this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026

108 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

85391 readers

4952 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

L3s@lemmy.world

enu@lemmy.world

technopagan@lemmy.world

L4s@lemmy.world

L3s@hackingne.ws

108

Microsoft Teams is getting a controversial location tracking feature that users may hate (www.neowin.net)

submitted 4 hours ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 35 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] manmachine@lemmy.world 45 points 3 hours ago (4 children)

Was there ever a MS Teams feature anyone actually liked? Seems like the whole product is based on loathing.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 points 1 hour ago

Teams isn't made for the users.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

They recently cribbed the Catch Up feature directly from Slack. I’m a big fan of that. Come up with a good feature on their own? Nah.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 1 points 43 minutes ago

I bet some employers love that shit. They are Microslop Teams‘ main customers. Making our life miserable is a feature.

[–] br3d@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Good to remember that the client for Teams isn't you - it's your IT department

[–] scops@reddthat.com 18 points 1 hour ago

No, it's upper management. I don't give a fuck what you're doing all day as long as it doesn't create security vulnerabilities in the environment

[–] cinaeth@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Hopefully this change will get rid of some scammers who use teams to recruit for fake jobs

[–] kaml@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

wasnt it only yesterday that Gremlin Satya Nutella was telling employees they should not be tracking their staff?

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 17 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I look forward to everyone being shown as located in the major city where our VPN is listed instead of where we actually are. That's how it works for browsers and other location based functionality now.

[–] harmony@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 3 hours ago

Even without VPN, IP-based location has always shown me in all sorts of random places, sometimes even in the opposite end of my country. Guess it's an ISP thing.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

This is using your office network/wifi SSID to set your location status in Teams. It’s not sharing your location when you’re nothing the office.

Also, it’s opt-in.

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago

Is it possible to hate Teams more?

[–] folekaule@lemmy.world 12 points 3 hours ago

My company device already has so much surveillance on it that this won't make a meaningful difference to me.

However, given that they can't even get my activity status right, I don't see it going well. For example It sets me we idle even if I'm typing furiously in my editor, unless I go wave my mouse cursor in Teams for a few seconds. Other chat apps got this right decades ago.

It doesn't deliver messages or delivers them out of order. Unread status on messages doesn't work right. It crashes randomly. I could go on.

Fix the core functionality, Microsoft, instead of adding all kinds of big brother bullshit. I don't trust Teams to get anything right and neither should my manager.

[–] PlantJam@lemmy.world 9 points 2 hours ago

Microsoft says that this feature is basically a replacement for physical workplace check-in peripherals, it reduces the need to manually update your status

Considering how much I have to manually fix my regular teams status, I have doubts as to how effective this will be.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 22 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Hmm...

Image generated with Microsoft Copilot

[–] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 20 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, and what an image…

[–] justsomeguy@lemmy.world 10 points 3 hours ago

Should give the teams logo a whip at this point

[–] magnue@lemmy.world 14 points 3 hours ago

Location: at work.

[+] Fizz@lemmy.nz -31 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Controversial opinion but this is perfectly fine to enable in an enterprise environment. If you're being paid to work and you're lucky enough to be trusted to work from home its fine to force employees to have location services enabled. Not like there isnt a million other ways to see where they are.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 24 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

i'm fine with company property having tracking, but as long as i'm doing my job i don't see why my employer needs to know were i am. and that's despite me preferring to work on location.

[+] Fizz@lemmy.nz -17 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (4 children)

I work in a big office, I want to know if the person is in office, working from home or offsite somewhere. This feature will automatically update the status to give that info. I dont see how its hard to understand why that is a useful feature. Also I said enterprise environment its assumed these are company devices.

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 25 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I have never once had an issue with this.

Know why? Because I work with responsible adults. Once you start treating adults like little kids with no agency, you’re opening the floodgates for the control schemes which finally start to affect you personally.

What could your employer do that would overstep your personal boundaries? By handwaving this one away, you’re enabling them to cross your line later. You must see that, yes? It’s clear to everyone else.

You are not doing yourself any service, even if you think you’re just “sitting this one out.”

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 11 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Because working from home doesn't really mean you have to be in your house as long as you're working. Just like you don't have to actually eat on your lunch break. If you can't trust me then why am I still working for you?

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Then ask

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz -5 points 3 hours ago

I do and its an inferior way of checking their status

[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Two reasons:

The feature likely won't work as well as you might think. What happens when you leave for 10 minutes to get some lunch, and that's when your boss's boss checks your location and it says you're working from home or something. And now you get written up because you're supposed to be in the office three days per week. I get this is a specific and convoluted example, but stuff like this happens--a feature is released, and management is too stubborn to take things with a grain of salt (or they otherwise won't consider the limitations).
You're assuming they're only using your location data to update your in/out status. Neither MS nor your employer will ever be content to only use limited information when they have access to more. And while it would be somewhat limited if it were only on work devices, understand that a lot of employers expect people to install this shit on their personal devices (I was the only holdout in my department who wouldn't/couldn't install MS authenticator on my phone, it was a whole thing).

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 hours ago

I had a boss that would teams-call me when I was on the toilet. I don’t think it was malicious, just inconvenient. He was a dick about it though, so maybe he was watching my status.

The Authenticator app is one of the the least invasive pieces of software you could install on your phone, so you’re on your own there. But we just get a Yubikey and it’s their problem.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz -3 points 3 hours ago

Leave your device? But really you'll be able to say you were getting lunch and since you return 10mins later they'll see you're in the office. If they dont accept that then you'd be cooked with or without this feature.
Saying neither MS or your employer will ever be content to only use limited information when they have access to more is a stupid point considering that both parties already have access to more information than this feature will provide. If they are bringing a personal device its probably already registered into some MDM software for basic device management of company assets and that provides them with more control than this will. If they dont then the company is probably to small and not interested in gathering this info or doing anything with it.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It's irrevelant where somebody is, as long as the assigned work is completed. Are you an insecure middle manager by chance?

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Im not a manager but im just struggling to see how you habe such a narrow view of work that you think its that linear. Most roles do require inter team and department cooperation and in those cases it's nice to be able to check teams and see if someone's in the office because then you can go talk to them directly.

Why is knowing if someone is wfh or in office such a bad thing to you? Also where someone is is not irrelevant there are plenty of restrictions around work locations.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Yo, I was hoping to chat about fizzing buzzes today. You in the office; wanna grab coffee? If you prefer you can call or we can just chat on slack? Anyway I thought it would be best if we foo’d the bars in that order on project A.

Easy. No naked ping. No pressure. Question already in the open. No expectations. Will find out if able to meet in person. Will get an initial response.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world -1 points 1 hour ago

Agreed. It’s updating your status to in-office and updating your office room location.

Many hybrid workforces already have software that’s doing this as part of desk hoteling.

If you’re online and not in the office, it’s not updating your location to your home address.

This is useful for coworkers to figure out where they are at so they can sit close. It might not sound like a useful feature at first but consider how large a campus like Microsoft is. Knowing what building and floor someone is at makes it much easier to work together.

Some of the other responses here make it sound like they’ve never signed in with a badge before.