LOL
Another stupid feature (enforced by regulations/law/policies) that has no real world use, besides making us users angry :-(
Like Google collecting all of our location history for their own usage, but not allowing us to see it via web anymore (only on mobiles), or having the android dialer not allowing us to record our own phone conversation (easily circumvented), or movie/music/game publishers not allowing us to backup our own media… you get the point.
All these are due to laws and regulations that are there to protect the big companies and don’t take into consideration users and the common sense ;-)
Aurornis · 5h ago
> All these are due to laws and regulations that are there to protect the big companies and don’t take into consideration users
This feature is not due to laws and regulations.
The user in this case is the presenter who clicks the button to enable screenshot protection on their meeting. This is Microsoft trying to deliver a feature their users want, not laws and regulations making them do something their users don’t want.
tw04 · 4h ago
But it’s literally the dumbest feature ever. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a user from pulling out their phone and taking a picture of any slide they want. Or having a camera recording the whole session out of view of their webcam.
It is security theater at its peak.
lolinder · 3h ago
It's not pure security theater, there are a few clear gains for those who care about such things:
* Naive screencaps are much less traceable to the leaker than a naive photo is. Yes, someone can strip out EXIF data, but we've seen over and over again that they generally don't. And even without EXIF a naive framing on the photo is more likely to expose information about the location or identity of the person who took it.
* A photo of a webinar is going to (barring serious postprocessing) look much less official and be less legible than a screenshot, so the use cases for illicit captures are going to be fewer. Few people are going to try to take a phone photo of the top-secret meeting and use the slide in their next team all-hands, but many might forget the rules and than snap a screenshot really quickly for later use.
* Just having the ability to block the easy method of screen captures helps avoid cases where the person doing the capturing isn't actively malicious, just ill-informed. If a normal employee attempts a screenshot and is reminded they're not supposed to do that, they're not going to pull out their phone to take a photo, they're going to say "oops" and move on.
Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here, but most of corporate InfoSec is wrapped up in protecting against pretty lame threat models that would benefit from this—mostly uninformed/ignorant employees screwing up without intending to be a threat.
cma · 3h ago
> Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here
Like running windows in a VM or using an HDMI capture card. And are they going to break running teams meetings when using moonlight etc. with this? If you are OBS capturing during the meeting does it get blacked out or just breaks your recording?
lolinder · 3h ago
You don't need to elaborate on mechanisms for bypassing because you're already imagining a threat actor that is out of scope.
This is primarily about blocking accidental leaks by regular employees who were asked to not record but ignored it. This kind of reuse of content happens all the time in companies of any significant size and isn't entirely stopped by simple requests or watermarks. This tool gives companies one more option to protect against this very lame and boring but also very real threat.
crote · 1h ago
> This is primarily about blocking accidental leaks by regular employees who were asked to not record but ignored it.
I think you're seriously overestimating regular employees. A significant number of people will send you smartphone pictures when you ask for a screenshot - why would they suddenly start looking into on-device screen capture when taking a picture or video of some random presentation?
lolinder · 1m ago
I already addressed this possibility in my first comment. Points 1+2.
andrekandre · 11m ago
> A significant number of people will send you smartphone pictures when you ask for a screenshot
n=1 but this is also my experience at $JOB for a majority of times for me as well
preciousoo · 2h ago
And also gives legal teams more foundation to stand on, bypassing this isn't trivial so it shows real intent
Aurornis · 37m ago
The easiest one is already mentioned in the article: Someone pulling out their phone and snapping a photo.
People know it’s not perfect. However, raising the bar discourages the spontaneous captures that people might try out of habit.
Aurornis · 39m ago
I think it’s funny that so many of these comments assume the person clicking the “enable screenshot protection” checkbox will be unaware that participants might have camera phones. It’s equally funny to read the comments imagining participants with elaborate pre-built workarounds like hidden pinhole cameras or pre-configured HDMI splitters going into full-screen video capture on another system.
The people using this feature aren’t going to imagine it as 100% protective against any and all possible methods of exfiltrating data. It’s a feature for discouraging casual data capture and dissemination. It serves to remind people doing spontaneous captures that they aren’t supposed to, but everyone knows a dedicated person could find a way to get that photo if they really, really want.
That doesn’t make it useless. Every time you raise the level of difficulty for accomplishing something, a percentage of attempts are thwarted or discouraged. As it turns out in the real world, raising the bar even a little tiny bit is effective in thwarting or discouraging the majority of attempts across the average user base. You’re not defeating the dedicated attackers, but you’re reducing the overall number of successful attacks and even attempts.
The same is true for things like the office firewall blocking websites: Yes, we all know a dedicated engineer can create a way around it, but it’s going to stop most employees from getting to those sites and serve as a reminder to others that they’re not supposed to access them.
stevage · 2h ago
Nah, this would stop a lot of threats.
I'm an example of that threat. I'm a freelancer who often has video calls with new clients. Sometimes I surreptitiously screen cap demos or presentations. It would be very difficult to use a phone that way without breaking the conversational flow.
Other supposed workarounds would require much more preplanning. Like I'd need to know that there was something worth capturing.
realitysballs · 2h ago
RDP into computer that has meeting running and then screenshot from the external computer running RDP .
stevage · 2h ago
Yep, I already covered workarounds that would be possible with preplanning.
Dylan16807 · 1h ago
If you already do it regularly, then the preplanning is not a big barrier. You already know that you keep getting into situations where something is worth capturing.
HDMI capture with passthrough is $20.
miki123211 · 1h ago
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who completely misunderstand the value of friction, and those who depend on friction too heavily; GP clearly falls into the former group.
This feature provides value because it increases friction. It won't stop really determined and motivated users from leaking, but it'll make leaks, especially accidental leaks / those due to hacks, a lot less common.
The same applies to DRM, "security by obscurity", social media post editing / deletion, dark patterns, loss leaders, promotions and coupons, the list is endless.
If your user is a perfectly rational being with infinite time and infinite tech savviness, the proverbial "spherical cow", those features make 0 sense. Just like spherical cows, though, those users don't actually exist, and so friction matters.
That doesn't mean friction is infinite, though. It's too easy to overestimate it and fall into the trap of thinking that "users won't bother doing this, it doesn't matter if this combination of actions loses us money, it's too bothersome", and then get very surprised very quickly.
tw04 · 1h ago
I work in security. I have had customers request this feature. I have asked them to do an anonymous survey of users to ask what action they would take if they were blocked from taking screenshots and users universally say they’d take a picture of their screen with their phone.
I don’t underestimate friction, I just know even my grandma would reach for her camera for a picture of her screen and she doesn’t even know what a screen capture is. It’s a stupid feature that doesn’t create friction, it just encourages users to take an untraceable action.
I would FAR prefer recording who took a screenshot than blocking it as a presenter.
Aurornis · 36m ago
> I have asked them to do an anonymous survey of users to ask what action they would take if they were blocked from taking screenshots and users universally say they’d take a picture of their screen with their phone.
Everyone knows this. You don’t need this survey (which surely was a real thing that actually occurred and not something you just conveniently imagined for this argument, right?) to tell you that.
It’s literally written in the linked article.
We know. There are ways around it. But it’s friction, and friction has value. People know it’s not perfect, but it’s another reminder that people aren’t supposed to be doing it.
zmgsabst · 1h ago
Also, the screenshot stays within your corporate network, whereas the photo is immediately backed up to iCloud, sent over messenger, etc.
The friction pushes the flow into something even worse — while not actually changing the behavior.
smelendez · 3h ago
I’ve been on calls where a presenter explicitly asks that people not screenshot slides shown in the meeting because they’re drafts that will be refined and published or circulated later on. Some companies probably have that as a blanket policy. I’m sure this isn’t universally followed.
This feature would help make that less likely to happen accidentally or “accidentally.” It wouldn’t stop deliberate leaks but that’s a different problem.
Aurornis · 33m ago
We once had an intern who took screenshots of an internal presentation and posted them on the internet to brag about how cool his internship was.
When we did his exit interview he admitted he just wasn’t thinking. He did it all in a couple minutes while in the meeting. Something like this would have stopped him in the process and made him remember that the content was sensitive.
