[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.

[dang]

Thanks for showing up to provide some corrective information. I know it can feel like opening a box of yellowjackets, but one of the best things about the HN community is when someone with first-hand knowledge is willing to share what they know.

Edit: from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46827312, it does sound like the feature isn't really opt-in for end users though?

[tokyobreakfast]

> it does sound like the feature isn't really opt-in for end users though

End users should not have an expectation of empowerment when using Teams or its predecessors... the administrator can override basically anything.

If you work in a large enterprise they already control everything—or have the capability.

[refulgentis]

AI written with zero sources, links, anything, shouldn't be acceptable, especially to HNers. Makes me sad. :(

Apologies you both have to deal with this.

[bri3d]

Thanks for chiming in!

This is how I expected the feature to work once I read the real product brief, so that's a plus at least. You might want to tell your product people to ask whoever deals with this stuff at Microsoft anymore if they can, like, talk to the press about it? Various outlets have been running stories for almost a year now about how Teams is going to start sending your WiFi data to your boss.

The wording on the product page also makes it sound like tenant administrators will get to decide how opt-in works (ie - that they could select which options the end-user is allowed to pick, and at Microsoft they happened to give you the freedom of choice); this makes sense from my experience in enterprise software management but also makes the feature seem like it will be incredibly yucky/annoying. Is that just a case of poor wording?

This still seems like a super weird feature to push through in terms of "yuck" to "value," but I also know how that goes.

[jabroni_salad]

Out of curiosity is this related to the 'emergency location' that we admins have to provide for every calling plan user or is it a wholly separate system? Reading the other comments here they must not realize that teams is already tracking their address because it has to know which PSAP to connect them to.

This location either uses the named locations I have set up in Entra (we use our public IP ranges for it) or it prompts users for their address if isn't sure. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/emergency-c...

[charles_f]

Honestly I don't know - building location is probably using the same data though.

[dsr_]

The emergency location is for 911 dispatch. The theory goes that in the time of wired phones, a call from 212 555 1212 was definitely from the phone on the 11th floor of 60 Hudson Street, so the correct police/fire/ambulance would be obviously in South Manhattan -- but now that we have VOIP and softphones, the phone could be anywhere -- so which 911 point-of-presence should handle it?

Hence the explicit statement.

[zamadatix]

I appreciate you having the guts to comment on working on Teams :)

What do you think the coolest small thing coming to Teams people probably aren't aware of is? Anything cool you've worked on that you're allowed to publicly brag about? How'd you end up working on Teams, just the way things kind of went or something along the lines of what you aimed for?

[tylerchilds]

But the data exists such that anyone with enough leverage could see that?

Kind of like how Microsoft provides services to ICC judges until they won’t?

[mlrtime]

Thank you and a meta observation.

This happens almost EVERY SINGLE TIME there is a sensationalized headline about something I know about deeply. The title or claim in the article will take a option or feature or some industry where something MAYBE possible and state it as a fact for the propose of creating some kind of fear.

Fear = engagement = ad revenue

[TavsiE9s]

Great. Can you share how exactly someone's location is being derived?

[cptskippy]

> ...what building they're in...

Given that not every device has built in GPS, it sounds like the Network Team is going to have to provide the locations of APs for that to work.

Curious how Teams will resolve that. If you're on your phone using a VPN back to your home network will it know or show you as at home? What happens if you have multiple APs at home?

[csmpltn]

The tenant admin configures that mapping. They can also configure whether the data can be exposed to users outside of the organization. There’s no magic here.

[mc32]

As an aside the zoom admin panel offers great information for troubleshooting but it also offers lots of information about users’ connections.

[absqueued]

What happens if I only use the Teams in Firefox browser? Can a browser also identify SSID?

[jwrallie]

I’m pretty sure that and uninstalling it in your phone should do the trick.

The scary part is that your boss can question why you are the only one without location info.

[rozboris]

It's not your fault that you chose to work on Teams? Maybe "fault" is not the right word, but it's your choice. If you think it needs changing, it's in your hands. If you think it's fine to work on Teams, don't apologize.

[port11]

Maybe it’s not their fault that this feature exists?

Also, about choice: we like to pretend that people are free to choose where they work. They are; if there are no blocking consequences to that choice. For example, between working at Microsoft and letting my family starve? Well, I’ll bite the bullet. The market isn’t amazing, we can be much kinder on people for where they work.

[x3ro]

1. VeryGoodCorp builds a "harmless" feature that's super useful and maybe even opt-in. Only privacy-nuts object to it.

2. The feature is in fact useful, so most people enable it. It may even become company policy to have it enabled.

3. Companies who buy this feature ask for a way to force their employees to use it, as it's "confusing" if location data is only available for 90% of the employees. Not it's an opt-out feature, in the best case.

4. VeryGoodCorp is in a bit of trouble with its shareholders. Revenue growth hasn't been as great lately. They realize that they are sitting on a mountain of location data, aggregated from multiple harmless features, that would tell its customers if their employees are slacking off at work. Surprisingly, the customers are willing to pay good money for a "employee productivity score".

5. Profit..

Edit: formatting

Edit 2: Now you may say "well that wouldn't be legal", and depending on the jurisdiction I'm sure it isn't. But that hasn't kept VeryGoodCorp from collecting this data, they just forgot to turn off the toggle for EU you know, honest mistake. But they still have the data, and laws can change, or, you know, made to change.. (Prop 22 anyone?)

[esseph]

It also shows them what wifi network you are connected to.

[pbhjpbhj]

So it only lets Microsoft know people's exact location -- how close is Microsoft to the Trump regime? Nadella has apparently gifted Trump millions?

Why in the f does Word need my location (access to location services) for me to write a document? Pops up every time.

Teams already has a location setting, if you wanted to automate that a more correct way would seem to be adding the feature and offering users the opportunity to turn it on. Microsoft hasn't really changed since the IE days it seems.

[jajuuka]

It seems like people go out of their way to find something Microsoft, Apple, etc do everyday to get outraged about. Always appreciate someone from the source correcting misinformation and putting it into perspective.

[mcny]

Can you please allow me to disable Ctrl plus Shift plus C shortcut? I've been begging for years at this point...