A simple Microsoft 365 Roadmap update will now generate a raft of unhappy headlines. The idea is simple. “When users connect to their organization’s Wi-Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working in.”
Forget the locational anonymity of a Teams virtual background. Teams will update your location when connected to your company’s WiFi. On video, you may have your usual background complete with company logo. But your boss will know you’re not in work.
Are people just not going into the office without telling anyone? Like, who is this actually affecting?
Also, if they have to VPN into their company network, like assume many do, won’t that register as being in the office anyway?
I’d view it as more of the opposite: a tool built into the Teams suite to tattle on who isn’t complying with Return to Office policies.
VPNs would depend a bit on configuration. I know my ubiqiti router will let me dump VPN traffic into its own vlan (with dedicated IP range), so it would absolutely be possible to tell it apart from local traffic. At the same time, I’m pretty sure my workplace has all site network traffic VPN’d to the home office, so I’m not if the same logic would apply…
Trust me, if your employer wants to know if you’ve been coming into the office or not, they can easily find out without needing Microsoft Teams to tell them about it. They can see what IP address your machine is connecting from. And if you work in a building with secure access they could also just pull your badge-in history to find out if you’re actually there or not.
Oh, my employer already can and does track compliance via badge-ins, so they definitely know when they’re getting a return on investment from the corporate real estate.
I hadn’t thought about the connecting IP address though, that would absolutely be logged.