▲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:
- Mark Stefik and Brad Cox for their contributions to DRM
- Erick Lavoie for his work on Wildvine DRM
- Vern Paxson for his contributions to DPI (Deep Packet Inspection)
- Latanya Sweeney and Alexandre de Montjoye for their contributions to re-identification of anonymized data
- Steven J. Murdoch and George Danezis for their work on de-anonymization attacks
[0]http://www.bigbrotherawards.org/
[1]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/breachies-2025-worst-w...
>- 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 things like protecting voting rights in the US by notifying voters if their registration records change.
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.
lotsofpulp29 minutes ago
[-] We are way past shame being an effective tool to regulate behavior.
reply▲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.
reply▲datsci_est_20153 minutes ago
[-] Shame from the in-group still remains effective. Shame from the out-group wanes as an effective tool as polarization increases.
reply▲scottyah23 minutes ago
[-] It just has to come from people they care about. These days random people will try to shame you for so many things it's just overload.
reply▲iugtmkbdfil83427 minutes ago
[-] Now.. that is not accurate at all. Some people simply respond differently do different stimuli. And those do change with age and experience. It is not a bad idea.
reply▲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.
Ar-Curunir13 minutes ago
[-] Calling out anonymity researchers for showing that "anonymization" schemes don't work well is a stupid and dumb idea.
If they hadn't done it, you can bet that bad guys would have done it instead (and maybe were already doing it). What the researchers did is publicly show that the existing schemes were broken, hence motivating the design of better schemes.
Like, you fundamentally misunderstand computer security research if you think that shitting on people publishing attacks is a good thing.
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 enable it and require end-users to opt-in."
Yuck.
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 so there's a status in Teams of where you currently are. But IT knew all along. And if IT didn't have tools deployed to get this info already count yourself lucky to work at an immature org security-wise.
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"
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...
reply▲reaperducer16 minutes ago
[-] Working on the systems/security/infrastructure side, we can already do thisIT having the information for security is one thing.
In the hands of power-hungry lower middle managers, it becomes a weapon.
reply▲eaglelamp8 minutes ago
[-] In my experience the most common use of this data is to build case for firing someone for cause when upper management wants them out. It's rarely used for actual security purposes.
reply▲zamadatix44 minutes ago
[-] 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 sourcing. I.e. the quote in the article is the same roadmap item, yet the article talks directly to that as if it's the home SSID which will be put into Teams - where is that information in the quote it's describing? I'm not sure if they just didn't source that bit or if it's plain confusion about whether it's really limited to "connecting to your organizations Wi-Fi" which is then being picked up as a hot story.
Yeah, I couldn't find any sources that weren't rage-bait either.
Honestly, to me the feature seems so incredibly low-functionality that I'm surprised they're pushing it forward after all of the controversy it's generated. Like, sure, it might be nice to see if someone was out to lunch or in Building 17 or whatever without needing to message them, but at the cost of the whole "teams is spying on you" narrative and yuck-factor it pushes, I'm surprised they haven't pushed harder on either clarifying the functionality or just pulling it.
iugtmkbdfil83423 minutes ago
[-] I think I agree. Of all things MS does, this is relatively small potatoes. It a soft creep, but also a gentle reminder that I need to somehow get out of my position, do wfh where I control my environment better ( likely my own business ), or try to convince bosses that we should move away from Windows ( as impossible as sell now as it ever was ).
reply▲Hell, if you're using Teams PSTN calling, your location has to be pulled in by Teams for e911 compliance anyways down to the building. It updates automatically already, even!
reply▲Sure, and your corporate IT also have the roaming logs from their APs and the access logs from the VPN (and maybe your location from MDM anyway), but it doesn't get shown to your boss and coworkers in real time, probably, unless your company is structured really weirdly.
reply▲What happens if you deny location permissions? Why doesn't every other VOIP app require your live location, and instead are fine with a random address you manually entered?
reply▲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?
reply▲Nobody knows, as far as I can tell; I haven't found any actual sources and I don't think the code is present in a public release anywhere for anyone to look at. I'm assuming it must work off of MAC at a minimum, since most offices have the same SSID across buildings. It doesn't really seem "designed" as a spyware/audit feature, since it would be a terrible flimsy one, but it also just doesn't seem that useful compared to the "yuck" factor it generates and the potential for abuse by crappy employers/managers.
reply▲repeekad52 minutes ago
[-] This feels like a much better feature than “they can track your realtime location from the mobile app” as implied in the article? Plus employees will have to opt in?
