Managing Your Privacy In Microsoft Teams

You can choose to manage your privacy within Microsoft Teams from your coworkers and external contacts.

Blocking People Or Numbers

One of the biggest requirements of normal users is to enable them to block communication with spam callers or abusive people.

To do this, you must use the calling app within Teams. From within this app you can directly block a number from your call history by clicking on the ellipsis (…) on the offending contact and clicking “Block”

Alternatively, if the number has not yet contacted you and you want to take proactive measures to prevent initial contact you can manually add a contact to your contacts list and block them from there.

Blocking only currently works for phone number based contacts. It is not yet possible to block people by name or e-mail address.

In addition, you can also choose to automatically block callers without a Caller ID. These are usually spam calls. To do this, go to Settings and Privacy. Then check the “Block Calls with no Caller ID” option.

From this same menu, you can manage your block list and unblock numbers if you wish.

Limiting Your Data Sharing With Microsoft

You can also take steps in limiting the amount of data you share with Microsoft. Using the Privacy settings within the App Settings menu you can choose to disable participation into the following program

Surveys – The default is ON. Set this to OFF if you do not want to be contacted by Microsoft to participate in surveys around Microsoft Teams

Limiting Your Data With 3rd Party Apps & Services

Microsoft Teams uses open source technologies and also cloud based services such as Giphy, Tenor and more. These 3rd Parties may collect information about your usage of products within their service. This would be a mandatory acceptance on usage of such products. If you do not wish for your data to be shared, you can turn off these features for yourself even if your company permits it.

Priority Access

When set into Do Not Disturb presence state, by default you are not notified of incoming chats and calls from anyone. You can choose to grant exceptions to a list of important people who may bypass this behaviour and notify you.

Under Privacy Settings, Do Not Disturb, click “Manage Priority Access” and search by name for the people you wish to add