Don’t underestimate the diversity of the people watching zoom meetings. It’s not all engineers with elaborate screen capture setups prepared for the express purpose of recording meetings.
jasonfarnon · 2h ago
just because it isn't perfect doesnt mean it's "dumbest". snapchat, 4chan, etc. will foil 99% of users, who don't think to take/are incapable of taking that next step.
voidspark · 1h ago
It helps to prevent accidental sharing of confidential information.
9cb14c1ec0 · 2h ago
Or use an hdmi capture card.
Aeolun · 3h ago
That’s because what the users want isn’t actually being secure. They want to be able to say they did everything in their power to stop people from capturing sensitive info.
It’s all about diffusing that responsibility.
stevage · 2h ago
It reduces the risk, it doesn't completely eliminate it, and that's fine. Not everything was to be 100%.
tmpz22 · 4h ago
In a 1:1 format this would be effective in preventing some forms of misuse because it would be obvious if an individual took out their phone and pointed it towards the screen.
mastazi · 3h ago
but it is so easy to circumvent, even my teenage daughter, who doesn't have an interest in tech, knows what a capture card is and knows what an hdmi splitter is: she hasn't even entered the workforce yet and she already has all the ingredients needed to circumvent a software block on screenshots
:-D
antihipocrat · 3h ago
You turn your camera off for 10 seconds, take the photo and turn the camera back on. No-one would notice a thing
If you wanted video just have the device positioned outside the field of view. Laptop cameras fov is very narrow.
relwin · 3h ago
Easily circumvented:
Use two monitors, one positioned out of view.
Use a teleprompter mirror with a camera behind the mirror.
Use a video capture device, record on a separate computer.
I'm sure there's sneakier ways to perform this...
ThrowawayR2 · 49m ago
These comments are akin to pointing out that the privacy door on a public bathroom stall can easily be bypassed by looking over the top of the stall walls or underneath the gap between the ground and the bottom of the wall. In their rush to be clever, they instead demonstrate that the poster completely missed the point.
josephg · 2h ago
Your “easy” circumvention requires a second monitor, a teleprompter mirror, a camera, a separate computer and a video capture device. Remember, most people who use Teams don't work in tech. And for them, that’s not “easy”. Barely any normal people have that kind of equipment just lying around, along with the expertise and desire to set all that up, ready for a teams meeting.
For every 100 people who might decide to take a screenshot during a teams meeting, I doubt there’s 1 person who has all that equipment set up and ready to go. You don’t need to make something 100% effective to get a benefit from doing so.
kaonwarb · 3h ago
Sibling comment's definition of "easily" varies materially from my own!
lokar · 2h ago
Nothing, /yet/
hedora · 5h ago
Some people might want it, but it doesn’t actually work. It’s probably also required by some compliance theater in some places.
Aurornis · 29m ago
> Some people might want it, but it doesn’t actually work
It probably works as well as the company firewall blocking sites or the data exfiltration detection blocking companies from being stolen.
Everyone knows they’re not perfect and can be defeated by a sufficiently motivated attacker, but in practice they stop most casual attempts and discourage others.
lolinder · 3h ago
It doesn't work against which threat model?
Yeah, if you've got corporate espionage going on this isn't going to stop someone from lifting your slides and taking them elsewhere. But the most common culprit of corporate information security violations isn't a spy, it's a well-meaning employee who didn't hear, remember, or correctly interpret the request to not record the meeting.
Blocking the most common way in which this kind of well-meaning but ill-informed employee would break the expected security rules does work. It's just getting flak here because people are imagining a much more exciting threat model.
adolph · 4h ago
Yeah, some enterprise admin will click it and make it clickable for others. It’s a classic ratchet of enshittification until things reach a magic intolerability point and folks evacuate to other systems leading those to get rolled into one of the borgs: lather, rinse, repeat.
jasonlotito · 4h ago
> Some people might want it, but it doesn’t actually work
Why do you think they can't prevent on-device screenshots/screen recording can't be prevented when you control the entire stack?
shawnz · 4h ago
They can't control the entire stack because of the analogue hole
c-hendricks · 4h ago
It's kind of like locks isn't it? It'll deter honest folks, but will it prevent screen capture when Teams is running in a VM? What about over VNC?
charcircuit · 1h ago
>VM
Yes, it will not be capturable. If the VM is not secure it will not display it.
>VNC
The VNC server will not be able to capture it.
jasonlotito · 4h ago
What about a camera?
These aren't the use cases that really matters. What matters is the common case, and it's not about deterring honest folks. Honest folks aren't recording.
This is really a lesson in security blind spots. The number of people that are trying to "get around this" assuming that's the issue.
Edit: I'll make it simple. It will work because honest people aren't trying to get around it. But, they could still expose data they shouldn't. This helps prevent that. Again, a camera is enough to prove it doesn't need to be 100% perfect (and probably more honest considering screenshots can be faked).
So, instead of trying to think of how you can exploit, think of all the ways this private information can get out when it shouldn't and the people on the call aren't trying to release it. Work through that, and see where you get.
egypturnash · 4h ago
> Honest folks aren't recording.
Honest folks who want to be able to cover their ass later on are.
Honest folks who are working for dishonest people and are planning to be a whistleblower are.
Honest folks who have Recall on are. Possibly against their will if they haven't found out how to turn it off, or it's a work machine where they're not allowed to do so. Maybe they're not if Microsoft actually has enough interdepartmental communication for the "no screenies please" signal to make it all the way to Recall. It'll be hilarious if they don't.
josephg · 1h ago
One of the best rules I ever heard of was told to me by a cop here in Australia. She told me every time they unholster their firearm, they have to fill out about 3 pages of paperwork. I think that’s so genius.
Think about it - if you’re in a life or death situation, you won’t hesitate. Your gun is right there, and it’s there so you can use it. But if the situation doesn’t feel dangerous, the image of having to fill out 3 pages of paperwork justifying your actions is enough to make you hesitate. It’s weaponised bureaucracy. It’s like - there’s an ideal amount of friction for some actions to have. Pulling your gun out should have some friction to it. The choice should have weight.
I see this in just the same way. If the presenter doesn’t want their presentation recorded, there should be some friction to recording it anyway. It shouldn’t be impossible to record. But it shouldn’t be as easy as just taking a screenshot in windows.
Just like that cop with a gun, there should be the right amount of friction for recording a meeting against the wishes of the presenter. How many pages did the cop have to fill out? 3 pages. Not zero. Not 100 pages. How hard is it to record a meeting despite this protection? It’s doable - you need an hdmi capture card, or a camera out of shot, or something else. You probably need to set it all up before the meeting. And so on. It’s not impossible. But it’s not trivial either. That sounds just right to me.
brookst · 4h ago
Would it work on Mac?
jasonlotito · 4h ago
Yes.
Edit: But yeah, nothing to say why it can't work. So, yeah.
brookst · 1h ago
But MS doesn’t control the whole stack there.
NKosmatos · 5h ago
There isn’t a single user (presenter) that would ask something like this. Only a presenter that has to follow some strict “high security” procedures would enable something like this. A politician, for example, will have an excuse in case something leaks. The fact that with a simple mobile having a camera you can copy whatever is being presented (or with slightly more technical ways) is irrelevant for laws and procedures ;-)
Aurornis · 5h ago
> There isn’t a single user (presenter) that would ask something like this.
Asking participants not to screen record or take screenshot was standard practice at every company I’ve worked at where we discussed anything like financials or sensitive business plans.
anigbrowl · 4h ago
If you have a camera on a stand or are holding up a phone, other participants will able to see it and object. Of course it's still possible to get around it. It's possible to get around anything. The idea of privacy controls is to make bad-faith jerks have to work significantly harder.
SoftTalker · 3h ago
Cameras are in eyeglass frames now. Or lapel pins. The idea that someone would be noticed taking pictures is pretty obsolete.
anigbrowl · 1h ago
You can certainly get cameras like that, they're not the norm. You can object to any privacy feature by pointing out that it doesn't provide guaranteed security. Personally I am tired of having my privacy eroded by people holding themselves out as security realists who are always coming up with new ways to break things and/or normalizing existing ones.
cheschire · 5h ago
You don’t get invited to the right meetings, I see.
