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The Infographics Show
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You NEED to STOP Using Microsoft Teams Right Now
You NEED to STOP Using Microsoft Teams Right Now
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Субтитры (209)
0:00
Your boss might be watching you right now. Even if you work from home.
0:04
The moment your laptop connects to a company network, you’ve basically invited management
0:08
to pull up a chair in your home office and spy on you. And in the United States, it’s virtually 100%
0:14
legal. There’s even a nickname for it: Bossware. They know when you slack. They know about every
0:20
message you send, and can read them. Their eyes are always on you
0:25
It leaves you facing an uncomfortable truth. You’re not just working remotely anymore.
0:29
You’re working under observation. Chapter 1 - The Green Dot Illusion
0:33
If you’re one of the roughly 320 million people who use Microsoft Teams since 2024,
0:38
you’re more than familiar with how it forces you to perform… or risk losing
0:42
your job. If your status light isn’t green, your employers start to get
0:46
suspicious about how long you’ve been away from your desk. There are even
0:50
articles available that give you tips and tricks on avoiding the dreaded Idle status.
0:54
It’s all part of something called “Productivity Theater”. At this point it’s become a whole
0:58
industry unto itself, all to the end of keeping that little green Teams light on. It’s why if you
1:04
go to any online retailer, you’ll find so many options for “Mouse Jigglers”,
1:08
a desk gadget that keeps your mouse eternally shaking to avoid it ever going idle. But
1:13
Microsoft has invented the ultimate curtain call for productivity theater: The Unified Audit Log.
1:19
Those three words that might land you on the unemployment line.
1:23
For management, one of the biggest advantages of Microsoft Teams - and
1:26
its unparalleled integration into the Microsoft 365 Suite - is the
1:31
extremely powerful insights into your overall “AppInteraction” telemetry.
1:35
That word is incredibly important to understand for all this to make sense.
1:40
IBM defines it as, quote, “The automated collection and transmission of data and
1:45
measurements from distributed or remote sources to a central system for monitoring,
1:50
analysis and resource optimization.”
1:53
And that’s exactly what the Unified Audit Log makes possible.
1:56
Your overall status and whether your mouse is moving is a worthless metric. Bosses will now
2:02
be able to get a centralized data profile that tells them which apps on the 365 suite you’re
2:07
interacting with, and how often. They’ll know if your camera is on in meetings,
2:12
what messages your sending and how you’re spending company time.
2:15
Thanks to Teams, they can know now at the click of a button, regardless of what color
2:20
your little status light is. But that’s not even half as sinister as the other thing
2:25
that the tech allows your bosses to do: Know exactly where you’re working at any given time,
2:30
like they’ve implanted a tracking chip right there in your laptop or phone.
2:35
Chapter 2 - The Office Spy
2:37
One of the latest features on Microsoft Teams will effectively allow your boss,
2:41
and all of your coworkers sharing the same work WiFi network, to stalk you.
2:46
This isn’t just a fearmongering exaggeration.
2:48
It’s real.
2:50
Microsoft has declined to comment on in interviews,
2:52
but the application will automatically detect your location whenever you connect
2:56
to company WiFi. This information will not only be easily accessible to server
3:00
admins but also your co-workers. One of the major so-called “benefits” of this
3:05
new feature is that it allows you to detect and connect with your co-workers on projects.
3:10
But anyone who wasn’t born yesterday could tell you why that excuse doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
3:15
If you want to co-work on a project with a fellow worker, you can just send them
3:20
a message. The only people who would benefit from knowing the exact location of all their
3:24
workers at all times when connected to company WiFi are your managers. They’ll be able to see
3:29
if you’re a stack of potential profits or an unacceptable cost. Collecting reams of
3:35
data on you is how they think they can tell the difference without actually getting involved.
3:39
It’s important to remember that the system admins at your workplace need to choose to
3:43
turn this thing on. If they do, depending on your state, they legally only have to give you notice.
