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by Domagoj Belancic
"Tattletale" Microsoft Teams: New function reports who is in the office
28-10-2025
Translation: machine translated
From December, Microsoft wants to introduce a function in Teams that recognises whether employees are in the office. This raises concerns.
Microsoft is planning to expand the Teams platform - by adding a controversial function. This is designed to recognise whether employees are actually in the office. From December 2025, Teams will be able to automatically determine the work location based on the Wi-Fi connection.
How does the check work
?
The new function is called «Work Location Detection». As soon as your laptop or another device connects to the defined company network, Teams automatically sets the work location to «in the office» or to the respective building.
Microsoft justifies the expansion by wanting to support hybrid forms of work and create more transparency about who is currently working on site. This could be helpful for planning meetings, for example. At the same time, Microsoft emphasises that the function is deactivated by default and can only be activated with employees' consent.
Data protection and labour law: this could be difficult in Europe
Experts criticise, however, that the innovation could also be perceived as a form of surveillance, as the law firm Härting told Heise. Companies could use the function to monitor the behaviour of employees working from home. In Europe in particular, the conformity of this function with data protection laws must also be checked.
Will the «workaround» be blocked?
«Tom's Guide» and other portals are now speculating that the new feature will make this trick impossible. For example, the new function could check the IP address or MAC address of the router to ensure the location of the working device. However, this has not been confirmed.
Header image: Shutterstock
I've been tinkering with digital networks ever since I found out how to activate both telephone channels on the ISDN card for greater bandwidth. As for the analogue variety, I've been doing that since I learned to talk. Though Winterthur is my adoptive home city, my heart still bleeds red and blue.
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