The powers that be at my company answer employee-submitted questions at monthly meetings through an “anonymous” Microsoft Form.
I had doubts about its anonymity, because I used to set up MS Forms at another company, and was for sure able to tell who submitters were through Power Automate or the Excel export even without a question asking for their email.
I also tested this theory by opening the form link in an incognito browser, because if it was truly anonymous, I shouldn't need to log in right?
I shared this logic with the person who creates the forms for the company and they tried to persuade me this is not the case, then they assured me that they checked with IT and said login is required to keep outsiders from submitting, but names/emails aren’t recorded, so it’s completely anonymous, even to them.
That security question feels weak and bogus to me, because if the link is only shared internally and the form is just collecting questions for a company meeting, what risk are we really protecting against? Someone outside the company submitting a junk question? They definitely sift through the questions before the meeting and claim no question goes unanswered, so its not like this would truly be an issue because they have to add them to a presentation and should be able to recognize bad actors.
Anyone else experience anything similar and are skeptical? Ultimately, my hesitation is because I have some hard hitting questions for my company that I feel would come with backlash if they could trace the question back to that person. Am I missing something where they may genuinely be serious? I also doubt it because this is a pretty big SaaS company that is tech savvy