Potential privacy violation microsoft teams

[ZanyPombear]

I volunteer online for an organisation, and they gave me a work email to login to the teams meetings. I use my personal laptop to do this. They explained that I can’t actually sign into an email with the email address and that it won’t link to my laptop, and that it isn’t for anything other than signing into the meetings. I didn’t get that in writing.
I have just realised that actually, it is signed in on my browser and everything I have been searching for and logging in to has been saved onto the work account. Not porn or anything like that, but still personal and private things. Can someone within the organisation view that? I feel like this is a huge violation of my privacy

What do you mean everything has been saved onto your work account? What's been saved exactly?

You're going to need to be a little clearer.

It sounds like you are accessing MS Teams from a browser rather than a local install, which fits with what they told you.

What doesn't fit is that everything you are searching is being logged into the work account, unless you are using the same account to log into the browser.

I can be logged into MS Teams on the browser but my Chrome for example is logged in with gmail account and so my browser history is being logged to that.

Are you logging into the browser with the work account as well?

I noticed that I’m signed into the Microsoft account on my browser in the top right so everything I’ve been searching for and all my logins and downloads will be saved to that account

Pink is browser account.

Purple is Teams account.

Well that's kind of your error to be aware of and fix.

What can I do? They told me it wouldn’t link and that it was only for signing into meetings

You should sign out of your Microsoft account on your browser. Yes they can potentially view everything you have searched for when logged into their account.

Is there a way to stop them from viewing it? This is awful

They have no reason to search your browsing history. Is the email login assigned only to you? Can you simply clear your history? If you are a volunteer, I am imagining it is not a secret service organisation who would be checking your history. If you have been doing something like googling your service users or something else that is against the volunteering rules... then maybe stop... but based on what you have said here.. I don't think you have any cause for concern.

Can they see your search history - probably yes
Are they likely to look at your search history - probably not
Whose responsibility is it to sign out of a work account when using it for non-work use - yours
Are they violating your privacy - no, if you choose to use a work account then you abide by work rules which may include their looking at your activity
Are you in breach of work rules - possibly yes, it is likely that their rules will prohibit your personal use of a work account

solution - log out

Nobody us likely to look. I wouldn't be worried about this ... unless I'd been doing something dodgy or illegal. Have you?

OP, they are highly, highly unlikely to bother looking. And also, only a very certain, set few would actually have that access. Usually usage is only reviewed when issues are being investigated, such as performance.

The onus was on you to understand what you were doing on a technical level, not on them to tell you.

Ensure you use a private login on your browser going forward.

Which browser?

If it's Chrome then look in the top right, there's a avatar/icon that indicates which user account is logged in. Click on it, change to your personal profile.

This is not an invasion of privacy it's what IT professionals call a PEBKAC error. You're just not familiar with user accounts, and don't know to check which you're using and when to switch it.

It's a minor error on your own part. It's true they'd have no reason to view your browsing. The computer belongs to you personally.
Even when I was at work, the IT guy could pull up everyone's browsing history if he wanted to. Obviously porn etc was blocked. But he wouldn't be arsed quite frankly. Even if it was happening on their machine in their time most firms would not feel the need to do this.
Unless you were under suspicion for something.

..

Yes.

There are lots of different browser softwares.
There is nothing stopping you having 2 or more.
The different browsers do not share information.

Simply use one browser e.g. MS Edge solely for your work for this organisation and do not use it for anything else.

In the other browser where you do all your personal browsing, log out of that organisation's account and create a different login which is separate from that work.

I do not think the organisation gets sight of any of this data, but if you want to be cautious it's very easy for you to separate out your different activities like this.