The tracking is still gross, but limited to opt-in on office WiFi seems a lot less dramatic of a headline, especially given the main concern people have is work from home
pepperoni_pizza48 minutes ago
[-] > Plus employees will have to opt in?
If a company policy says you have to opt in, not opting in means you're breaching the policy and might get fired. Entirely legal in at-will employment places, but potentially not in places with better worker protections.
Saying that, I just got announcement from my employer they will not be turning it on for now.
seanclayton47 minutes ago
[-] Employees need to join a union
reply▲Personally I wouldn’t even start working for an organisation that uses Microsoft …
reply▲chankstein388 minutes ago
[-] We used to use GSuite then we got acquired and we're a microsoft shop. :(
reply▲palmotea39 minutes ago
[-] So how many dozens of organizations can you work for?
reply▲willturman31 minutes ago
[-] reply▲palmotea26 minutes ago
[-] > More and more every day.
That's not a bad thing.
But I think its totally unrealistic and impractical to deal with this kind of thing by being so choosy that you won't work for an org that uses Microsoft. Actually acting that way probably just means choosing to be unemployed (for the vast majority, at least).
dogma113833 minutes ago
[-] They can already do… pretty much any organization uses a VPN or “ZTNA” to provide access to resources so they know where you are.
reply▲> Plus employees will have to opt in?
I mean, that's not really how "opt-in" works for features that your company owns; you might have to "opt-in" technically but your company will probably make that a little more mandatory.
I do agree that the blog post, headline, and HN comments are as usual quite an overreaction, but this feature is pretty gross. It's also weird because the controversy/grossness-to-utility ratio seems awful, which either means that Microsoft product management has gotten as bad as everyone thinks it has or there's some future plan to make it more "robust."
repeekad46 minutes ago
[-] My concern is if the employee is aware, at least let me quit before I’m silently opted into my boss realizing I can get the same work done with less time at the desk from home
reply▲CGMthrowaway51 minutes ago
[-] >If you decide to take a "working lunch" and connect to "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantlyCan't you just rename your home wifi SSID to be whatever your Work wifi is called?
reply▲zamadatix36 minutes ago
[-] 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 your organization's AP". I'm not even sure how else to make this really work right.
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 based on SSID?
palmotea32 minutes ago
[-] > 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 based on SSID?
Maybe the enterprise exports a table of AP MAC addresses, mapped to locations. It could be the SSID stuff is just a way to spy on what non-office location you were at.
zamadatix25 minutes ago
[-] That's what I'm thinking. BSSID ~= "AP MAC Address" it's just each (SSID, frequency) tuple the AP advertises has a different BSSID/MAC rather than a single shared one per AP.
E.g. in the above deployment, each Aruba AP could have up to 16 BSSIDs/MACs per radio, but we really had an average of ~5 in use per band at any given site. So a single 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz AP would have 10 BSSIDs/MACs associated with it in the export (which would then roll up to be BSSIDs/MACs at that office).
