NSW education department caught unaware after Microsoft Teams began collecting students’ biometric data

Gathering of face and voice data went unnoticed for one month after it was automatically enabled for video conferencing app users in March

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The New South Wales education department was caught by surprise when Microsoft began collecting the voice and facial biometric data of school students using the Teams video conferencing app in March.

Late last year, Microsoft announced it would enable data collection by default, commencing in March, for a Teams feature known as voice and face enrolment.