Location Privacy Setting for Teams is Now Separate to Windows

If you wonder why Teams has suddenly started to prompt for approval to use your precise location and location history when you sign into a client, the answer lies in message center notification MC993226 (last updated 7 March 2025). It’s all to do with an update to Microsoft privacy policies governing how apps can use location information. Microsoft refers to this as a “location consent experience” which applies to Windows (running version 24H2 or later) and Mac workstations, but not VDI clients.

Take the example shown in Figure 1. Teams knows that the location setting for the Windows PC permits location information to be shared with IT admins to help troubleshoot issues like network connectivity (Figure 2). Until the change became effective, Teams used the Windows setting, but now Teams has its setting to govern whether it can access location data.

VDI desktops obviously don’t support the same level of precision when it comes to location data, which is why they’re currently excluded from location privacy. For more information about how to manage location sharing in Teams, see the Microsoft support documentation.

Targeted release has started, and general availability is slated for deployment between late March and early April 2025. The update will be available in the commercial and government clouds. Microsoft notes that the new location privacy consent “does not apply to fully managed devices where users are restricted from user granted location access” and that current policies will continue working as before.

Location Privacy is a Per Tenant Choice

Teams displays the location notice for each tenant accessed during a client session. For instance, if you switch from your home tenant to a tenant where you’re a guest member, Teams displays the location notice again. The reason is that the location information gathered by Teams is provided on a tenant basis, so the notice acts as a prompt for the user to disable the information in the Privacy section of the Teams settings app (Figure 3).

Location Data for Teams

MC993226 says that Teams is specifically interested in the SSID and BSSID. The SSID (service set identifier or network name) is the identifier for a Wi-Fi network. The BSSID (Basic service set identifier) is the MAC address of the network access point or Wi-Fi router used by a device to connect to a network.

Teams uses this information for the Call Quality Dashboard to track call quality at the organization level. Knowing someone’s location is also critical for location-based call routing to work. The data is also used for dynamic emergency calling in Teams Phone to allow the location of emergency calls to be identified. If your organization doesn’t have a Teams Phone subscription and a calling plan, you won’t have access to emergency calling. On the surface, if you don’t use Teams Phone, it seems like you don’t need to worry about location privacy.

Microsoft hasn’t given a firm number for Teams Phone users since July 2021 when they said that 80 million people used Teams Phone. However, although Microsoft has been nudging customers to use Teams Phone for years, the reported number doesn’t say how many users have paid calling plans instead of just using Teams Phone for VOIP calls.

Location Privacy is Important

Obviously, Microsoft would like users to consent to sharing location data with Teams as otherwise features won’t work as designed. I don’t think that anyone will complain too much about location data being shared with Teams to measure the quality of calls or to know where someone is when they make an emergency call. Using location data for other purposes, such as knowing the hot desk that someone is working at might be another matter, which is why keeping an eye on location privacy is important.

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