In a blog post attributed to Windows and Devices chief Terry Myerson and Marisa Rogers, the group’s privacy officer, the Redmond company said a coming update to the operating system would include more information on its data collection and privacy practices. That includes, for the first time, a detailed listing of the data the company collects by default from users.
“Our hope is this information will help you be more informed about the data we collect and use, enabling you to make informed choices,” the blog post said.
In February, an EU data-protection group, the Article 29 Working Party, said it “remains concerned about the level of protection of users’ personal data” after the company previously added to its Windows disclosures.
At the time, Microsoft offered its users options to send the company “basic” or “full” usage details (which the company said is made anonymous), without specifying what those designations mean, the group said. Such disclosures would likely fall short of EU guidelines that software users need to be adequately informed to make decisions about giving their data to companies.
Microsoft remedied a part of that on Wednesday in a blog post on its site for information-technology workers, revealing the type of data collected under each setting, from the broad (operating-system type and device specifications), to the specific (text typed in the search bar of Microsoft’s web browsers).
©2017 The Seattle Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