Then the SSID stuff is just pure speculation (at least from what I've been able to find from Microsoft so far, they are very light on details). Maybe it does that, maybe it doesn't - but the roadmap item doesn't even mention that half of the behavior at all. It certainly could use that as a fallback when there is no location, but where are the articles finding the plan actually has anything about SSID?
jjkaczor21 minutes ago
[-] 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)
ivan_gammel49 minutes ago
[-] I predict a lot of office wifi names with small typos used to share internet from smartphones.
reply▲trollbridge39 minutes ago
[-] Might need to change the MAC address and netblock to match the office one too, but entirely doable.
reply▲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.
reply▲silverwind49 minutes ago
[-] Should be restricted to only "in office" vs "not in office", no showing the wifi name. Also, the lack of wired network support seems odd.
reply▲IMO that's probably how the feature will work, I haven't seen any actual non-speculation/rage bait evidence to the contrary.
reply▲brainzap51 minutes ago
[-] I think its cool, so I can who is in the office for lunch.
Currently I manually check device IPs.
And there's me asking people :/
reply▲Our building security system updates something somewhere which ties into email. When we have incidents such as "the lifts are broken" or "the south exit is closed" or whatever, these get emailed to all staff that have been in the the building in the last so many hours (16 I'd assume). It's a handy system.
Ultimately if you are at the type of company which practices presenteeism, then the technology used is immaterial
lostlogin54 minutes ago
[-] Fucking hell.
Living in Teams is bad enough without this. It’s only a tiny part of my job, but if it was a major part I’m not sure I could stomach that.
reply▲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.
crazygringo10 minutes ago
[-] Seriously, this is
not a thing. It doesn't even begin to make sense. It's made up.
If you work in a factory with time cards that need to be punched in, and you punch in a buddy's who is late, that's a thing -- a very risky thing if you get caught, since it's fraud.
But the idea that you'll give a coworker your password so they can boot up and log in and somehow make it look like you're online...? Not a thing. And doesn't even make sense today when you can just open your chat client on your phone anyways and be present there. We've been in an era of remote work for a long time now.
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.
reply▲chorlton208050 minutes ago
[-] I think they would have thought of that and are likely using MAC addresses and a lookup table tied up Active Server, etc.
Yes, MAC addresses can be spoofed, but that isn't going to be what most employees will do.
kstrauser42 minutes ago
[-] "Huh, looks like Ted's working from 'Kiss My Ass, Stalker' again."
reply▲Run it from a VM, use a hotspot named the same as your home connection. Lots of options!
reply▲alistairSH36 minutes ago
[-] Assuming your office has entry gated with a badge (which I assume most do in 2026), don't they already know when you're physically at the office?
Heck, my employer's entry system was already coupled to my phone's location (optional, but meant I didn't have to reserve a desk manually). So, I already looked like I was coming to the office on weekends because the grocery store is next door.
SoftTalker23 minutes ago
[-] Yep there are so many ways an employer can know if you're coming to the office or not, if they really care.
reply▲I'm surprised this would be even legal in most European countries... Then again, MS might not care any more. Companies who are not looking for alternatives today won't ever be looking.
reply▲It is not. Best guess is that this is reserved for the land of the free.
reply▲I still expect this feature to roll out worldwide with some legalese fine print that the customer is responsible for configuring and operating the product "in accordance with local laws". I'd be really surprised if MS handles this differently.
reply▲The implementation details are sketchy/weak in all sources I can find, but I don't think it's pure (coordinates based) location tracking, but rather a "feature" that will show which WiFi network you're connected to as your Teams status. It's pitched as "what building you're in at the office," which seems like a stretch.
It's also kind of unclear whether the blog post is correct that it would show the name of another network if you connect to it - I'd sort of assume it would just show "Out of Office" instead of "connected to YO_MAMAS_WIFI" or whatever, but who knows.
semiquaver58 minutes ago
[-] > what building you're in at the office
This makes no sense. Every multi-building campus I’ve ever seen uses the same SSID for all APs across buildings.
For meshed networks there is a secondary ID (with a name I do not know) that is used to distinguish between APs, since your device should only talk to at most one AP at a time.
It wouldn't be surprising if they used that for finding the location, but marketing sells it as SSID matching as the people they want to sell it to are most likely not experts in networking.
reply▲EvanAnderson22 minutes ago
[-] The ESSID (Extended Service Set Identifier) is the human-readable thing you see. There is an underlying BSSID (Basic Service Set Identifier) that includes the unique identifier for the AP (its MAC address) your mobile unit is associated with.
