Microsoft Revamps 'Invasive' M365 Feature After Privacy Backlash:
Microsoft has announced what it calls a more privacy-friendly version of its Productivity Score enterprise feature, following backlash from security experts who condemned it as "full-fledged workplace surveillance tool."
The Productivity Score feature, which was launched as part of the Microsoft 365 productivity suite on Oct. 29, aimed to provide enterprises with data about how employees were utilizing technology. The idea behind the feature is to provide employees with a "score" based on metrics collected from their usage of Microsoft 365 products. For instance, an employee who uses Microsoft Teams, Outlook or Skype more might have a higher score.
However, following privacy concerns about the feature, the tech giant announced on Tuesday several changes to Productivity Score. "At Microsoft, we believe that data-driven insights are crucial to empowering people and organizations to achieve more," Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, said in a blog post Tuesday. "We also believe that privacy is a human right, and we're deeply committed to the privacy of every person who uses our products."
[...] "Employers are increasingly exploiting metadata logged by software and devices for performance analytics and algorithmic control," said Christl in a tweet last week. "[Microsoft] is providing the tools for it. Practices we know from software development (and factories and call centers) are expanded to all white-collar work."
In response to these concerns, Microsoft has made two overarching changes to Productivity Score. First, the feature will remove user names – and their associated actions – from the product, meaning that organizations will no longer be able to track individual activities over a 28-day period.
[...] A second change will modify the user interface to make it clearer that Productivity Score is a measure of organizational adoption of technolog and not individuals.
WSWS and Forbes agreeing? Microsoft managed to pull this trick.
WSWS - Microsoft's new "Productivity Score" helps employers spy on workers
Microsoft has expanded the analytics provided with its Office 365 suite of productivity applications into a "full-fledged workplace surveillance tool" according to privacy advocates.
The tool, called Productivity Score, allows employers to know the number of days a person was active on Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype and Teams over the previous four weeks and on what type of device.
The software gives managers access to 73 pieces of granular data about employee behaviors, all of which is associated with employees by name. Microsoft denies the software is workplace surveillance, but privacy advocates say it most certainly is.
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The documentation for Productivity Score shows the extent of workplace surveillance the software allows. "Person metrics" include data such as the number of hours a person spent in meetings and on email outside of working hours and the number of emails sent. The system also monitors "low-quality meeting hours" which is defined as, the "Number of meeting hours in which an attendee multitasked, attended a conflicting meeting, or attended a meeting that exhibits Redundancy (organizational)."Employees are assigned an "influence" score "that indicates how well connected a person is within the company. A higher score means that the person is better connected and has greater potential to drive change." The product documentation states. The software also has a "Diverse tie score" indicating how varied and broad a person's connections are and a "Strong tie score" recording how many "strong and tight engagements a person has had."
J.S. Nelson is an associate professor of law at Villanova University who studies workplace surveillance. She told Forbes the software is "horrendous." "Why are they monitoring people this way and what is that telling people about the relationship they should have with their employers in the workplace? What message are you sending?" she asked.
Forbes - 'Dangerous' And Hidden Microsoft Feature Could Destroy Your Career And Your Business
A few days ago, Forbes broke the news that Microsoft unveiled a new feature of its 365 services software that allows employers to secretly monitor and "score" their staff on productivity.
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While that sounds reasonable enough, there are technical challenges apart from the behavioral issues just mention—both in relation to the concept and in relation to how it works. These include:
- Intractability and unknown "Score" validity. Scoring is both an art and a science. Yet, Microsoft isn't known within the world of ratings and scoring...
- Scores would require industry and niche-tailoring to be meaningful. Furthermore, there's a Grand Canyon of difference between assessing productivity in a large, mature business and a smaller, high growth business...
- To make the Productivity Score tractable and meaningful, Microsoft must also dictate the criterion. The way out of the above challenges is for Microsoft to implement a one-size-fits-all template for scoring...
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- The Score doesn't translate into money easily. Let's face it: right now, businesses are concerned about money—making money, saving money and not losing money. How does a score of say, 62% on collaboration, translate into profits? Sales? Customers retained or gained?
- Scores can be gamed. There seems to be nothing preventing staff from learning what activities lead to better or worse scores. They can easily lean in to the ones that that boost their perceived performance...
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- AI will ultimately mess things up. Companies sell customers on AI because it's cheaper for them to use—not because it works better or is better.
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To be clear, the Microsoft 365 feature is optional and is "opt-in". So you're safe, as long as you or your employer don't plunge into it without thinking. Nonetheless, it would seem that until Microsoft's clients have a better handle on addressing the above problems in their own best-interest, opting-out is a smarter way to go.
(Score: 2, Troll) by SomeGuy on Thursday December 03 2020, @12:08AM
And if they were caught using Linux they got a score of -9000 and were immediately sentenced to death.