3:49
But bear in mind, this isn’t always so straightforward.
3:52
They might hide this caveat in a larger user agreement, just expecting you to click “I
3:57
agree” without reading. Or they might try to sell it to you through convenience, saying,
4:01
“You’ll never need to manually set your work location again.” The only time you
4:06
have power over this is before you sign away your right to this privacy in the first place.
4:10
Chapter 3 - The Keystroke Trap
4:13
You might think, based on these two cases,
4:15
that if your workplace doesn’t use Microsoft Teams, you’re in the clear.
4:19
You’d be wrong.
4:20
Technical employee surveillance is a thriving industry. With the
4:23
advent of AI and the never-slowing software boom,
4:26
new methods are being added to the spying toolkit every day. Take, for example, keystroke logging.
4:32
This is somehow even more invasive and terrifying than the other options,
4:35
and major tech companies like Meta are already doing it. As of late April, 2026,
4:40
Meta installed software on all employee devices that will track every key they press as they
4:45
type on their keyboards, every click they make, and even their mouse movements. All,
4:49
supposedly, to train their AI models to perform these tasks autonomously.
4:53
This dystopic technology is called the Model Capability Initiative, or MCI,
4:59
and it’s awful for employees for two different reasons.
5:02
First, it’s watching literally everything you click and type while at work and storing that
5:07
information. If you use certain terminology that might be flagged inside the system like
5:11
“pay raise” and “union” in chats that you naively think are private, you might suddenly find the
5:17
boss looking at you an awful lot closer. But even worse, if your company uses a program like this,
5:23
it means they’re getting you to provide free on the job training to your own replacement.
5:28
To you, it’s the destruction of your livelihood and potentially even your industry. To management,
5:33
they might reframe it as “data-driven cost-cutting” for the shareholders.
5:38
Chapter 4 - The AI Risk Score
5:40
It seems like nothing is sacred in the office, including your emails and browser history.
5:45
If you’re using a work computer, a work server, or even a work email address,
5:49
all of these things aren’t your property. They belong to your employer. That gives
5:53
them sweeping rights to run through the content with a fine-toothed comb. Your
5:57
company IT department knows every embarrassing question you’ve ever googled on company time.
6:02
Your boss can’t just see the subject line of your email, its recipient,
6:05
and the time it was sent, but also the body text and any attachments you had in it.
6:10
None of this is off limits.
6:11
None of it.
6:12
Brian Kropp, chief of research for Gartner’s HR practice, says,
6:16
“Anything that you write on any company messaging platform, your employer has access
6:20
to. Either through IT or HR… anything you put on those platforms, your employer can look at.”
6:26
Demand for the technology has only improved the technology over time. Services like SentryPC,
6:32
Work Examiner, iMonitorSoft all boast about one particular aspect of their functionality.
6:37
If their system detects unacceptable employee behavior - the parameters for this are, of course,
6:42
selected by the employer - they’ll secretly take a screenshot of the moment they view as a breach for
6:47
the employer to keep as evidence. Imagine this: You’re typing fast and a perfectly innocent word
6:53
that you were typing now reads as something offensive because you clicked the wrong key.
6:57
This isn’t just a misunderstanding anymore. If your typo is on a secret
7:02
internal list of unacceptable words or phrases, the screenshot has already been
7:06
taken and sent directly to your boss to incriminate you. If your boss has
7:10
already been looking for an excuse to get rid of you for whatever reason, a piece
7:14
of AI software has just given them the silver bullet and painted a target on your forehead.
7:19
And that’s still not nearly as bad as the ways your bosses can invade your privacy if they’ve
7:24
bought a subscription to Veriato Cerebral Security. It’s one of the more high-end
7:29
employee stalking software services on the market. They’ve taken the screenshot violation
7:34
even further with their “time capsule” feature. It will capture a continuous video recording of
7:39
your screen if the software has reason to believe you’re violating the company code of conduct.