On Windows you can see this (from an elevated context and, in newer versions, with location services enabled) by running: "netsh wlan show interfaces"
They could use the BSSID, which is unique per physical access point.
reply▲Yeah, the whole feature brief seems like either a really flimsy cover story or truly awful product management since it's a completely useless feature.
reply▲If it's just the SSID it's pretty useless for making sure people are at work. I can totally connect to "Office_CA-SJC-03" from home, or any other SSID you care to name.
reply▲JellyPlan57 minutes ago
[-] Why not get a portable hotspot and call it "[your work's wifi name]"
reply▲Would that not cause problems when your laptop tried to connect to two networks that needed different credentials?
reply▲lostlogin48 minutes ago
[-] If you deleted teams off your phone then hot-spotted from phone?
reply▲> Remember when you could text Dave from the office to turn your PC on because you were stuck in traffic?
I don't understand why this doesn't still work. If Dave from the office has access to your PC, presumably Dave and your PC are in the office, connected to your office's network, and thus it would appear that you are in the office?
Or is the assumption that you're carrying another device with you that would give you away? In which case, shouldn't the complaint be more about being forced to perform some kind of work task (like carrying/being accessible by your phone) when you're off the clock...which is hardly a new issue/complaint?
Most middle managers will either not require this, or require it but find ways to themselves avoid being tagged as logging into their home wifi. The prevailing culture around middle-management is one of inefficiency and rule avoidance. Middle managers need to be replaced by AI already.
reply▲xcf_seetan47 minutes ago
[-] Does it works both ways? Does it also tracks where the boss is? To be fair to the employee, he should be able to see where the boss is at any time.
reply▲Completely agree. My employer makes all employee badging data available. Any employee can view whether any other employee has badged into the office and when. This includes viewing whether your boss has come in.
However badging data is much more coarse-grained than WiFi. For one, because the building is large, you can’t tell which part of the office the employee is. For two, you can’t tell when the employee has left work because no badging is needed to exit the building.
This article is like 300 words. Would it have killed them to not generate it using AI?
reply▲Maybe this will change one day but at the current moment this is an immediate turnoff. It's like someone trying to show you their project day 1 and it's a page filled with ads and a newsletter popup. You may have good reasons to do that but it doesn't instill a sense of trust and quality.
reply▲mortenjorck59 minutes ago
[-] I don't know how much of it was hand-edited and how much was direct output, but this article has that unmistakable LLM
voice. The rhythm, the rhetorical flourishes; it's all there even if it's diffused through some human revision.
The really weird thing is going to be when people start internalizing the LLM voice and writing that way. It's probably happening already.
djha-skin53 minutes ago
[-] > 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 "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantly.
Looks like I need to rename my home wifi to "Corporate Network."
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 seems like the worst practices from Trilogy/Crossover are leaking all over the industry. First the crunch at all times at FAANG, next tracking everyone in a few minute intervals, ending up with real-time video tracking at all times, all spawned by the desire of inept top management to run software development as a manual factory with predictable assembly lines and not an intellectual pursuit.
reply▲>
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 "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantlyBut what if I have a secondary wifi network in my home that says "BigCorpSuperSecureWifi", wouldn't that work? What if that's the name of my phone's hotspot?
palmotea34 minutes ago
[-] > 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 "Starbucks_Guest_WiFi", your boss sees it instantly. You can’t hide behind a generic "Remote" status anymore.
So how exactly does this work? It'd be pretty trivial setup my access point to provide a work SSID? How much access does Teams really have to get info to discern your location?
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.
palmotea21 minutes ago
[-] > 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.
It looks like MS Teams will never be getting installed on my phone.
I don’t even allow location sharing with my own family on and ongoing basis.
Some people don't have a choice. Of course they could choose to lose their job over it, but for some that is not an option.
I also totally don't get why you would want to share your location, even with family. I don't want to know where they are either.
