The NSW education department was surprised when Microsoft started using the Teams Video Confartencing app to collect voice and facial biometric data from school students.

Late last year, Microsoft announced it would enable data collection by default, and began in March, a team feature called voice and facial admissions.

Voice and Face Registration in Teams Creates a sound and facial “profile” for each participant at a team meeting, which the company says will improve audio quality, reduce background noise and enable the software to tell who to speak at the meeting by recognizing their voices and faces.

The data can also be fed into Microsoft's large language model subtitles to improve the accuracy of transcription or abstract enabled in these meetings.

The NSW Department of Education website notes that the school uses teams as a “hub for teachers and students to engage, create, interact and collaborate”.

"It is a one-stop communications platform that combines chat, video conferencing/courses, file storage, allocation and multiple application integrations," the website notes.

The Guardian Australia can reveal that the department was arrested for a month when the team's voice and facial enrollment opened in March.

A spokesperson for the education department said: "A new Microsoft Teams feature allows voice and facial registration for people entering team meetings to be quickly disabled on our network and deletes any facial or voice recognition profiles created."

The feature was closed in April, and the configuration file was removed within 24 hours of the department, realizing that sound and facial registration were enabled.

The Education Department did not answer questions about the number of students or employees who collected biometric data at the available time or among affected persons.

One parent about warnings to Australia expressed concern that while the department assured them that deleted data and turned off the feature, other parents may not realize that it was collected first.

When registering a user, Microsoft retains a copy of the data and the user has the option to delete the configuration file at any time. If a user deletes their team account, Microsoft notes on its website that it deleted biometric data within 90 days.

Rys Farthing, director of policy and research at the research organization, described the collection of children's biometric data as "real concerns".

"The unnecessarily collected biometric data from young people, which raises real concerns - these students are now at risk for a lifetime," Farthing said.

“Are the data collected used to train its AI? We are sure it was not disclosed or shared when it exists, and all copies have been deleted? The data is like toothpaste and it is difficult to put it back into the tube.

“This just shows why we need stronger protection around children’s data, especially in preventing over-collecting. It’s worrying.”

Microsoft declined to comment.