7:44
Thanks to AI integration, not only does Veriato - and the hundreds if not thousands of companies
7:49
like it - use their recordings to gather massive data packets, it also creates profiles of every
7:55
employee. Your profile will be the product of patterns that the software identifies when it’s
8:00
spying on you: How many files do you download and upload on a daily basis? How much time do you
8:05
spend interacting with each workplace application? How do you message? How many messages do you send?
8:11
The purpose of all this is “Behavior Analytics”, allowing them to identify “anomalies” in your
8:16
behavior. In other words, if you start acting outside of the pattern that the
8:20
software has predicted for you, it’ll flag you as behaving strangely and let your boss
8:25
know that something is wrong. Just because a single workday meant you downloaded more
8:29
files than usual, or sent more emails, suddenly, you’re under the microscope.
8:33
We also know just how often AI makes mistakes or suffers from hallucinations,
8:37
but does your manager know that?
8:39
If they’re buying one of these services, chances are they trust it. And if it randomly declares
8:44
you the company problem child, it’s your word against the service your boss is paying for.
8:49
They even use all the data they collect to compile a “risk score” on every employee. It assesses
8:55
the likelihood that you’ll be a security threat to the company. This is all true.
8:59
Veriato’s own marketing materials brag that it runs in “stealth mode” by default,
9:04
meaning that users would have no way of even knowing that they’re being watched.
9:08
It’s like an invisible person standing behind you right now, staring over your shoulder. Even
9:13
if it doesn’t detect wrongdoing, it’ll take a screencap of your device every 30 seconds.
9:19
Chapter 5 - The Digital Panopticon
9:21
Paranoia of being observed breeds obedience. This whole idea was created by English philosopher
9:27
Jeremy Bentham in 1786, almost 200 years before John Wilder Tukey first used the word “Software”
9:34
in the context of computing. He called it “The Panopticon”, a thought experiment around a
9:39
“perfect” prison where prisoners believed they could be being watched at all times,
9:43
and so always behaved themselves. Now, we’re seeing Bentham’s dream realized
9:47
across the whole workforce, as intricate nets of software web together to create
9:52
a global digital panopticon with every employee at every company trapped inside.
9:57
And in an effort to stay on top in a competitive Bossware market,
10:01
companies are creating increasingly bizarre and invasive services to set themselves apart. Sneek
10:07
is a piece of software that likes to present itself as a conscientious mental health aid
10:11
for employees who miss the workplace atmosphere. But is your mental health really improved by your
10:17
boss having the ability to conference call you at any time without a decline button?
10:21
“Prodoscore” is an AI service that relentlessly tracks your activity and uses it to create a
10:26
numerical “productivity score” for your boss. And if you have a position that has
10:30
a pretty nuanced view of “productivity”, then there’s an excellent chance this one
10:34
could get you in trouble. And software designed to track so-called “active work” can genuinely
10:39
eat into your paycheck, as workers like finance executive Carol Kraemer found. Her
10:44
$200 an hour salary resulted in truly pathetic takehome pay, because her employers used
10:50
tracking software to only let her bill for the specific minutes she was “actively working.”
10:56
And this isn’t an isolated incident.
10:58
Eight of the 10 largest private U.S. employers track the productivity
11:02
metrics of individual workers, many in real time,
11:05
according to an examination by The New York Times. Some services like FlexiSPY, SPYERA,
11:11
CleverControl, and iKeyMonitor also provide call-tapping functionality.
11:16
Even more of these services offer webcam and mic surveillance, audio monitoring,
11:20
and mobile device access, so they really can get you anywhere. According to SurfShark,
11:26
information on these services is even gathered into a centralized “war room” interface inside the
11:31
software. The thing they’re declaring war against is you ever having a sense of privacy again.
11:37
But it’s not just Microsoft. You’re not safe on some of the most ubiquitous workplace apps on the
11:43
market. If your workplace uses Slack, and your company is buying the Enterprise Plan, it’s easy
11:47
for administrators to store and view messages from everyone using the system underneath them.
