Can my boss spy on me via Microsoft Teams? (2024)

Can my boss spy on me via Microsoft Teams?

30-second overview:

Microsoft Teams is a great productivity tools, but can your activity on Teams be monitored by your employer?

Timewatch develops apps for Teams ( & Outlook) and has first-hand experience in what Teams data can be accessed. We often get asked who can see what, and in this article, we answer some of these common questions:

Is my Teams data visible to my company? Simple answer – Yes!
Is my Teams data accessible by Microsoft?
Can my Teams chats, calls and meetings be monitored?
Can I hide my data from my employer?
Can I hide my data from Microsoft?
Can my Teams meetings be used in time tracking?^{(Yes! Learn how)}
Can my Teams calls be used in time tracking?^{(Yes! Learn how)}

What Microsoft Teams data can your employer access?

Let’s cut to the chase: Everything you do in Microsoft Teams can be visible to your boss. To be visible an employer would need to implement or develop a tool to access Microsoft Teams data directly. We know this because we develop Teams apps to access teams data and can confirm what data is accessible. Timewatch uses this data to help people in time tracking, calendar planning and resource scheduling. Through developing these systems, we can confirm that the following Teams data is accessible:

All one-on-one chats, group chats, and meeting chats as well as anything you have deleted
All of the meetings you have created or joined, along with the subject, date and time, attendees and duration
All of the things you create or delete such as Channels, Teams
The times and dates that you have logged in and logged out of Teams and the IP address from which you did so, the device you connected with and its operation system
All of the apps you use inside Teams
Any meetings you recorded – including the recordings
All files that you create or attach in Teams
The type and model number of any headset you use
The Microsoft “productivity” score. This has nothing to do with your productivity, it is a number that tells Microsoft how many Microsoft tools are being used. We mention this metric to ensure it is not misunderstood, misquoted or misused.

So yes, your company could create a tool to monitor Teams calls and chat, but if you use Timewatch, we can help you take control of your data.

Use Teams data to your advantage to save time

Teams holds a lot of data about you and how you spend your time at work. Timewatch helps you take advantage of this data to save you time in scheduling and timesheet entry – we can also alert you if your Teams calls or chat is being monitored.

What data can Microsoft Teams access?

Microsoft says it tracks three types of data including: error reporting data, census, and usage data. It claims it does so for usage and support reasons.

Error reporting
This is exactly what it sounds like and includes the feedback that users provide as well as call quality and call issues feedback. That data is also used to track errors and monitor and improve system performance.
Census data
This is information about people’s use of Teams, information about your device type, operating system, language, and related areas of interest. You can see why this might be valuable data.
Usage
is the number of calls made by a user, meetings attended, and messages sent.

But what about Microsoft Teams privacy and security?

As an international corporation, Microsoft has to protect your data and privacy. It’s the law. Microsoft make many commitments to you and your employer to:

Never harvest your data and use it for any purpose other than the aforementioned error reporting, census and usage purposes
Never use your data for advertising
Never share your data with third parties
Be compliant with privacy rules including the EU GDPR law
Erase all data when your organization’s subscription is canceled

Can Microsoft Teams chats, calls and meetings be monitored?

There are security and privacy settings in Teams that allow a meeting organizer to control who can attend the meeting. People from outside your organization must be invited and when they join the meeting they are held in a virtual “lobby” until they are admitted to the meeting. At that point everyone in the meeting has access to all verbal, chat, video and documents that are shared.

All meetings can be recorded and transcripts can be taken and shared. Activating recordings and transcripts can be done by the meeting organizers but it could also be done behind the scenes by your company by writing a Teams app to do this. Timewatch can confirm that this is possible, but not without the knowledge of the company or it’s network administrators.

The short answer is that Teams meetings can be monitored, recorded, transcripts recorded, documents and chat recorded by internal people such as those included in meetings, chat, or by an employer.

External parties cannot access Teams without your or your employer’s consent, however this does not rule out the possibility of vulnerabilities being exploited by hackers. At a hackathon in 2021 a vulnerability was found in Teams by “ethical hackers” who waited until any vulnerabilities are patched before publishing any details. Those hackers won $200,000 for their find.

Can my employer listen in on my calls?

Yes and no. Technically, only people included in the call can hear the call live but as we’ve previously outlined, your employer could record the call or keep a transcript. It can actually be quite beneficial to record calls as these may be needed at a future date or for training purposes.

Can I hide my data from my employer?

No. If they want to, your employer can access your chat, chat images, and attachments, call and meeting logs, and record calls and meetings. Again, this can be quite beneficial, for example to use this data to help you in managing your schedule, your to-do list, tracking time, and help the business in keeping track of discussions, shared data etc. If you have concerns over privacy, use Teams for work related activities and use something different for personal communications, chat, video calls.

Can I hide my data from Microsoft?