But due to an overlooked bug, some had fun watching it go up in flames when it detected OS/2.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday December 03 2020, @12:10AM (1 child)
I'm bored in your meeting and my eyes are pointed elsewhere -> your meeting is useless
I'm interested in your meeting and am looking up related information -> your metrics are useless
I roll my eyes in your meeting -> Really? I'm in my pajamas and my cat wants food
I roll my eyes in your meeting -> I can't believe you're my boss
I roll my eyes in your meeting -> there's always 1 asshole
I don't contribute anything to your meeting -> your meeting is useless
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @12:27AM
Many meetings are useless, and are held even though an email would do. People zone out all the time in meetings, especially during company Town Hall meetings.
(Score: 4, Informative) by rigrig on Thursday December 03 2020, @12:36AM (1 child)
You'd think that someone would've predicted the massive backlash this was going to cause, so maybe assume they did, and announced it anyway.
Now that they've back paddled a bit, they sure have all those managers are thinking about how nice having access to all that telemetry would be.
And the big splash has been made, so the outcry will be a lot less once the toned down version starts creeping back to full on individual surveillance.
Besides, the goal isn't to provide free metrics, it is to push Microsoft products by making the magic numbers go up when people switch from competing products to Outlook, Skype or Teams.
And now when people question the magic numbers, Microsoft "cannot reveal the exact calculations, because of privacy".
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stretch611 on Thursday December 03 2020, @03:23AM
Close, but not quite.
The end user does not determine what to use. They will not pick more microsoft products so that their own score goes up.
The management chooses what software the grunts are supposed to use. They want the data the Microsoft is sending. If an end users utilizes a non-Microsoft program, it is a big gap in the productivity numbers that microsoft provides. This encourages the management team to switch to another microsoft program so that the gap is filled with products that monitor the employee during the entire work day. Having a company only use Microsoft programs is how they make money.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:29AM (3 children)
The Forbes article touches on some of the real problems about how useless this kind of measurement is for certain job roles. Of course Microsoft is going to tout it to management as some kind of "detailed insight" into people's productivity. Who needs proof? It's numbers, facts, and it makes pretty graphs to look at!
I used to get these kinds of "productivity" reports at my last job. Messages were almost always worded like, "You had 92% quiet time last week!" It measured things that our team never did. We didn't need Microsoft Word, or Powerpoint. We didn't spend excessive time in Skype or Teams because we all sat next to each other. We only had one hour long and three 15 minute meetings a week. Our time was spent in remote desktop sessions, ticketing systems, and other stuff that wasn't part of Microsoft Office. None of our actual work counted as being "productive."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:39AM
Sounds like you could have fought back with your own measurements and reports?
Format them up the same way as the originals and submit through the same channel(s).
(Score: 4, Funny) by deimtee on Thursday December 03 2020, @03:21AM
Just rename minesweeper.exe as word.exe and sol.exe as excel.exe Boom! 100% productivity.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 03 2020, @03:49AM
Yes. This sort of tool is crack for bean counters and gaslighters. By the time all the smoke has cleared and the blood on the floors been mopped up, management will go back to pining for the next management fad. And M$ will be richer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Farkus888 on Thursday December 03 2020, @11:57AM
As a network person; putty, notepad, and our companies NMS of choice are where I do all of my real work. MS Office product usage is a very good metric of overhead. I only use them for work that would be done by an administrative assistant if I were important enough to have one.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday December 03 2020, @02:21PM (1 child)
I know it's already a meme that Orwell was an optimist, but it's becoming increasingly easy to imagine the day where people will read 1984 and grimly chuckle at how quaint and innocent it all is compared to the reality.
Even the original Terminator movies have a naivety about them in that the machines are individuals and obvious baddies that are fought in conventional combat (Well apart from all that time travel, jackknifing trucks, and relying on industrial equipment to beat them). The reality is humans are now born to worship the machines and accept them as an extension of their own minds even as they take all their most personal information and surreptitiously exert control over them. They tried to cover this angle somewhat with Terminator Genisys but arguably not in enough depth.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @07:22PM
yeah, it's creepier if you can capture the insidiousness of it all. the devil is invited to dinner, after all.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 03 2020, @04:58PM
My corporate workstation has all three of those apps.
The more I use them the less time I'm spending writing code or posting jokes to SN.
Be careful what you measure. People will optimize for that. That includes the measuring of body parts.
It reminds me of Lines Of Code Per Day. I seem to recall a story of Apple's Bill Atkinson writing a negative two thousand lines of code one day in the early 1980s.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @07:18PM
"At Microsoft, we believe that data-driven insights are crucial to empowering people and organizations to achieve more," Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365
Jared Spataro, Chief Whore-ass Bitch for Microsoft 365.