excel24Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings
AllBiMyselfMicrosoft is working on adding a new Teams feature that will prevent users from capturing screenshots of sensitive information shared during meetings.
Clickbait title
No, the title is quite accurate. There is no magic to discern “sensitive” data from that which is not.
It’s not accurate because it will be an optional feature.
QuarterSwedeYeah, not seeing this as the big bad everyone thinks it is. We regularly have Teams meetings with other companies when they’re sharing their proprietary info. I’m okay with a screen capture disabling function just like we’d want to use from time to time.
patatahooliganFrom the article:
Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode to protect shared content.
and
“This feature will be available on Teams desktop applications (both Windows and Mac) and Teams mobile applications (both iOS and Android).”
So this is actually worse than just blocking screen capturing. This will break video calls for some setups for no reason at all since all it takes to break this is a phone camera - one of the most common things in the world.
This has always been the case for anything that restricts screen capture. The tech makes getting detailed information more difficult, that’s all.
Adobe does this with PDFs by restricting printing. You can still record the screen and flip through each page.
Also, you’ll look odd holding your phone up to the screen.
Also, you’ll look odd holding your phone up to the screen.
just connect another display, set it to mirroring, and point a camera at that. or just use a video capture card.
Like I said, there’s always been a way to defeat this type of protection. This feature makes doing so more difficult.
That’s pure speculation. Did you even read the article?
Considering most of the organizations using Teams bear the “enterprise” warning label I wouldn’t count on whoever you are talking to having the ability (as in permissions, not stupidity) to turn it off.
What part of the headline suggests the feature is mandatory? Assuming its mandatory doesn’t pass the critical thinking “sniff test” because what is sensitive is purely subjective. Microsoft has no way of knowing what data you consider sensitive. As in, there’s no way Microsoft could make it mandatory on only “sensitive” data.
“Microsoft” “will” “block”
Those parts of the title.
The source though indicates that it will be a Feature and it even has its own name. Sadly it doesn’t point out that it will be optional.
Additionally you can see in the comments of the article that people think this will be mandatory.
That’s a charitable reading, and likely justified by the article, but based only on the phrasing, it’s just as likely to read that as assuming Microsoft will block all content in order to ensure the safety of sensitive data. Sniff tests have to be adapted when things tend to stink in general, or companies regularly try to cover up their smell.
it’s just as likely to read that as assuming Microsoft will block all content in order to ensure the safety of sensitive data.
Hang on. If you’re rejecting rational use cases that companies use Teams for, then your assumption must be that Microsoft will block ALL screen capture when a teams meeting is occurring whether its of the Teams meeting content being shared or not. As in, even the presenter would be blocked from doing screen captures of their own system. Why isn’t that your conclusion?
Why are you, again, from the headline only, assuming that screen capture would mandatory for just content shared to you by a Teams presenter? You chose a middle ground (which was wrong as shown by the first line in the article), but why didn’t you choose full blocking?
Sniff tests have to be adapted when things tend to stink in general, or companies regularly try to cover up their smell.
So are you adapting yours back now because yours was proven wrong by the first line of the article?
Well, ‘proven wrong’ is a bit of a stretch. ‘will soon block screen capture’ doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room, but also isn’t that crazy to read into it that maybe it would block screen capture on the presenters screen… especially if you grant that it might only have control over the teams portion of the screen. I’ve had it black out windows on my own machine even when not presenting.
But further than that, it’s not fair to say everything has to be read only from the most or the least charitable viewpoints. Context is a thing and if you’re even a little bit familiar with the history of software enshittification, it’s reasonable to assume that an uncharitable reading is fair without assuming the app will now melt your computer for spare parts if you try something that is disallowed. ‘As shitty as we can get away with’ might be a good rule of thumb.
this is true, if you have privacy categories setup and you use something that isn’t rated for someone, they won’t be able to see it. Kinda like permissions. Government and Medical environments is where I’ve seen it applied. It’s a beast to implement.
