Microsoft Starts Sharing Your Location With Your Employer

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/01/22/microsoft-starts-sharing-your-location-with-your-employer/

34 Comments

  1. Jealous-Bit4872 on

    This is a low effort article. Microsoft has been reporting location for years as a security feature.

  2. Any company I worked for always knew which IP addresses I connected from and where roughly I was at a given time, its part of any basic cybersecurity setup. 

    Teams displaying your location is hardly “letting employer know” lol. 

  3. If for nothing else but for tax purposes, I feel like this shouldn’t be controversial (I guess unless the employer is being shady about it)

  4. Huge nothingburger. Your employer already knows a ton about you when you use corporate devices, if they aren’t living in the Stone age.

  5. I told my manager that he’ll have to pay me extra if he wants me to put Teams on my personal phone. Hell no.

  6. Pickel_Bucket_317 on

    I am my own boss so technically I’m tracking myself… and I don’t like what I see.

  7. StatusFortyFive on

    I.T. administrator here, location sharing has to be enabled manually, also there are a lot of privacy issues that a company has to take into consideration before enabling. In the European Union for the company I work for this was an immediate hard nope. This article is sensationalism. See below on how to configure it in your tenant.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-location-sharing-in-microsoft-teams-583dd649-87fc-4b23-aed6-f4e2279297f9

  8. Well, I don’t lug my laptop everywhere with me, so how does it know I’m out shopping in that scenario? 🤔

  9. “Using smartphones is a company policy”, so employees are fucked out of the privacy league!

  10. Teams has always had the ability to do this specifically for team’s phone because they needed it for federal requirements for 911 so they can route you inside the building within 300 feet.

  11. My boss is too cheap to pay for Microsoft products. He said, “Why would I pay for any of that when Gmail and Google docs are free”. GMail is shit compared to Outlook, but at least I’m not being tracked?

  12. I guess this is why I started to get that “location is turned off” popup repeatedly. I turned location off because the icon kept annoyingly turning on and off in the taskbar notification area. Either stay on or off FFS!!

  13. Major-Piccolo5422 on

    This is really nothing new- if your employer issues you cell phones and laptops they know where you are-

  14. Oceanbreeze871 on

    This only works with WiFi

    “When users connect to their organization’s Wi-Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working in.” Conversely, if you’re not connected to work Wi-Fi, then it shows that instead and you will be found out.”

  15. AND, people will still use M$-Windows because it’s convenient.

    AND, a lot of people are unfortunately required to use M$-Windows at work.

  16. The feature is not tracking you. Only reporting that you are in the office when you connect to the local wifi. Calm down.

  17. As a system administrator for a large company, we know where your device is via other methods and have been able to for a long time now

  18. A few yesrs ago my boss try some creepy shit like that and I refuse to download the app, no, I didnt get fired.

  19. I used to be okay putting Slack on my personal phone and installing the required MDM profile, but no more. They can give me a work phone that will stay firmly in airplane mode during off hours.

  20. Loving the comments here. So much misinformation. People so up in arms about their employers that have their SSN and everything else. Yet will happily post up their dinners and locations on Facebook practically realtime lol. The bottom line is, if you have a phone in your hand, youre being tracked, and by way more unknown and larger entities than your employer.

  21. Us boomers remember the early days of Microsoft and Windows; so much optimism and happiness over each new update that made our work lives much more productive and gave us some incredible digital tools. Now it’s as if every week there’s another news article about some feature that Microsoft is forcing onto users that only benefits Microsoft and it’s corporate partners, and is yet another big Fuck You to Windows users.