FireBeyond · 4h ago
Pretty common where I have worked. Most commonly when reviewing internal product roadmaps to our sales teams because we've burned too many times when customers complain that we haven't implemented something we never announced but a sales person mentioned/showed.
jasonlotito · 4h ago
> The fact that with a simple mobile having a camera you can copy whatever is being presented (or with slightly more technical ways) is irrelevant for laws and procedures ;-)
That you think the only attack vector here is a 3rd party device means you haven't really considered everything. Consider screenshots that might happen for many reasons, including malicious software, or even normal software someone might be using, and accidental exposure.
modzu · 2h ago
hahaha nobody asked for this
voidspark · 1h ago
You have no idea. Infosec in my company would ask for this.
WillieCubed · 2h ago
AFAIK, Google stopped making Timeline accessible on the web in favor of local-first storage to avoid having to give location data when subpoenaed by law enforcement (since they can't give away data they literally don't have access to). And they didn't want to deal with the headache of user privacy-related lawsuits, so they defaulted Google accounts into auto-deleting location history (which was already opt-in for years).
Grazester · 23m ago
Don't know why Android doesn't allow you to record the call with the dialer.
Google voice on the other hand allows this. Just hit 4 and you call is recorded. It is announced to all parties however.
Henchman21 · 5h ago
This is why I advocate for International DCO EPO day!
Because if we shut it all down, a huge chunk won’t start up, and humanity gains huge amounts of electricity generation back, but somewhat more importantly: maybe we could stop carrying smartphones!
(This is mostly in jest, here’s a “/s” for those who can’t tell)
6P58r3MXJSLi · 4h ago
> easily circumvented)
Or, you know, just take a picture of the screen with your phone.
Or record the session, or film it, etc etc etc
kwanbix · 3h ago
And what is the point? If I want to capture something, I can use my cellphone even if print-screen is not working.
watwut · 5h ago
Lets blame laws and regulations for features private companies decide to implement, because I guess that will help us destroy the state.
Stop making up laws and regulations that dont exist.
kyriakos · 54m ago
This kills teams for Linux users since there is no desktop client so capturing can't be prevented. Linux users will be audio only in those calls.
The worst thing about this feature is that if someone takes a screenshot it will be saved on an IT controlled computer but if users are forced to snap screen caps with their phones the sensitive information ends up on personal devices and probably cloud synced to Google drive etc
fifticon · 7h ago
Interesting how this will stop me from taking a picture with my mobile phone. The amount of effort people will go to, to make people's work more cumbersome. I am not screenshotting for espionage, I am screenshotting to accomplish my job.
alabastervlog · 6h ago
And the phone’s what I’d be using to exfiltrate anyway. I’d only screenshot on the work device for work purposes.
grapesodaaaaa · 1h ago
100% this. If I have something juicy I want to show my wife about how they’re messing up our 401k’s, etc. I take a phone picture so that there’s no record of it happening on the official device.
Microsoft doing this is a huge waste of time other than catching the bottom 5% of people doing something like that.
I just want to add that my company has our stuff so locked down, that it’s easier for me to take a phone pic, transcribe the code with ChatGPT, fix the issue on my personal machine, then type it back into the work laptop for some issues. It’s absurd how businesses want to control everything to such a degree that 1) there are now these crazy, leaky workarounds, and 2) it’s to the detriment of people actually getting stuff done for the business.
Aurornis · 5h ago
It’s not literally every Teams meeting.
It’s an option the presenter can turn on when needed.
If you need the data from the presenter to do your job, presumably you’d contact them and ask.
Frost1x · 5h ago
I don’t know about you but sometimes it’s some small piece of information that isn’t worth contacting the presenter about. I need to call or craft an email, be polite and come up with some nonsense greeting maybe for a bullet point or two or a string I don’t want to rapidly shift focus to duplicate by hand. Then I have to sit around and wait for a response where they have to do the same, and I’m definitely not their priority.
Businesses want to control everything, so this will become a common default for people to use. It’ll be embedded in all sorts of company policies and I wouldn’t be surprised if Teams clients in some corporate domain can set it as a default option to help promote the policy (by default block screenshots on all our presentations to reduce liability risks).
If it’s like a paper, some data advertised, or some significant work that’s when you generally want and need to contact the author.
Aurornis · 5h ago
> I don’t know about you but sometimes it’s some small piece of information that isn’t worth contacting the presenter about. I need to call or craft an email, be polite and come up with some nonsense greeting maybe for a bullet point or two or a string I don’t want to rapidly shift focus to duplicate by hand. Then I have to sit around and wait for a response where they have to do the same, and I’m definitely not their priority.
So it’s something critically important for you to get your job done, but also something that’s not worth writing a couple sentence e-mail about, but also going to block your work while you sit around and wait all day for it?
Communication is the foundation of any office job. If you’re in a meeting with these people, just ask in the meeting? If you can’t, send an email during the meeting and you haven’t lost any time. It’s really not as hard as you’re trying to make it sound.
I generally discourage people from using ChatGPT for office communication, but to be honest if writing a simple e-mail request to get something you need for your job triggers this level of overthinking, you might benefit from letting it at least draft the email to get you started and past the analysis paralysis.
IshKebab · 5h ago
No he didn't say it's critically important. I don't know why you're being obtuse about this. He's 100% right.
lolinder · 2h ago
> I need to call or craft an email, be polite and come up with some nonsense greeting maybe for a bullet point or two or a string I don’t want to rapidly shift focus to duplicate by hand. Then I have to sit around and wait for a response where they have to do the same, and I’m definitely not their priority.
This is not a problem with this feature, this is a problem with your office's expectations surrounding communication.
At my workplace this exchange looks like a slack message along these lines:
> Hey, can I get a copy of the info from side 10? I'll use it for $X.
lolinder · 3h ago
> I am not screenshotting for espionage, I am screenshotting to accomplish my job.
This is literally the threat model that this feature is protecting against: it gives presenters a way to say "no really, when I say don't record I mean don't record". If people end up overusing it at your company, that's a problem to address with them, but I can totally imagine use cases where you would want to turn this on just as an added precaution against accidental but well-intentioned misuse of the visual aids in a private presentation.
This isn't to protect against corporate espionage, it's to give presenters the option to be a little bit more clear about their expectations of confidentiality.
Aeolun · 3h ago
No, no, what they’re doing is making it harder for me to work around their (inevitably misplaced) expectations of confidentiality. This is one of those things that will be misused to hell and back so we’re better off not having the feature at all. It’s existence is a net negative to corporate employees everywhere.
mingus88 · 7h ago
That was my first thought also.
I suppose if the presenter wants no screenshots they’d also want cameras on and you’d have to be pretty sly about using your phone.
Either way, dumb. The analog hole can’t be closed.
0cf8612b2e1e · 5h ago
Duplicate screen to another monitor outside of view of the camera is the low tech solution. The better one would be to get a HDMI splitter that can plug the feed into something to make a digital copy.
dullcrisp · 5h ago
Sounds like they’ll want to disable the camera controls next.
constantcrying · 6h ago
Not relevant at all.
This is like a watermark on a PDF. Not some impossible to circumvent security protocol.
queuebert · 6h ago
What's to stop me embedding a pinhole camera in the lamp behind me, zooming it in on the screen, and recording every meeting?
These kinds of measures only stop the good guys from doing their jobs. The bad guys put way too much effort into espionage for this to work.
Aurornis · 5h ago
I love all the comments imagining complex technical workarounds while skipping right over the obvious workaround of using a smartphone camera to take a picture of the screen (which was mentioned near the top of the article that everyone read, of course). Modern camera phones are wide angle enough that it’s not hard to grab a shot of the monitor out of frame.
> These kinds of measures only stop the good guys from doing their jobs. The bad guys put way too much effort into espionage for this to work.
This is for preventing casual screenshots and reminding average office workers that meeting content is sensitive. It’s not an iron-clad tool for defeating dedicated espionage involving hidden pinhole cameras.
There have been similar arguments for ages about how if something isn’t iron-clad perfect protection then it’s pointless, but in the real world making something more difficult actually makes people think twice and stops most of the people who would casually do it.
See for example Snapchat’s screenshot notifications. It’s well known that there’s an elaborate way to circumvent it. However the fact that it takes a lot of work and there’s a risk of getting caught trying really hard to deceive the other party is enough to make most people not want to risk it.
RajT88 · 5h ago
Exactly right. The great firewall of China is another example - of it blocks 60% of people from outside content it is probably "good enough for government work".
to11mtm · 5h ago
> Modern camera phones are wide angle enough that it’s not hard to grab a shot of the monitor out of frame.