After they killed Skype, I tried to install the mobile Teams app. It wouldn't sync properly with the desktop app, so deleted it and forgot it existed. So glad it wouldn't work!
reply▲I installed it on my iPhone but didn't allow Bluetooth access or location access. I imagine it can't really do much with how iOS is. I also don't take my work phone with me if I go outside, so Wi-Fi tracking would be fairly useless anyway.
reply▲Guess it's true unless you have a company issued phone that is managed. But then maybe it's less shocking as long as you are allowed to totally turn it off outside work hours.
reply▲re-lre-l23 minutes ago
[-] In my opinion, if I want to install any work-related software on my personal devices, it means I’m so excited about the job that I honestly don’t care whether a manager sees where and what I’m doing - just as a manager usually doesn’t care either. I mean, there’s no reason at all to install anything on personal devices unless you actually care about the business.
reply▲ngetchell29 minutes ago
[-] 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.
newsoftheday18 minutes ago
[-] 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.
reply▲galleywest20023 minutes ago
[-] I am doubtful that Teams is going to fire off an e911 address change request to a vendor such as Intrado/West or Sinch every time you change WiFi.
reply▲antaviana33 minutes ago
[-] When I started working at a time with no mobiles and no remote, calling or being called to the office for personal reasons was seen with disrespect from your coworkers. At work you were supposed to be working, and outside of work you were supposed not to be working. Pretty much as in the Severance series, but without the forgetting. With mobiles and connectivity, everything changed, I'm unsure if for better. Now you can work 24/7 or slack all day as if there were no tomorrow.
reply▲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
reply▲Things like this blocking as extremely easy to detect and flag. Because they control the app they can always in-band the information to servers you need to connect to.
reply▲Modded Teams APK?
reply▲On a company-managed device?
reply▲wizzwizz422 minutes ago
[-] It's more likely than you think.
reply▲I'm sure it depends on the make/model and how locked down it is or if they even care
reply▲VPN? Fake GPS? I know some routers have an option not to broadcast the name of the network but I'm not sure how that works.
reply▲Any middle management thinking of enabling this technology will make it mandatory. If you blackhole the traffic, that's also reason to fire you.
reply▲SoftTalker20 minutes ago
[-] Why would they want to fire you? And if they do, they will find a reason.
reply▲Do they need a reason anymore? Most US is at-will to work.
reply▲jdmichal52 minutes ago
[-] They don't need a reason to fire you. They need a reason to fire you and not pay unemployment benefits.
reply▲reactordev49 minutes ago
[-] 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.
reply▲inetknght26 minutes ago
[-] Unemployment benefits are so low, they're barely enough to pay for food. Not enough to also pay for utilities, and definitely not enough to pay rent/mortgage.
This is intended to force you back into the slave market.
guluarte35 minutes ago
[-] I guess you can use wireguard and install a vpn server on your work pc, that being said if your company has a semi competent IT team they will notice that, if you work from home just install wg easy
https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easythis only works if you control the device and not managed by your company
Some of my neighbors have some rather colorful Wifi SSIDs. I've seen some silly ones like "FBI SURVEILLANCE" as well as at least one crudely expressing their opinion of the current US President. Probably won't be long now before we see someone get fired because their boss saw the name of their home Wifi network.
reply▲> Teams on Mac
> And obviously, the mobile app (your pocket spy).
Don't these ask for location permissions? This story is light on details.
The roadmap feature is light on details too: "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 enable it and require end-users to opt-in."
I found a lot of news stories about this dating back to where it showed up on the roadmap in early 2025, but none of them with any more implementation details (ie - is it using _only_ WiFi network name, or some other data too?)
The Teams Android app just asked for location permission today for me for the first time. And got denied.
reply▲So looks like feature is not working in the web client? One more reason to to use that instead.
Also, I will uninstall Teams from my phone for sure.
reply▲If they really care every large company already knows what building you are in just by tracking your badge info. This was transparent: I could check my own badge history anytime.
What this does is track when you are not working in the office.