Doubt it will prevent flameshot from working if I use teams in firefox
“This feature will be available on Teams desktop applications (both Windows and Mac) and Teams mobile applications (both iOS and Android).”
Knowing ms they’ll just make browsers audio only going forward
Pointless.
Rules for thee not mee
leicharbenMicrosoft Teams will soon encourage users to point their phones at their screens from off camera during meetings
PsythikYeah seriously; this won’t even stop normies. Everybody knows how to take a picture with their phone. Why bother?
Hell a lot of people would probably default to using a phone because they don’t know how print screen works.
I’ll have to use the camera phone again then.
Don’t worry, Recall will record everything done on the Windows machine.
The important bit:
Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode to protect shared content.
And I presume everything except Windows 11 Teams will be considered “unsupported”.
I used to be able to join teams meetings in the browser version of teams from my Linux machine. I did my last job interview this way
There’s also the unofficial flatpak, which works rather well.
MaestroNo, it sucks. The Linux app does not support screen sharing on Wayland, but it works fine in the browser
Ah. I haven’t switched to Wayland yet so I wasn’t aware of that issue.
I use Wayland at work, and haven’t had any issues sharing my screen on Teams.
This still works, it is my only method of interaction with Teams
Aahhwww, that is so sad, I run Linux and soon our entire office will.
Guess we won’t be using teams then, ooaaahhhwww, so sad
What do you use for video calls with screen share?
My coop uses teams and I want to move them off it.
Did you even read the article.
Read the article man
This feature will be available on Teams desktop applications (both Windows and Mac) and Teams mobile applications (both iOS and Android).
katy ✨i trust signing in through the browser on linux will be supported since that’s the official way to use teams on linux
except on firefox of course
I use Edge on Linux for working with Microsoft stuff on my corporate laptop. For everything else I use Firefox there. Privacy preserved, basically.
Privacy preserved, basically.
only if the browser cannot run in the background, and it cannot access any of your fikes, the DBus of your regular user’s session, and other facilities
You lock it with flatpak as much as you can. Also, don’t keep it running if not needed.
Also, don’t keep it running if not needed.
can you enforce that with flatpak? I often see the notification that “X program is still running in the background” or something similar, but the flatpak permission settings did not seem to have such a setting
No but, you can just close it.
BlackmistGood. Do me a favour and block the audio as well.
So now my clients will have a harder time engaging with my product. Great.
Stop using microsoft teams, ya dolt.
My workplace barely groks opportunity cost on their main product, and I’m not responsible for the IT. When it breaks constantly, I say “yeah we know it breaks like this, get them to fix it.”
Not my circus, I just stamp the tickets.
I don’t know to what extent they’ll go, but yes, this and the Advanced Chat Privacy in WhatsApp are just user locking moves.
Welp, there goes any accountability.
So take a fucking picture with your phone
No you.
My company is transitioning to teams. Most of our engineering is on Linux.
Can Microsoft please hurry up and break teams so we can’t transition?
If Co is willing to use it in current state, all the breaking in the world is not going to change their mind.
Most of our engineering is on Linux
God I wish my company allowed that
I have a Linux work laptop which they let us have but we still have to use the MS crap. Fortunately most of it is accessible through the browser but a lot of the Office apps are broken, or missing features on web.
This is fairly common in software development.
I’m still at my first job in Software Development.
Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode to protect shared content.
I think this has gone and done it for you
Don’t worry, teams is always somewhere between 10%-30% broken, always something n doesn’t work, there are always a bunch of people that can’t get in the meeting, that can’t share screens all of the sudden because fuck you, that’s why
Teams is the absolute worst and not a day goes by without people shitting on it, and we’re only using it because most of our customers do but internally we will switch to something open source soon, because I get to make that decision 😎
I have looked but I just couldn’t find an open source alternative that supported Teams core features like showing an error every time I login.