Pedantic correction:
'grab a shot of the monitor out of frame of the webcam of the person wanting to take screenshots of the meeting'.
First time I read it I was somehow imagining breaking of laws of physics lmao.
I suppose the biggest irony of this is, most of the shops that might want to enable this are already so sloppy that they half expect folks to screenshot teams presentations for notes later.
WorldPeas · 5h ago
Or… y’know having a HDMI capture box with a trigger pedal.
whatwhaaaaat · 5h ago
Doesn’t hdcp take care of that? 720p over component sure but hdmi has protection for this.
The vendors of the camera have the same interests of the vendor of the software. It is just a matter of time until the software watermarks the video and your camera automatically stops recording.
Users have to resort to (exclusively, if possible) open source tools.
matheusmoreira · 5h ago
The real solution is democratization of manufacturing. We need the ability to make our own hardware, our own computers. Then we won't need to suffer the silly policies of corporations.
rolph · 6h ago
the Analogue hole Will never Die
immibis · 5h ago
They tried to. They tried to make cameras illegal. Remember that?
That's the equivalent of sitting in a movie theater with a camcorder. Not important enough to bother crafting a solution for.
CorrectHorseBat · 6h ago
I would say it's completely different. A camcorder movie has bad quality, most people would rather pay for a good quality movie than a free camcorder one.
For sensitive data on the other hand quality doesn't matter as long as it's readable.
SoftTalker · 3h ago
Plenty of people would pay to watch a camcorder copy of a new release film rather than pay the cost of taking the whole family to the theatre. That’s why it was commonly done. Now you just go online.
6stringmerc · 5h ago
But if it makes Microsoft’s claim untenable then it’s worth noting that security is only limited…a sweeping generalization that “screen capture is blocked” isn’t really valid anymore.
Making something more difficult is okay to claim in my view, but trying to over-state capabilities or security concerns is problematic.
dist-epoch · 6h ago
I'm pretty sure you can use some HDMI capture device to do that easier.
constantcrying · 6h ago
Totally irrelevant. This is there to protect an organization from itself. Think of it as a watermark on a PDF.
It exist to make the easiest way impossible and to tell participants that the content should not be shared by them.
codingdave · 7h ago
At some point, you need to trust your staff. If you do not trust them to keep confidential information private, then why are you giving them the information in the first place?
Aurornis · 5h ago
I have some friends who work in a medical facility. They get an extreme amount of training on patient privacy laws and constant reminders not to get sensitive patient information on to their personal devices.
Despite the intense training and constant warnings, it happens constantly. And that’s just the cases they know about and address.
You have to be able to trust your staff, but you also have to be realistic that any organization at scale will have people who either don’t care or don’t think and it happens frequently.
leovander · 2h ago
Extreme amount of training? More like once a year online HIPAA test that everyone blows through with the occasional CISO phishing campaigns that at least one person fails.
hedora · 5h ago
In the US, medical privacy laws serve exactly two purposes:
1) Prevent the patients from suing after a data breach or intentional sale of their medical records, regardless of negligence.
2) Transfer as much money as possible from health care to privately owned businesses in the compliance industry.
Very few computer security lessons from that industry generalize to other parts of the economy.
MattPalmer1086 · 6h ago
People make mistakes. Why not put a simple control in that doesn't get in the way of any legitimate use?
Aachen · 3h ago
The mistake being, what, accidentally sneezing onto the printscreen button so hard it depresses?
This isn't the same as leaving a tool in someone; making and misplacing a screencap take active doing. If your meeting participants actively want to put data where it doesn't belong, the solution isn't accident prevention
mingus88 · 6h ago
You can’t really sniff out disgruntled employees until they act on it.
rf15 · 6h ago
maybe if your employees are disgruntled and feel like they can't talk to you about it you are shit at your job
Traubenfuchs · 5h ago
I had aggressively disgruntled colleagues that couldn‘t deal with being fired, having 3 month notice period and 2 extra salaries and called the CEO names via anonymous all hands meeting.
Many people are babies.
jchw · 4h ago
This is of course, incredibly stupid, due to the analog hole (which to be fair, is mentioned in passing by the article, but doesn't seem to be addressed at all by MS*.) Having this feature just guarantees it will get used, and possibly made into a standard compliance theater feature, hurting legitimate users for very little practical gain.
The only real practical gain is that it might prevent malware from being able to capture visible data, but what's funny about that is one of the desktop systems that can prevent unwanted screen capture by design (Wayland) also intentionally doesn't have any support for DRM/HDCP features, so it will likely be stuck on audio-only mode. High five, Microsoft!
* I wanted to go to the source directly to check if maybe they just left it out, but the link that they currently have seems to be non-sense. It seems to point to something about "Co-pilot" audio transcription. In Romanian, for whatever reason.
Most folks know this is easily defeated typically by viewing the content on another device (eg via casting it, remote desktop, phone mirroring, etc) or viewing it from within a VM, and then using the native screen capture functionality on the viewing device to record/screenshot whatever you need.
That being said - guessing they are doing this for their enterprise customers mainly, where alot of those other options are locked down. But plenty of people already know to just record their screen from their phone anyway - impossible to block that and much safer way to exfiltrate whatever info/data you need.
tylerhou · 27m ago
Wouldn’t HDCP prevent viewing content on another device? I assume that is what technology they would use to implement this.
johnnyo · 5h ago
> This feature will be available on Teams desktop applications (both Windows and Mac) and Teams mobile applications (both iOS and Android)."
Seems like it’s even easier, just join the meeting via browser.
I’m not familiar with a way to enforce this type of restriction in the browser.
asadotzler · 5h ago
Browser DRM like WideVine and PlayReady do the enforcing
kccqzy · 4h ago
Really? I didn't know it was possible to use DRM like WideVine for peer-to-peer video.
adolph · 4h ago
Teams is going through a central server and bouncing it out to participants, right? Not p2p.
SoftTalker · 1h ago
I thought Teams was a reskin of Skype so whatever they used to do…
to11mtm · 5h ago
From the Article, if only to be pedantic enough that I agree with 'yes a browser might work'
> The company plans to start rolling out this new Teams feature to Android, desktop, iOS, and web users worldwide in July 2025.
OTOH we will see if there's any type of weasel-wording on whether browser is in fact non-supported (i.e. will go to audio-only mode.)
The other possibility, is that every 'supported' platform has some form of DRM that results in the functionality working even on browser (just thinking out loud about DRM functionality possibilities) means Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS all work but everyone else is out of luck.
pests · 2h ago
Same way Netflix does I’m sure.
rvba · 5h ago
The things you mention are a dream for most corporate employees, where everything is locked on their computers.
They will just make photos using their phones.
tstrimple · 4h ago
Ran into this “feature” this week. So instead of grabbing a screen cap from my VDI I have to grab it from my primary OS and then email myself the image to cross that corp “boundary”. They recently disabled copy and paste between my computer and the VDI session as well.
mindcrash · 6h ago
That's quite unfortunate because due to a screen capture through Snipping Tool I got evidence of my org planning to fire me before even making announcements through a shared PowerPoint deck with a slide containing a org chart which shouldn't really be there at the time in the Teams meeting.
So from a employee POV it has its uses.
But people who will get in the same situation like me could simply use the camera on their phone pointed at the screen and be done with it, I guess.
asadotzler · 5h ago
use your smartphone's camera next time. that puts the evidence on your device rather than your company's device.
socalgal2 · 16m ago
Sounds like only a matter of time until Microsoft adds this to Edge (and Chromium) and thenn any page can prevent you from taking a screenshot
charcircuit · 3m ago
This already exists in browsers. It's why you can't screenshot movies on youtube.com or netflix.com for example.
neilv · 2h ago
> Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode to protect shared content.
Is this anti-competitive and anti-open-standards?
deadbolt · 1h ago
Good to see Microsoft returning to their roots /s
tonetegeatinst · 7h ago
The workaround that Microsoft is officially supports but isnt mentioning it.....is using microsoft recall.
svaha1728 · 6h ago
Yes. Don’t take a screenshot of your teams meeting, you aren’t trustworthy. We will block that while we take a screenshot of everyone’s computer every couple minutes and run an LLM on it.
dustbunny · 7h ago
Yeah maybe this is a way of preventing anyone else from creating a copilot competitor
wmf · 5h ago
Why would Recall be allowed to screenshot DRMed content?
