Top
Best
New

Posted by imalerba 12 hours ago

Microsoft 365 now tracks you in real time?(ztechtalk.com)
365 points | 279 commentspage 5
WalterBright 10 hours ago|
I'd have two phones (and two laptops). One for work only, the other for everything else.
treetalker 11 hours ago||
Elsewhere in the news (including HN): "Microsoft is working to rebuild trust in Windows".
tiku 11 hours ago||
Run it from a VM, use a hotspot named the same as your home connection. Lots of options!
api 10 hours ago||
Microsoft really seems to be tripling and quadrupling down on total surveillance of the user's "own" system. If you haven't ditched MS yet, I'd consider it now.

Linux is becoming more and more viable for a gaming PC. For business uses a Linux desktop is usable but probably not ideal, but you also have macOS. I'd pick anything but Windows and MS stuff.

lpcvoid 12 hours ago||
Microslop doing Microslop things
cheema33 11 hours ago||
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!!!

imglorp 11 hours ago||
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.

SoftTalker 11 hours ago||
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.

marekful 12 hours ago||
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.
toomuchtodo 12 hours ago||
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/

marekful 12 hours ago|||
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.
pixl97 12 hours ago|||
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.
direwolf20 12 hours ago||||
Invasion of privacy is legal in the US.
toomuchtodo 12 hours ago|||
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.

marekful 12 hours ago|||
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...
toomuchtodo 11 hours ago||
You could potentially purchase profiles on them from a data broker, and make them public if not illegal in your jurisdiction.
boogrpants 12 hours ago|||
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.

reactordev 12 hours ago|||
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.
boogrpants 12 hours ago||
That they are wealthy and powerful is illusion.

All I see is frail old, codependent losers who need blue pills to simulate virility.

direwolf20 12 hours ago|||
Other things can stop things.
idle_zealot 12 hours ago||
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.
direwolf20 10 hours ago||
You could also spam it full of fake data
whynotmaybe 11 hours 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.

iberator 11 hours ago|||
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

mystifyingpoi 10 hours ago||
> going for walks and making dinners during WORK TIME

Yet, when in the office, drinking coffee, watercooler smalltalk and smoking at the entrance is somehow considered work time.

Leave us alone. The output is all that matters.

dangus 12 hours ago||
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.

ilinx 12 hours ago|||
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.
jodrellblank 12 hours 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...

abdullahkhalids 12 hours 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.

loloquwowndueo 12 hours ago||||
UPS has a right to know the location of their trucks.
jen20 12 hours ago||||
> 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.

observationist 12 hours ago||
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.

lijok 11 hours ago|
Classic prisoner's dilemma
fsckboy 5 hours ago||
how is there a prisoner's dilemma pattern of payoffs here?
mahirsaid 11 hours ago||
the people that sacrificed years of education and hardship to be employed by a company and have a boss in the end of the day your still back to the same predicament. A plumber, electrician, carpenter, has more autonomy than any profession in the US. A surgeon after years of schooling and experience still has to answer to a director or board, wrong doing will lose all of their credentials and revoked in due time.
jollyllama 12 hours ago|
Hmm, what if you're using the browser app?
SoftTalker 11 hours 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.
jollyllama 11 hours ago||
I'll consider the practice. How does it even work for hard/ethernet/non-wifi connections?
More comments...