SoftTalker40 minutes ago
[-] Still easy to do if you have a badge system at work. No badge swipes today yet you've done work (emails, PRs, etc)? You're not working at the office.
reply▲Mr. Doctorow calls this “Bossware.” ;-)
reply▲Detrytus38 minutes ago
[-] OK, I’m renaming my home WiFi to “Riverside_Strip_Club” :-)
reply▲I wondered why the Teams Android app suddenly decided to ask for location permissions today.
Denied.
ahartmetz41 minutes ago
[-] Same and same. Like, what the hell is that for now?!
reply▲Disgusting, and a potential legal liability for employers if they turn it on. Not in the “invasion of privacy” sense, but the “there was a crime committed in area X and now the cops want our Teams logs from the employees who were there that Microsoft disclosed to them.”
The more data you collect, the bigger your legal liability when something inevitably goes pear-shaped.
Stop treating workers like grifters or prisoners and you won’t have nearly as many problems.
Most MDM software would already have access to your location. This might make it available to a lower level of management.
reply▲assaddayinh56 minutes ago
[-] Society feels like a prison and the warden is watching.
reply▲copilot_king52 minutes ago
[-] Working in the panopticon is bad for productivity.
This is about satiating the warden's control fetish, consequences for the company be damned.
This is exactly the end state we'll end up in unless the technology sector starts saying no to implementing the tools of petty tyranny.
Hint: Bossware and most things the MBA's drool over.
Unfortunately, there's enough people out there that are fine with implementing said features if it means they get a paycheck; even if it ruins the world for everyone else.
Wow, what a dystopian feature. One more reason to stay away from Microsoft products as far as possible.
reply▲Microslop doing Microslop things
reply▲jollyllama48 minutes ago
[-] Hmm, what if you're using the browser app?
reply▲SoftTalker38 minutes ago
[-] My question as well. When I'm remote, I use Teams in the browser and I proxy the connection over SSH to my desktop machine at work.
reply▲jollyllama5 minutes ago
[-] I'll consider the practice. How does it even work for hard/ethernet/non-wifi connections?
reply▲It's so pathetic that people actually put up with this. There are so many ways to stop that tracking from working and no, your boss doesn't have the right to track you.
reply▲Why pathetic?
People were breaking the rules, not working, going for walks and making dinners during WORK TIME.
Lazy and fraudulent people destroyed WFH.
Should be banned forever. 20% people working, 80% slacking
whynotmaybe33 minutes ago
[-] No, he can't track you but yes, he can track his devices.
If you install corporate teams on your personal device, you are part of the problem.
You must request a device for that and never mix personal and professional stuff.
Until there is a law, there is nothing to stop them. So you need the law. First person to reach out to would be Ron Wyden, he has been a reliable advocate in this space.
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/
Nothing legal prevents them from trying but if you block the tracking then your not in the wrong, and if you prove they tracked you in your lunch break and after work, you might have a good chance at winning in court for invasion of privacy.
reply▲Most of this will be under 'tracking the corporate asset'. They aren't tracking you as a person, but instead a laptop or phone of which they own or control. That's going to be much harder to defeat in the US.
reply▲Invasion of privacy is legal in the US.
reply▲Very true, I support this, but the law is still needed imho unless we're fine normalizing the continuation of corporations tightening the screws on workers to keep their labor costs within their desired tolerances. It's about control, of course, as it always is. Protect the human from bad actors, broadly speaking.
I would be chuffed if I see someone present on breaking this at Defcon this year.
There are some questions, too. Can I track my boss if he can track me? Can I install a key-logger on the CFO's laptop? Why not? They just want to see where I am, and I just want to see what key they hit...
reply▲There are laws against LEO engaging in extrajudicial killings.
There are law's against wage theft.
Both happen quite often, recent ICE events aside.
Turns out words written in a book do not actually constrain physics.
What is this? The medieval ages? You seem to believe laws are mage armor.