Hilift · 5h ago
Does psr.exe no longer take screenshots?
bob1029 · 7h ago
Any security feature that can be totally defeated with a spicy HDMI splitter and a 2nd computer should not exist.
This stuff looks much more to me like "fuck the user" than anything else. I am 100% convinced there is a cult of evil bastards at Microsoft, et. al. that is hellbent on making everyone's UI/UX as janky as possible.
Xelynega · 7h ago
Yea, this sounds like "Microsoft teams no longer supporting video on Linux and old versions of mac/windows" more than anything
throitallaway · 4h ago
Yep, joining Teams meetings from a browser on Linux is a flaky experience at best (despite Meet and Zoom working fine.) I'll happily send back a Google Meet invite to anyone that invites me to a Teams meeting.
shim__ · 6h ago
Sounds like an good reason to turn down invites with an Teams link
maxloh · 6h ago
They could just integrate Web DRM APIs like Google Widevine, Microsoft PlayReady, and Apple FairPlay, as both of them are integrated into the operating system and only work with a supported monitor. An HDMI splitter would likely not pass the test.
Streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus use these APIs to protect their content as well.
flutas · 5h ago
That's why OP mentioned a spicy HDMI splitter. HDMI splitters are allowed to break HDCP, which means that protection doesn't really matter.
I use a setup like this frequently for work to demo our Android TV based apps with full content even though it all has DRM applied. Always leads to a "how did you get this footage" line of questioning for anyone who knows that we use DRM.
timewizard · 6h ago
My complete guess would be a legal team asked for this. You can easily imagine several scenarios that would prompt them to seek out a feature like this.
I think this because our company recently enforced a 2 year mail deletion policy on all mailboxes for "legal reasons." Which were "we don't want stuff to show up in discovery if we get sued."
raverbashing · 7h ago
Or, you know, just use the phone in your pocket
constantcrying · 6h ago
No. It is there to protect an organization from itself. It tells the participants that the content should not be shared by them.
It is essentially like a watermark in a PDF. It can be trivially defeated, but that isn't the point.
acchow · 6h ago
If they wanted something like a watermark, they could have just added a watermark...
elmerfud · 6h ago
You can keep repeating this nonsense but it doesn't make it true. It just means that you've drank the Kool-Aid and don't really understand how technology works.
It offers no meaningful protection to the organization itself. Anyone who's willing to violate a company policy that says not to record and share information this will not stop them or slow them down in the slightest. So it offers no protection at all.
It is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand and thinking it's safe. you continuing to spout this nonsense I'm not sure which is worse this policy thinking it protects people or people who actually believes at this would protect people.
ale42 · 6h ago
I think that it might more have legal implications than practical ones. It wont protect the organization from information exfiltration, but it might legally protect it, in the sense that a court might state that the necessary technical measures were there, so the organization is not responsible for the data leak that happened... or something in that direction.
import · 6h ago
Are you ok bro? You wrote the similar sentences to the other few comments criticizing the Microsoft’s nonsense feature.
whstl · 6h ago
A former colleague was harassed for a months on end a boss and used screen recordings to prove it to HR.
Not surprised at all that MS is doing this.
GuB-42 · 3h ago
I guess that if that's optional, including the "Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode" part, then why not. I guess it can prevent some accidental leaks, like with someone hitting PrtScr by mistake.
But if someone wants to take a screenshot, the "take a picture with your smartphone" exploit is already very obvious and commonly used, even by non-technical people. I know that confidential information is shared like this all the time, bypassing all security, and everyone turns a blind eye to it, because that's how they get the job done. I fully expect that if that feature is forcibly turned on, people will do it without giving a second thought.
And if you want to do it discreetly, just turn off your camera or cover it.
There are other ways of working around that, like using a video capture card, but why bother when you have a solution so obvious as taking pictures of the screen, even the article mentions it.
dankwizard · 1h ago
Very pleased this is coming. Once a week I hold a meeting with stakeholders to show my latest art works and I can hear them push the print screen button. Very annoying. I am trying to get these freshly minted but if is becomes public somebody has screenshotted them, the value plummets
figassis · 6h ago
I screenshot a lot on meetings to take notes, usually when someone is presenting a slide and I want to note down the bits that are relevant to my work. But no, espionage!
bhouston · 5h ago
This is security theater. It makes you feel secure but it doesn’t actually protect you. If things can not get out do not share them via Trams in the first place.
Frost1x · 5h ago
And adds an inconvenience. Easy enough to get around, but, now I have to add some extra effort to get around it.
tacheiordache · 2h ago
So if you're screen capturing with something like OBS or screen shot snips it would show black? For audio it'd be silence?
waltbosz · 4h ago
I wonder how it will work. The article sounds like it just overrides the print screen button. But what about screen recording apps like OBS? Seems like Teams would need to inject some code deep into the os to block that.
Gabrys1 · 4h ago
On Android, the OS exposes an API allowing the app to control whether it's visible on the screenshot and screen capturing tools (like screen mirroring to your TV). If the app disallowes screenshots (it's called FLAG_SECURE) your screenshot/stream will have a black rectangle instead of the app image. This is usually requested by bank apps and paid content apps like Netflix.
I assume there are provisions for the same thing in all the other supported systems. Everyone without such support will get no video on the affected meetings.
hu3 · 4h ago
it's probably going to be some DRM codec protection similar to Netflix where video goes black for screenshots.
thih9 · 5h ago
I very often take screenshots during meetings, it’s a helpful reference point to me. I never used that to save more sensitive data than what I already have access to. Still, I assume my use case will no longer be supported. That’s unfortunate.
kccqzy · 4h ago
I do the same. But I think you can just nicely ask the presenter to share the deck.
calrain · 3h ago
Just take a picture with your smartphone and email it to whomever you want.
Blocking screen captures is an example of 'Security Theatre'
giancarlostoro · 7h ago
Does this include screenshots? Lots of us screenshot coworkers screen share to log bugs and issues they are showing on a screen.
moralestapia · 7h ago
Yes.
gloxkiqcza · 7h ago
This should be configurable at the very least
globalnode · 2h ago
Meanwhile recall. I sound disgruntled but I'm actually glad its out in the open now.
nonane · 6h ago
Which APIs would one use to implement this feature on Mac and Windows? For example is there a OS level flag that one can include on windows to not allow capturing of the app’s window - or is a notification sent out when someone tries to capture the screen (and then one can just blank the window)?
gokhan · 6h ago
One method for Windows. Nothing can prevent a dedicated user though.
Watermarks, both hidden and visible, would be a more sensible solution.
flufluflufluffy · 4h ago
I get that it’s basically impossible to enforce but who are all these people that screencap stuff from Teams meetings? Why do you need to do that? Can you not get the actual material you’re capping via somebody emailing/sharing the actual file? If not, why? Are you not allowed to access it? Or are you all just taking candids of your coworkers for your own devious purposes?
Noumenon72 · 3h ago
I rigged up a Mac Shortcut with the Extract Text from Screenshot feature so if I see someone visit a URL or display an error message, I can copy the text from the shared screen instead of asking them to paste it into the chat.
fuzzylightbulb · 16m ago
Windows can do this via Text Extractor In PowerToys. Unbelievably useful utility that I use all the time.
twobitshifter · 3h ago
I do it just taking notes alongside the slides as the presenter goes through. Most PowerPoints have 1 to 3 actual useful slides.
GuestFAUniverse · 6h ago
Yeah. Concentrating on getting Windows and all MS products to be more secure and robust, instead of building up smoke and mirros would have been too hard I guess.
What a waste of developers resources.
rs186 · 3h ago
> unsupported platforms
Ah, basically DRM and Widevine L1 vs L3 for meetings, old story again.
marcodiego · 5h ago
This and DRM and other restrictive anti-features like self destroying messages, un-recordable strings, unprintable files are all fully artificial restrictions. They make no sense when the source code is available since removing it is as simple as removing an if.
I payed for my device, it is mine, it is up to me to decide whatever I'll do with it. It is my right under the private ownership definition. The current situation on modern devices, especially smartphones, is ridiculous and a complete distortion of rights that are fundamental even for the roots of capitalism.
