youtube, porn, whatever" at work was a managerial problem and not a security problem [0]. And when management needed data from computers about an employee, they had to go through security -- they couldn't just fish around on their own. HR was involved, there was a paper trail, and requests were scope limited.

There are companies that do incredibly invasive employee monitoring, but those dystopias don't use EDR or whatever. They use some other vendor's spyware to replace management with creeping.

For some reason I'm reminded of the chains or cables used to keep operator hands (Posson's pull-backs) from being crushed in a press brake.

[0] The malware, etc that can come from those sites was a security problem -- but checking if creepy Bob was looking at boobs on company equipment or even just wasting time had nothing to do with infosec.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#208

Post by mystifyingpoi »

g947o wrote: post #134
triceratops wrote: post #25

FTA > Remember when you could text Dave from the office to turn your PC on because you were stuck in traffic? I honestly don't. This was a thing? Why? > So if you decide to take a "working lunch" and connect to "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantly. I would have a lot of fun with "creative" names for my Wi-fi network.

This doesn't make any sense. In any organization with a remotely capable IT, you'll still need to log in with your own account. If you give someone else your password to log in... there is a bigger problem.

It could make sense, although probably rarely these days. The question is, whether the benefit of pretending to be on time (no need to stay late to compensate, no need to explain to supervisor) outweighs the security and legal risk. It totally might.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#209

Post by jama211 »

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…

That’s ok, if my work cared enough about whether I was online or at my desk at any specific moment they’d have complained already. I have teams quit completely half the time. I get my work done, my performance reviews are good, I turn up to meetings on time, that’s all that should ever matter.

Also if they cared so much about where I was to punish me for it, I’d quit that company. The only companies I will work for are ones that treat me like an adult, it’s fairly simple.

Re: Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?

#210

Post by toomuchtodo »

palmotea wrote: post #119
zamadatix wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The roadmap description is not really specific enough to either back up what the article is saying or describe if this approach would/wouldn't do anything, so I'm wondering the same kinds of things. If I were to try to implement the given task description, I'd start with assuming this would need to be "Enterprise gives an exports of BSSIDs and locations, Teams uses that table to set the location when you connect to y…

> If it really is SSID based, the feature would be relatively useless for most organizations even before discussion trying to spoof it. E.g. the last place I worked had ~3,500 physical addresses with APs (and many more individual buildings/"office" names), all with the same "Corp_Name_Employee" SSID because otherwise it's way more work to have unique SSIDs. So how would this feature even do what it's supposed to do b…

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