Individuals need to grow a spine and not be so kowtowed. This battered wife shit where everyone has to kneel before some rando with an iPhone clipped to their belt is pathetic. Management isn't actually anymore useful to humanity than me, cause like me there's a huge backlog of people who can do managements job.
Laws are for them, not for us. It’s to keep us in their pockets. In line. Working. Till we die. Written by the wealthy and powerful to remain wealthy and powerful.
reply▲boogrpants45 minutes ago
[-] That they are wealthy and powerful is illusion.
All I see is frail old, codependent losers who need blue pills to simulate virility.
Other things can stop things.
reply▲Without some sort of organized intervention this sort of tracking will only get worse. A law is the basic way to enforce collective behavior, but sure, if your government doesn't pass one then you should organize some other way. Probably a union in this case.
reply▲Does UPS have the right to know the location of its drivers?
Of course it does.
I don’t know that we can draw broad conclusions about worker rights on this issue.
My company probably DOES need to know that I’m not taking company information to certain locations like overseas if I work in certain industries like if I am in healthcare covered by HIPAA and I’m handling PHI.
Hyperbolic example, but if I’m taking a teams call or reading my email in North Korea, that is a gigantic problem.
Right to privacy doesn’t exist inside of employer apps and company devices, and there isn’t a strong argument that it should exist.
jodrellblank43 minutes ago
[-] > "
Of course it does."
Of course it doesn't. (What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence).
> "there isn’t a strong argument that it should exist."
Did you google for anything on this topic? Did you set a timer for 5 minutes and spend some time trying hard to think of one? Did you look at other countries and their regulations (e.g. Germany?[1]) and why they ended up that way?
[1] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/employee-monitoring-in-ger...
I would argue that UPS has the right to know the location of its packages and trucks, but not its drivers. If a driver has to leave for a few hours for a family emergency, UPS no longer has the right to track that driver, as long as they are not using company equipment for travel.
reply▲abdullahkhalids59 minutes ago
[-] Before computers and internet, a manager might have been allowed to take work files home to work on them. Or workers on the road, might have stacks of company files with them in their car.
How did companies enforce the worker not taking the files with them on their international trip? Just by punishment when it was discovered after the fact. Things worked fine. It was good enough.
There is no need for additional surveillance, just because computers and internet can be used to do it.
> Right to privacy doesn’t exist inside of employer apps and company devices
Indeed, but the right of an employer to have you carry their device outside of their building also doesn't exist.
newsoftheday12 minutes ago
[-] "Here is the scary part"
"The Bottom Line"
It reads like AI generated content, is it just me?
This is why unions in the workplace are a good thing. It would prevent management from enabling these god awful policies by using collective bargaining.
Yet the contrarians here will always say "iTs bEtTeR wItHoUt uNiOn cuz I nEgoTiaTe beTtEr"
The Brahmin wants to track the commoners. The market isn't very happy with MSFT's AI bubble and dumped the stock yesterday. 50% more to go down!
reply▲Jamesbeam4 minutes ago
[-] I 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.
Installed Linux on my work computer, completely uninstalled microsoft software from my phone. I'm deliberately excluding Microsoft wherever possible.
Switch to Linux, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Say it's a security measure against spyware by malicious and hostile entities online.
Classic prisoner's dilemma
reply▲varispeed46 minutes ago
[-] Microsoft is building better chains for corporate slaves.
reply▲rapsacnz49 minutes ago
[-] I use Little Snitch and block every phone home feature. Works great.
reply▲echelon_musk1 hour ago
[-] >
managers will be able to see your real-time location. And no, disconnecting from the office Wi-Fi won't save you.Huh? If you're in the office already then your real time location is... the office. Makes 0 sense to me.
Another reason to avoid ever working for a company that uses Teams.
reply▲This can't be legal in the EU, right?
reply▲Sure it can, other groups are already tracked in detail on the job.
reply▲So get a separate work phone and turn it off.
reply▲everdrive49 minutes ago
[-] One more reason not to use WiFi but to use ethernet.
reply