Users should organize and, at the least, avoid using such services even if it means to lose some convenience. Losing my freedom is not a fair price to pay for such conveniences.
rKarpinski · 5h ago
Presumably bypassed by turning off hardware acceleration? Like with many streaming sites that also block screen capture.
code4tee · 4h ago
This is a pointless feature that’s easily bypassed if you know what you’re doing. It’s there so someone can check a compliance box to make an auditor that doesn’t know much about tech feel better. That’s it.
chasd00 · 3h ago
This is exactly right. It’s there to check the “no screenshots allowed” checkbox on some compliance form for some random certification.
Aeolun · 3h ago
Maybe these companies should just hire trustworthy people? Or don’t present things controversial enough that good people will want to leak them?
rf15 · 6h ago
So how does this affect Teams in the browser?
asadotzler · 5h ago
Very likely. WideVine and PlayReady can enforce.
throitallaway · 4h ago
If they don't it's bye bye Teams for me (a blessing in disguise) because they discontinued the Linux client a while ago.
inetknght · 5h ago
I have a hearing disability. I often recorded meetings so that I could replay and listen to key points again.
This is going to block a valid use of screen recording and I wonder if it would violate A.D.A. requirements
extra88 · 5h ago
Your employer has an obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for your disability. There could be a number of solutions including:
* paying for professional human captioning of the meetings you're in (automated captions are not accurate enough to be relied on)
* the host using Teams' own recording system and providing only you with the recording, maybe only the audio
grensley · 3h ago
I take screenshots because they're definitely going to forget to share the presentation.
pjmlp · 6h ago
These folks never heard of something called photographic camera.
SbEpUBz2 · 6h ago
WhatsApp disabled creating screenshots of profile pictures (this annoyed my grandmother), but it cannot really do this when using through the web interface.
artursapek · 1h ago
>However, it should be noted that, even if screenshots are blocked, sensitive media and information shared in Teams meetings can still be captured by taking a photo of the conversation.
At least the article points out the reason that doing this is completely pointless
gunalx · 5h ago
Straigth up impossible to block just taking a phone pic of my screen though.
lousken · 5h ago
is this something you have to enable(or disable) for your tenant? or for a particular meeting? i don't understand from the article
i don't see why would you want to enable this, unless you have BYOD allowed
micahdeath · 7h ago
So, record your screen with your phone. =D
ajsnigrutin · 3h ago
So wait... chromium on linux will be in audio only mode, and windows users will be able to use their phone cameras to record both audio and video?
j45 · 3h ago
Until someone runs it in a VM.
grishka · 6h ago
And what will prevent people from patching their Teams clients to still allow screenshots? What will prevent someone from building an unofficial Teams client from scratch that has none of this bullshit in the first place?
sherdil2022 · 6h ago
Nothing is stopping anyone from recording the screen and capturing audio. However that is not the point. These features are required by regulated industries and companies like Microsoft can offer them. Plain and simple.
johnea · 7h ago
This is just to serve as a reminder of who actually "owns" your computer.
Overwhelmingly, people who speak in favor of windows, grew up using it. It's like the indoctrination of any religous cult, it works best when you start young.
One has to wonder when the world will recover from windoze brain damage...
pndy · 3h ago
> It's like the indoctrination of any religous cult
Heh; sister in grade school for her computer class was given a pamphlet where she and her classmates could learn how to become web surfers with IE, how to write a blog with WL Writer and how cool is SkyDrive for saving your files.
IcyWindows · 6h ago
Is that really any different than those that grew up with a Mac?
jolmg · 5h ago
It's not a Windows vs Mac thing. It's using closed-source software vs open-source, i.e. Windows & Mac vs Linux et al.
johnea · 5h ago
This is highlighted by how many different types of user interface environments are implemented in free s/w platforms, vs the monoculture user interfaces of proprietary OSes.
The resultant windoze brain damage is a co-mingling of "you don't know what you don't know", lack of awareness of just how varied computer interfaces could be, with the "child indoctrination" aspect that nothing else seems quite right when it's not what you were raised on.
After my first programming experiences, on a TRS-80 in the mall radio shack in the late '70s, I was exposed to a variety of user interfaces, but eventually became locked into windows myself, mostly from employer enforcement.
The thing that drove me away in the end was the way various settings were moved around with each new release, and the way my workflow had to constantly adapt to arbitrary changes in the user interface with each revision.
After exploring a wide variety of desktop environments, I've been on fluxbox window manager for many years now and I'm still quite satisfied. All of my configuration options are in my home directory, and my user interface experience is recreated without incident when updating, and even when moving to new h/w.
But the monoculture is wide spread, and continues to inhibit computer innovation outside of what will benefit the mothership...
johnea · 5h ago
Really only as a matter of scale.
The main vendor locking practice of M$, has been to cut deals w/ h/w makers to preinstall windoze on their new computers.
This caused many many more people to face childhood indoctrination into windoze than into macOS.
Tangentially, over many years apple was a less malicious company than M$, but that advantage has waned in recent years.
hanson108 · 4h ago
Uh take a picture.
constantcrying · 6h ago
Awesome, this was really needed.
No, this isn't a "security" feature and it obviously can be easily circumvented. The reason this is useful is to make it extremely clear to participants that the contents should not be shared by them.
Aicy · 6h ago
I think this would be true if this feature was optional. Then if a particular meeting had it on then you would think twice about capturing the content, but if it's always on even on some team games night then its devalued.
Like Google collecting all of our location history for their own usage, but not allowing us to see it via web anymore (only on mobiles), or having the android dialer not allowing us to record our own phone conversation (easily circumvented), or movie/music/game publishers not allowing us to backup our own media… you get the point.
All these are due to laws and regulations that are there to protect the big companies and don’t take into consideration users and the common sense ;-)
This feature is not due to laws and regulations.
The user in this case is the presenter who clicks the button to enable screenshot protection on their meeting. This is Microsoft trying to deliver a feature their users want, not laws and regulations making them do something their users don’t want.
It is security theater at its peak.
* Naive screencaps are much less traceable to the leaker than a naive photo is. Yes, someone can strip out EXIF data, but we've seen over and over again that they generally don't. And even without EXIF a naive framing on the photo is more likely to expose information about the location or identity of the person who took it.
* A photo of a webinar is going to (barring serious postprocessing) look much less official and be less legible than a screenshot, so the use cases for illicit captures are going to be fewer. Few people are going to try to take a phone photo of the top-secret meeting and use the slide in their next team all-hands, but many might forget the rules and than snap a screenshot really quickly for later use.
* Just having the ability to block the easy method of screen captures helps avoid cases where the person doing the capturing isn't actively malicious, just ill-informed. If a normal employee attempts a screenshot and is reminded they're not supposed to do that, they're not going to pull out their phone to take a photo, they're going to say "oops" and move on.
Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here, but most of corporate InfoSec is wrapped up in protecting against pretty lame threat models that would benefit from this—mostly uninformed/ignorant employees screwing up without intending to be a threat.
Like running windows in a VM or using an HDMI capture card. And are they going to break running teams meetings when using moonlight etc. with this? If you are OBS capturing during the meeting does it get blacked out or just breaks your recording?
This is primarily about blocking accidental leaks by regular employees who were asked to not record but ignored it. This kind of reuse of content happens all the time in companies of any significant size and isn't entirely stopped by simple requests or watermarks. This tool gives companies one more option to protect against this very lame and boring but also very real threat.
I think you're seriously overestimating regular employees. A significant number of people will send you smartphone pictures when you ask for a screenshot - why would they suddenly start looking into on-device screen capture when taking a picture or video of some random presentation?
People know it’s not perfect. However, raising the bar discourages the spontaneous captures that people might try out of habit.
The people using this feature aren’t going to imagine it as 100% protective against any and all possible methods of exfiltrating data. It’s a feature for discouraging casual data capture and dissemination. It serves to remind people doing spontaneous captures that they aren’t supposed to, but everyone knows a dedicated person could find a way to get that photo if they really, really want.
That doesn’t make it useless. Every time you raise the level of difficulty for accomplishing something, a percentage of attempts are thwarted or discouraged. As it turns out in the real world, raising the bar even a little tiny bit is effective in thwarting or discouraging the majority of attempts across the average user base. You’re not defeating the dedicated attackers, but you’re reducing the overall number of successful attacks and even attempts.