There are some things you can do to protect your privacy. Turn on privacy settings, ask your organization to use multi-factor two stage authentication on your account, and set up private channels but ultimately your organization can still implement or create an app to record chat, meetings, and calls.

Can access to Teams data be helpful for anyone besides a spy?

Absolutely. Teams does have a wealth of information that can be very helpful to your employers and to you. This is actually how and why Timewatch knows what data is accessible in Teams. We develop apps to utilize this information and save employees time. For example:

Meetings
Our calendar planner and employee scheduling software Whitespace^® and Time&Space^® sync items scheduled for you within our system with your Teams system to set up the appointment in your calendar. This can create a Teams meeting in other attendees calendars without the need to go through the Outlook Meeting Invite process.
Adding customer or project information to meetings
Often people have meetings that relate to customers, projects, tasks, types of work or require other information associated with that appointment. Our systems allow additional fields to be added to Teams (and Outlook) meetings and appointments, and then used in scheduling, reporting, time tracking and project billing.
Using Teams calls and meetings in time tracking
Users that use timesheets or time tracking often find they need to look back in their calendar or try to remember what meetings they had or what they were doing earlier in the week. At the user’s request, their timesheet can be prefilled with their teams meetings and teams calls – including details of who their call was with. People tell us that they are amazed how many calls they would otherwise overlook, how much time this saves them and how much more accurate their timesheet is.

Your Teams Questions Answered

Can Teams meetings be recorded?

Yes, Teams meetings can be recorded.

To record a meeting, from the ‘… More’ button, choose ‘Start Recording’. A recording icon will appear in the top left hand corner of the Teams window:

Can Teams calls be recorded?

No, at present, Teams calls cannot be recorded.

If you want to record a Teams call, you need to make it a meeting, then you can record it by clicking the ‘… More’ button and choosing ‘Start Recording’.

Can Teams calls be monitored?

No, Teams calls cannot be monitored.

No one can record Teams calls, not even the people on the call, and at present there are no back-end API’s available to record or monitor calls.

Teams calls are private.

Can Teams video calls be recorded?

Yes, Teams video calls can be monitored if they are made as meetings.

However, you can tell if a meeting is being monitored as the recording icon in the top left hand corner of the Teams window, as shown below:

To avoid this, you can create the meeting as a call and then share your screen or camera.

Can Teams meetings be monitored?

Yes, Teams meetings can be monitored!

Anyone in a Teams meeting call record the meeting and request a transcript after the meeting has ended. However, during the call all attendees can see the meeting is being recorded via red circle next to the time in the top left hand corner of the Teams window:

Even if no one on the call records the meeting, it is possible for the meeting to be automatically recorded and a transcript stored. Although there is no setting within Teams to do this as a standard, from work Timewatch have undertaken we can confirm that it is possible to create a Teams extension to automatically record meetings for particular people, Teams, groups of people or channels. However, such an extension would need to be installed by the organization, it cannot be done by stealth, and if meetings are recorded, the recording icon will still be visible to all attendees.

What can my employer see in Teams?

As a default, your employer cannot see anything of your Teams activities unless you or someone else records or shares information. However, it is possible for the organization to create or purchase a Teams extension to access data to view your activities in Teams. This includes:

All one-on-one chats, group chats, and meeting chats
All of the meetings you have created or joined, along with the subject, date and time, attendees and duration
All of the things you create or delete such as Channels, Teams
When you logged in and logged out of Teams and the device, IP address and operation system of the machine you accessed it with
All of the apps you use inside Teams
Any meetings you record and the recordings
All Teams attachments
Details of the headset you use

Can my employer read my Teams messages and chat?

Yes, your Teams messages and chat are potentially accessible to your employer. Although Teams does not provide a way for employers to do this as a standard, it is possible. From the work Timewatch has undertaken integrating with we can see that it is possible to write a Teams extension that can extract all Teams chat messages.

How can Teams meetings be used in time tracking?

Timewatch’s Teams time tracking systems seamlessly turn Teams calls and meetings into time tracking entries.. Users simply login to their Timewatch system, which is automatically prefilled with their calls and meetings ready to be turned into time tracking entries.

Can I tell if my Teams meetings or chat are being monitored?

You can’t but Timewatch can!

If you use our Teams timesheet system, we can tell employees if their data is being harvested by other systems, the name of these systems and the access they have. This service can help employees gain confidence in their privacy within Teams.

How are Teams calls and meetings used in timesheets?

Our timesheet systems seamlessly link with Microsoft Teams and prefill timesheets with users Teams calls and meetings. At the click of a button users can choose to include or exclude items from their timesheet. It really couldn’t be simpler.

Want to Learn More?

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us via chat, or book a call with a product specialist who can show you the system in operation.

Speak with a specialist

Learn more about Teams Security, or using Teams in time tracking or resource scheduling.

Can my boss spy on me via Microsoft Teams? (2024)