Protecting privacy is a top priority at the University of Toronto. The following questions and answers explain U of T privacy practices, specifically with regard to Microsoft Teams.
The University of Toronto is a customer of Microsoft 365 and owns and controls University data and has reviewed protections for personal data. Microsoft provides assurances that it does not use personal data for anything other than providing users with the service that they are subscribed to. As a service provider, Microsoft does not scan email, documents, or Teams for advertising or for purposes that are not service-related. Microsoft does not have access to uploaded content.
Microsoft Teams is provided as part of Microsoft 365, and is protected by the same security standards as Microsoft 365. Details of security and compliance to standards are provided in Microsoft’s trust centre and have been reviewed by the University. Like OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, Teams customer data stays within the tenant. Teams enforces team-wide and organization-wide authentication through Active Directory, and encryption of data in transit and at rest. Files are stored in SharePoint and are backed by SharePoint encryption.
Microsoft provides a large number of controls that are customizable by U of T administrators and users. Some use cases are provided below. Please see additional support documentation in our Teams Support webpage
Channel owners can moderate a channel conversation and control who is, and is not, allowed to share content in channel conversations. This helps ensure only appropriate content is viewed by others. Please see additional support documentation in our Teams channel moderation webpage.
Yes, any user can edit or delete any message sent to a channel or a chat directly from the user interface. Please see additional support documentation in our Managing you Teams Experience PDF.
Yes, with meeting options, you can decide who from outside of U of T can join your meetings directly, and who should wait in the lobby for someone to let them in. Participants who join by phone will be joining via lobby. Meeting organizers can also remove participants during the meeting. For more information on controls, see this support document from Microsoft.
A meeting organizer can define roles in a Teams meeting that designate “presenters” and “attendees” and control which meeting participants are allowed to present content in the meeting. In the case of U of T, internal members (faculty, staff and students) are presenters by default. This can be adjusted to select specific people, or only the person setting up the meeting. For more information on controls see this support document from Microsoft.
Meeting recording access is limited to U of T attendees (faculty, staff and students) who are on the call. All recordings of meetings are accompanied by a notice to attendees that a recording is taking place. The notice also links to the privacy notice for online participants. Only faculty and staff have video upload permissions to Microsoft Stream. Videos may be shared and downloaded according to permissions enabled by account administrators.