The same is true for things like the office firewall blocking websites: Yes, we all know a dedicated engineer can create a way around it, but it’s going to stop most employees from getting to those sites and serve as a reminder to others that they’re not supposed to access them.
I'm an example of that threat. I'm a freelancer who often has video calls with new clients. Sometimes I surreptitiously screen cap demos or presentations. It would be very difficult to use a phone that way without breaking the conversational flow.
Other supposed workarounds would require much more preplanning. Like I'd need to know that there was something worth capturing.
HDMI capture with passthrough is $20.
This feature provides value because it increases friction. It won't stop really determined and motivated users from leaking, but it'll make leaks, especially accidental leaks / those due to hacks, a lot less common.
The same applies to DRM, "security by obscurity", social media post editing / deletion, dark patterns, loss leaders, promotions and coupons, the list is endless.
If your user is a perfectly rational being with infinite time and infinite tech savviness, the proverbial "spherical cow", those features make 0 sense. Just like spherical cows, though, those users don't actually exist, and so friction matters.
That doesn't mean friction is infinite, though. It's too easy to overestimate it and fall into the trap of thinking that "users won't bother doing this, it doesn't matter if this combination of actions loses us money, it's too bothersome", and then get very surprised very quickly.
I don’t underestimate friction, I just know even my grandma would reach for her camera for a picture of her screen and she doesn’t even know what a screen capture is. It’s a stupid feature that doesn’t create friction, it just encourages users to take an untraceable action.
I would FAR prefer recording who took a screenshot than blocking it as a presenter.
Everyone knows this. You don’t need this survey (which surely was a real thing that actually occurred and not something you just conveniently imagined for this argument, right?) to tell you that.
It’s literally written in the linked article.
We know. There are ways around it. But it’s friction, and friction has value. People know it’s not perfect, but it’s another reminder that people aren’t supposed to be doing it.
The friction pushes the flow into something even worse — while not actually changing the behavior.
This feature would help make that less likely to happen accidentally or “accidentally.” It wouldn’t stop deliberate leaks but that’s a different problem.
When we did his exit interview he admitted he just wasn’t thinking. He did it all in a couple minutes while in the meeting. Something like this would have stopped him in the process and made him remember that the content was sensitive.
Don’t underestimate the diversity of the people watching zoom meetings. It’s not all engineers with elaborate screen capture setups prepared for the express purpose of recording meetings.
It’s all about diffusing that responsibility.
:-D
If you wanted video just have the device positioned outside the field of view. Laptop cameras fov is very narrow.
For every 100 people who might decide to take a screenshot during a teams meeting, I doubt there’s 1 person who has all that equipment set up and ready to go. You don’t need to make something 100% effective to get a benefit from doing so.
It probably works as well as the company firewall blocking sites or the data exfiltration detection blocking companies from being stolen.
Everyone knows they’re not perfect and can be defeated by a sufficiently motivated attacker, but in practice they stop most casual attempts and discourage others.
Yeah, if you've got corporate espionage going on this isn't going to stop someone from lifting your slides and taking them elsewhere. But the most common culprit of corporate information security violations isn't a spy, it's a well-meaning employee who didn't hear, remember, or correctly interpret the request to not record the meeting.
Blocking the most common way in which this kind of well-meaning but ill-informed employee would break the expected security rules does work. It's just getting flak here because people are imagining a much more exciting threat model.
Why do you think they can't prevent on-device screenshots/screen recording can't be prevented when you control the entire stack?
Yes, it will not be capturable. If the VM is not secure it will not display it.
>VNC
The VNC server will not be able to capture it.
These aren't the use cases that really matters. What matters is the common case, and it's not about deterring honest folks. Honest folks aren't recording.
This is really a lesson in security blind spots. The number of people that are trying to "get around this" assuming that's the issue.
Edit: I'll make it simple. It will work because honest people aren't trying to get around it. But, they could still expose data they shouldn't. This helps prevent that. Again, a camera is enough to prove it doesn't need to be 100% perfect (and probably more honest considering screenshots can be faked).
So, instead of trying to think of how you can exploit, think of all the ways this private information can get out when it shouldn't and the people on the call aren't trying to release it. Work through that, and see where you get.
Honest folks who want to be able to cover their ass later on are.
Honest folks who are working for dishonest people and are planning to be a whistleblower are.
Honest folks who have Recall on are. Possibly against their will if they haven't found out how to turn it off, or it's a work machine where they're not allowed to do so. Maybe they're not if Microsoft actually has enough interdepartmental communication for the "no screenies please" signal to make it all the way to Recall. It'll be hilarious if they don't.
Think about it - if you’re in a life or death situation, you won’t hesitate. Your gun is right there, and it’s there so you can use it. But if the situation doesn’t feel dangerous, the image of having to fill out 3 pages of paperwork justifying your actions is enough to make you hesitate. It’s weaponised bureaucracy. It’s like - there’s an ideal amount of friction for some actions to have. Pulling your gun out should have some friction to it. The choice should have weight.
I see this in just the same way. If the presenter doesn’t want their presentation recorded, there should be some friction to recording it anyway. It shouldn’t be impossible to record. But it shouldn’t be as easy as just taking a screenshot in windows.
Just like that cop with a gun, there should be the right amount of friction for recording a meeting against the wishes of the presenter. How many pages did the cop have to fill out? 3 pages. Not zero. Not 100 pages. How hard is it to record a meeting despite this protection? It’s doable - you need an hdmi capture card, or a camera out of shot, or something else. You probably need to set it all up before the meeting. And so on. It’s not impossible. But it’s not trivial either. That sounds just right to me.
Edit: But yeah, nothing to say why it can't work. So, yeah.
Asking participants not to screen record or take screenshot was standard practice at every company I’ve worked at where we discussed anything like financials or sensitive business plans.
That you think the only attack vector here is a 3rd party device means you haven't really considered everything. Consider screenshots that might happen for many reasons, including malicious software, or even normal software someone might be using, and accidental exposure.
Because if we shut it all down, a huge chunk won’t start up, and humanity gains huge amounts of electricity generation back, but somewhat more importantly: maybe we could stop carrying smartphones!
(This is mostly in jest, here’s a “/s” for those who can’t tell)
Or, you know, just take a picture of the screen with your phone.
Or record the session, or film it, etc etc etc
Stop making up laws and regulations that dont exist.
The worst thing about this feature is that if someone takes a screenshot it will be saved on an IT controlled computer but if users are forced to snap screen caps with their phones the sensitive information ends up on personal devices and probably cloud synced to Google drive etc
Microsoft doing this is a huge waste of time other than catching the bottom 5% of people doing something like that.
I just want to add that my company has our stuff so locked down, that it’s easier for me to take a phone pic, transcribe the code with ChatGPT, fix the issue on my personal machine, then type it back into the work laptop for some issues. It’s absurd how businesses want to control everything to such a degree that 1) there are now these crazy, leaky workarounds, and 2) it’s to the detriment of people actually getting stuff done for the business.
It’s an option the presenter can turn on when needed.
If you need the data from the presenter to do your job, presumably you’d contact them and ask.
Businesses want to control everything, so this will become a common default for people to use. It’ll be embedded in all sorts of company policies and I wouldn’t be surprised if Teams clients in some corporate domain can set it as a default option to help promote the policy (by default block screenshots on all our presentations to reduce liability risks).
If it’s like a paper, some data advertised, or some significant work that’s when you generally want and need to contact the author.
So it’s something critically important for you to get your job done, but also something that’s not worth writing a couple sentence e-mail about, but also going to block your work while you sit around and wait all day for it?
Communication is the foundation of any office job. If you’re in a meeting with these people, just ask in the meeting? If you can’t, send an email during the meeting and you haven’t lost any time. It’s really not as hard as you’re trying to make it sound.
I generally discourage people from using ChatGPT for office communication, but to be honest if writing a simple e-mail request to get something you need for your job triggers this level of overthinking, you might benefit from letting it at least draft the email to get you started and past the analysis paralysis.
This is not a problem with this feature, this is a problem with your office's expectations surrounding communication.
At my workplace this exchange looks like a slack message along these lines:
> Hey, can I get a copy of the info from side 10? I'll use it for $X.