11:52
If the company you work at uses Google Workspace, and subscribes to plans like
11:56
legacy G Suite Business Google Workspace Business Plus and Enterprise Standard, they can use “The
12:02
Vault”. This ominously named feature allows them to archive and search specific content
12:07
from the company’s employees across Drive, Gmail, Groups, Chat, Voice, Classic Hangouts, and Meet.
12:13
The fact is, all of this is terrifying… and we have the stats to back it up.
12:18
A study conducted by ExpressVPN found that 56% of employees feel stressed or anxious
12:23
when they suspect monitoring is happening without their knowledge. Peter Holland,
12:27
a professor of human resource management from Swinburne University, has gone on record saying he
12:33
thinks relentless productivity monitoring actually has the exact opposite of the intended effect.
12:38
During an interview on the subject of Bossware, he said, “The research
12:42
indicates that the more you monitor and surveil people, the more likely it is
12:46
that they are going to be less productive. People have spoken about being bullied…”
12:50
But despite this, market forces seem to be increasingly pressing management to
12:54
take an aggressively “data-driven” approach to running their businesses. The result? They can
12:59
no longer see the forest, and in their desire to cut costs, they cut down all the trees.
13:04
Chapter 6 - The Office Revolution
13:06
The first line of defense will always be your own right to legally consent to this kind of
13:10
spying. Check any work contracts you signed when you took the job for clauses that say you
13:16
consented to workplace digital monitoring. It’s a tactic employers rely on: using vague, carefully
13:22
worded policies so you never fully realize how much of your privacy they’re actually invading.
13:27
But you can always check your computer. By pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del or Ctrl + Shift + Esc,
13:32
you can open up your computer’s Task Manager. This is essentially popping the hood to see
13:36
what software is currently running. If you spot any of the apps we’ve mentioned,
13:40
or others you don’t recognize, you may have just
13:42
found proof that your boss is quietly looking over your shoulder right now.
13:46
If you’re using a Windows device, you can also use the MS-DOS command line,
13:50
which means pressing Windows + R, and typing ‘cmd’ into the search box. From here,
13:55
you can search “tasklist” and find the same information on all the programs currently running.
14:01
Another option is analyzing network traffic for sudden spikes during work hours, however, this
14:06
one is a little more imprecise. There could be multiple explanations for these spikes and you’re
14:10
not going to have any certainty from just the data alone. If you thought that, you’d be falling
14:15
for the exact same trick all these expensive software services are pulling on your boss.
14:19
In order to prevent yourself from getting caught out by any Bossware, it’s also important to
14:23
practice data hygiene. This means you should keep any work-friends group chats off the official
14:28
servers and on separate devices. A safe mantra to internalise is: Never say or do anything on a
14:35
work device or a work network that you wouldn’t be fine with your boss immediately being able to see.
14:40
Sometimes, the services your boss uses won’t be as stealthy as some of the
14:44
premium packages. Not everyone can afford to predict all their employees’ “risk factors”,
14:48
after all. If your browser comes with a message that says, “Managed by your organisation”,
14:53
then don’t make any literally Not Safe For Work searches. Treat it
14:57
with healthy suspicion if your boss asks you to connect to a specific VPN while working,
15:02
because it might be one that allows traffic inspection from the administrators.
15:06
And of course, if you don’t mind being a little more confrontational you can always buy and
15:10
download some reputable anti-spyware software. And even if your boss confronts you over it,
15:14
at least you’ll know that you still have the moral high ground.
15:17
The workplace isn’t the only place where tensions are rising. Companies might be
15:21
watching employees more closely than ever, but the tech giants building those systems
15:25
are starting to turn on each other too. And the biggest fracture might
15:29
be happening inside the AI industry itself. Find out the real story in “MASSIVE Microsoft
15:34
Divorce That WILL BANKRUPT OpenAI and ChatGPT Forever”. Or watch this instead!
