Hints or proof of recording Microsoft Teams meeting without permission

[KostasD]

Hi all,

I need your expert advice on this. I am a member of a charity group which has monthly meetings held over Microsoft Teams. The other day we saw and got a snapshot of it (thankfully) where one of the participant's window displayed the OBS logo as below. When asked, he replied that he was not recording us and that OBS was installed by his son for video editing purposes? He went to say that his assumption was that OBS got integrated with MS Teams along with other applications like Skype and Zoom installed on his PC.

Since we are all true open-source people and we believe that with this great gift that open source provides us there is also great responsibility, I would like to ask the community here:
1. on which occasions would we normally expect the OBS logo to appear as below?
2. does OBS integrate with video applications automatically or do we actively and purposely have to configure these video apps such as MS Teams for OBS to integrate with?
3. looking at the snapshot below, can we assume or be certain that the guy was recording the meeting or does he tell the truth?

 

[PaiSand]

OBS isn't a video editing software, just compositing and recording.
You can't know if it was recording or not.
What you see in the image it's an OBS plugin Virtual Cam which pass thru a webcam video feed so you can use it within OBS and other software at the same time, but the webcam isn't started so the OBS logo.
You have to manually select this virtual cam in the programs you want it to show the webcam.

 

[KostasD]

Thank you for the reply. So for the OBS logo to appear on MS Teams, does it mean that the user has configured MS Teams to enable OBS? What I am looking for here is to establish if this logo appears after the user has actively configured MS Teams with OBS or if the OBS plugin is auto-enabled in Teams with the camera switched off?

 

[koala]

OBS comes with a virtual webcam. Instead of recording stuff, you can order OBS to output its sources to the virtual webcam. For conferencing, this functionality is usually used to change or bautify your real webcam (real Webcam -> OBS -> virtual OBS webcam -> Teams) as well as to composite some presentation within OBS, then send this presentation view to Teams.

Seeing this picture on your screenshot only means OBS has been installed on that machine and its virtual webcam is currently switched off. That's all. If there is a real webcam on this machine as well, there are now 2 webcams the user can choose from, and the user seems to have chosen the OBS one. Or Teams chose it itself automatically, because perhaps the OBS webcam has been installed last.

 

[KostasD]

Thank you! It doesn't look like Teams selects the last installed webcam, I tried it with mine and Teams just sticks to the webcam it was originally configured. User has to actively select the OBS webcam. Bearing in mind this logo appeared during the discussion a couple of times, judging from the responses it makes me think that the user had actively selected the virtual cam for sure. Whether record was pressed or not we will never find out I guess!

 

[TryHD]

Thank you! It doesn't look like Teams selects the last installed webcam, I tried it with mine and Teams just sticks to the webcam it was originally configured. User has to actively select the OBS webcam. Bearing in mind this logo appeared during the discussion a couple of times, judging from the responses it makes me think that the user had actively selected the virtual cam for sure. Whether record was pressed or not we will never find out I guess!

Even if recording would be pressed nothing beside the person that pressed recording would be recorded because you would see the meeting as his webcam else, so it is pretty unlikely that the person did record the meeting.

 

[AaronD]

Even if recording would be pressed nothing beside the person that pressed recording would be recorded because you would see the meeting as his webcam else, so it is pretty unlikely that the person did record the meeting.

Playing "devil's advocate" here: it's possible to Window Capture or Screen Capture a specific window or screen in OBS. (even if the selected window is not on top) So it's possible that they were doing that with their copy of the meeting window or the screen that it was shown on.

All we know is that their virtual camera (one specific video output from OBS) was turned off. Nothing more.

It's *possible* that they didn't understand the entire system, didn't think things through, and wanted to record without their "camera" going on a drug trip like it does when you feed it its own signal. So they turned off the feed to the meeting, and that's what it shows. But we don't actually KNOW that that's what happened. It's just speculation that may not be true.

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It's easy to make OBS completely invisible to the meeting. Essentially, always have the virtual cam on, and always have OBS show the real webcam. Or, feed the meeting directly from the webcam, and use OBS to record the meeting window. That's also invisible. No one else would have any indication of anything different, and so probably wouldn't think to ask.

You can even do both at the same time, using multiple instances of OBS on the same machine, started from the command line (or terminal, or a modified shortcut, or script, or whatever) with the --multi flag. Run `obs --help` in a terminal to see a list of what all you can do there.

I do exactly that with a meeting that I host: a script starts two instances of OBS with different settings, one to feed the meeting like a regular live broadcast, and the other to record the meeting window. When the meeting is done, I put the recording on YouTube, unlisted, and send the YT link to the group. I even have some automation set up so that I only have to think about the "live broadcast" instance, and the recording instance just follows automatically so that it comes out nice too. If I were to keep the "broadcast" instance on the camera for the entire time, no one would know the difference except for the e-mail that I send later, with the link in it.