This is literally the threat model that this feature is protecting against: it gives presenters a way to say "no really, when I say don't record I mean don't record". If people end up overusing it at your company, that's a problem to address with them, but I can totally imagine use cases where you would want to turn this on just as an added precaution against accidental but well-intentioned misuse of the visual aids in a private presentation.
This isn't to protect against corporate espionage, it's to give presenters the option to be a little bit more clear about their expectations of confidentiality.
I suppose if the presenter wants no screenshots they’d also want cameras on and you’d have to be pretty sly about using your phone.
Either way, dumb. The analog hole can’t be closed.
This is like a watermark on a PDF. Not some impossible to circumvent security protocol.
These kinds of measures only stop the good guys from doing their jobs. The bad guys put way too much effort into espionage for this to work.
> These kinds of measures only stop the good guys from doing their jobs. The bad guys put way too much effort into espionage for this to work.
This is for preventing casual screenshots and reminding average office workers that meeting content is sensitive. It’s not an iron-clad tool for defeating dedicated espionage involving hidden pinhole cameras.
There have been similar arguments for ages about how if something isn’t iron-clad perfect protection then it’s pointless, but in the real world making something more difficult actually makes people think twice and stops most of the people who would casually do it.
See for example Snapchat’s screenshot notifications. It’s well known that there’s an elaborate way to circumvent it. However the fact that it takes a lot of work and there’s a risk of getting caught trying really hard to deceive the other party is enough to make most people not want to risk it.
Pedantic correction:
'grab a shot of the monitor out of frame of the webcam of the person wanting to take screenshots of the meeting'.
First time I read it I was somehow imagining breaking of laws of physics lmao.
I suppose the biggest irony of this is, most of the shops that might want to enable this are already so sloppy that they half expect folks to screenshot teams presentations for notes later.
Users have to resort to (exclusively, if possible) open source tools.
For sensitive data on the other hand quality doesn't matter as long as it's readable.
Making something more difficult is okay to claim in my view, but trying to over-state capabilities or security concerns is problematic.
It exist to make the easiest way impossible and to tell participants that the content should not be shared by them.
Despite the intense training and constant warnings, it happens constantly. And that’s just the cases they know about and address.
You have to be able to trust your staff, but you also have to be realistic that any organization at scale will have people who either don’t care or don’t think and it happens frequently.
1) Prevent the patients from suing after a data breach or intentional sale of their medical records, regardless of negligence.
2) Transfer as much money as possible from health care to privately owned businesses in the compliance industry.
Very few computer security lessons from that industry generalize to other parts of the economy.
This isn't the same as leaving a tool in someone; making and misplacing a screencap take active doing. If your meeting participants actively want to put data where it doesn't belong, the solution isn't accident prevention
Many people are babies.
The only real practical gain is that it might prevent malware from being able to capture visible data, but what's funny about that is one of the desktop systems that can prevent unwanted screen capture by design (Wayland) also intentionally doesn't have any support for DRM/HDCP features, so it will likely be stuck on audio-only mode. High five, Microsoft!
* I wanted to go to the source directly to check if maybe they just left it out, but the link that they currently have seems to be non-sense. It seems to point to something about "Co-pilot" audio transcription. In Romanian, for whatever reason.
https://www.microsoft.com/ro-ro/microsoft-365/roadmap?id=490...
That being said - guessing they are doing this for their enterprise customers mainly, where alot of those other options are locked down. But plenty of people already know to just record their screen from their phone anyway - impossible to block that and much safer way to exfiltrate whatever info/data you need.
Seems like it’s even easier, just join the meeting via browser.
I’m not familiar with a way to enforce this type of restriction in the browser.
> The company plans to start rolling out this new Teams feature to Android, desktop, iOS, and web users worldwide in July 2025.
OTOH we will see if there's any type of weasel-wording on whether browser is in fact non-supported (i.e. will go to audio-only mode.)
The other possibility, is that every 'supported' platform has some form of DRM that results in the functionality working even on browser (just thinking out loud about DRM functionality possibilities) means Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS all work but everyone else is out of luck.
They will just make photos using their phones.
So from a employee POV it has its uses.
But people who will get in the same situation like me could simply use the camera on their phone pointed at the screen and be done with it, I guess.
Is this anti-competitive and anti-open-standards?
This stuff looks much more to me like "fuck the user" than anything else. I am 100% convinced there is a cult of evil bastards at Microsoft, et. al. that is hellbent on making everyone's UI/UX as janky as possible.
Streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus use these APIs to protect their content as well.
I use a setup like this frequently for work to demo our Android TV based apps with full content even though it all has DRM applied. Always leads to a "how did you get this footage" line of questioning for anyone who knows that we use DRM.
I think this because our company recently enforced a 2 year mail deletion policy on all mailboxes for "legal reasons." Which were "we don't want stuff to show up in discovery if we get sued."
It is essentially like a watermark in a PDF. It can be trivially defeated, but that isn't the point.
It offers no meaningful protection to the organization itself. Anyone who's willing to violate a company policy that says not to record and share information this will not stop them or slow them down in the slightest. So it offers no protection at all.
It is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand and thinking it's safe. you continuing to spout this nonsense I'm not sure which is worse this policy thinking it protects people or people who actually believes at this would protect people.
Not surprised at all that MS is doing this.
But if someone wants to take a screenshot, the "take a picture with your smartphone" exploit is already very obvious and commonly used, even by non-technical people. I know that confidential information is shared like this all the time, bypassing all security, and everyone turns a blind eye to it, because that's how they get the job done. I fully expect that if that feature is forcibly turned on, people will do it without giving a second thought.
And if you want to do it discreetly, just turn off your camera or cover it.
There are other ways of working around that, like using a video capture card, but why bother when you have a solution so obvious as taking pictures of the screen, even the article mentions it.
I assume there are provisions for the same thing in all the other supported systems. Everyone without such support will get no video on the affected meetings.
Blocking screen captures is an example of 'Security Theatre'
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/...
What a waste of developers resources.
Ah, basically DRM and Widevine L1 vs L3 for meetings, old story again.
I payed for my device, it is mine, it is up to me to decide whatever I'll do with it. It is my right under the private ownership definition. The current situation on modern devices, especially smartphones, is ridiculous and a complete distortion of rights that are fundamental even for the roots of capitalism.
Users should organize and, at the least, avoid using such services even if it means to lose some convenience. Losing my freedom is not a fair price to pay for such conveniences.
This is going to block a valid use of screen recording and I wonder if it would violate A.D.A. requirements
* paying for professional human captioning of the meetings you're in (automated captions are not accurate enough to be relied on) * the host using Teams' own recording system and providing only you with the recording, maybe only the audio
At least the article points out the reason that doing this is completely pointless
i don't see why would you want to enable this, unless you have BYOD allowed
Overwhelmingly, people who speak in favor of windows, grew up using it. It's like the indoctrination of any religous cult, it works best when you start young.
One has to wonder when the world will recover from windoze brain damage...
Heh; sister in grade school for her computer class was given a pamphlet where she and her classmates could learn how to become web surfers with IE, how to write a blog with WL Writer and how cool is SkyDrive for saving your files.
The resultant windoze brain damage is a co-mingling of "you don't know what you don't know", lack of awareness of just how varied computer interfaces could be, with the "child indoctrination" aspect that nothing else seems quite right when it's not what you were raised on.
After my first programming experiences, on a TRS-80 in the mall radio shack in the late '70s, I was exposed to a variety of user interfaces, but eventually became locked into windows myself, mostly from employer enforcement.
The thing that drove me away in the end was the way various settings were moved around with each new release, and the way my workflow had to constantly adapt to arbitrary changes in the user interface with each revision.
After exploring a wide variety of desktop environments, I've been on fluxbox window manager for many years now and I'm still quite satisfied. All of my configuration options are in my home directory, and my user interface experience is recreated without incident when updating, and even when moving to new h/w.
But the monoculture is wide spread, and continues to inhibit computer innovation outside of what will benefit the mothership...
The main vendor locking practice of M$, has been to cut deals w/ h/w makers to preinstall windoze on their new computers.
This caused many many more people to face childhood indoctrination into windoze than into macOS.
Tangentially, over many years apple was a less malicious company than M$, but that advantage has waned in recent years.
No, this isn't a "security" feature and it obviously can be easily circumvented. The reason this is useful is to make it extremely clear to participants that the contents should not be shared by them.