Microsoft Office 365 New Privacy Policy Is a Win For Privacy Advocates

Microsoft's new Online Services Terms Ave been released, and they unambiguously commit that they will not use customer data for profiling or advertising purposes. Data will only be used for the following three purposes:

Delivering Services
Troubleshooting
Ongoing Service Improvements

This is a guaranteed level of privacy protection that privacy advocates have long demanded, and one which Google does not offer, even for G Suite customers.

Hopefully this will put pressure on Google to offer the same level of protection for all Google App users. It's ridiculous that my paid G Suite account terms can't guarantee that my information won't be used to create an advertising profile.

To read more:

Https://zdnet.com/article/microsofts...g-or-profiling

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

Great news. I am all in with Windows 10 here at my office and home. One Drive and Office 365 are very good products. Microsoft is seriously stepping up their game. A Surface Pro X or one of their foldable may be my next Tablet/laptop.

Originally Posted by bb10adopter111

Hopefully this will put pressure on Google to offer the same level of protection for all Google App users

I don't see how that could ever happen. Google is, after all, an advertising company which inherently means NO PRIVACY.

Originally Posted by brookie229

I don't see how that could ever happen. Google is, after all, an advertising company which inherently means NO PRIVACY.

I can see it if people are paying for the apps. There are still plenty of us out there that do not pay that they can make the money on.

Originally Posted by howarmat

I can see it if people are paying for the apps. There are still plenty of us out there that do not pay that they can make the money on.

True if the business model allows for paid apps but more and more we are seeing (at least the one's I'm interested in) no option for payment. This goes even for subscription options. I may be wrong, but my perception is that many apps want ads ONLY.

As it is now, very few people are willing to pay for an app or G Suite for that matter. I'm one of the few that will ALWAYS pay for a decent app if I can get away from ads.

Originally Posted by brookie229

I don't see how that could ever happen. Google is, after all, an advertising company which inherently means NO PRIVACY.

Yep, but they also want to offer business cloud services. Eventually they may have to truly segregate the data collected from free and paid services, but currently they aren't doing that. They protect the data in G Suite, but they still profile the users.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

Originally Posted by howarmat

I can see it if people are paying for the apps. There are still plenty of us out there that do not pay that they can make the money on.

We indirectly pay by buying an Android device. 🤔

ok the article seems to imply this is only applicable to online/cloud services?

If that's the case then big whoop... you're already paying MS directly anyway. what about Windows 10?

Originally Posted by kvndoom

ok the article seems to imply this is only applicable to online/cloud services?

If that's the case then big whoop... you're already paying MS directly anyway. what about Windows 10?

Windows 10 makes it incredibly easy to turn off all data collection. It's only over the Internet on other services that privacy becomes such a big issue.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

Originally Posted by bb10adopter111

Windows 10 makes it incredibly easy to turn off all data collection. It's only over the Internet on other services that privacy becomes such a big issue.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

I just switched from 7 right after christmas, so I'm still feeling it out. I just remember a lot of gnashing about Win10 telemetry, as well as ads popping up in Explorer and stuff like that. Not surprising as I consider Windows 10 the first "Freemium" OS. I'm still in the tweaking phase though.

Originally Posted by kvndoom

I just switched from 7 right after christmas, so I'm still feeling it out. I just remember a lot of gnashing about Win10 telemetry, as well as ads popping up in Explorer and stuff like that. Not surprising as I consider Windows 10 the first "Freemium" OS. I'm still in the tweaking phase though.

Yes. And it's a fair criticism of Microsoft that they moved in that direction. But they have responded to concerns by making it easier to turn off pretty much all of the telemetry as desired.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

Originally Posted by kvndoom

I just switched from 7 right after christmas, so I'm still feeling it out. I just remember a lot of gnashing about Win10 telemetry, as well as ads popping up in Explorer and stuff like that. Not surprising as I consider Windows 10 the first "Freemium" OS. I'm still in the tweaking phase though.

I've been using Win 10 since it released.

Yes, there are a lot of setting related to privacy, but they are mostly all in one place, and I turned everything off. Also turn off that internet sharing thing. There is still some telemetry that always goes back to MS, but then, Win 7 did too - it just wasn't a thing of concern before.

I've never seen any ads anywhere in all my time using Win 10 - other than the usual browser ads that stay within the browser. I use Firefox as my browser, and only the regular IE 11 for certain sites that requires it (our office timesheet/project schedule app only runs in the IE interface). I never used Edge. I do have an ad-blocker extension in Firefox, so even those are greatly reduced. I also only use the old Windows Media Player instead of whatever that Groove music app was supposed to be.

Then, I looked up how to manually uninstall all those excess apps that I'll never use, like 3D paint, Connect, Camera, Get Office, Get Skype, Contact Support, Maps, Money... I mean, why do I need a "Camera" app on my PC? Some things I kept, but most of those things were useless to me. Unfortunately, it requires the PowerShell window and a rather complicated command line entry, as they can't be uninstalled in the usual way. Fortunately, there are sites with a list of those apps, and you can copy/paste the line entry from the website page into the PowerShell window command line.

Originally Posted by kvndoom

I just switched from 7 right after christmas, so I'm still feeling it out. I just remember a lot of gnashing about Win10 telemetry, as well as ads popping up in Explorer and stuff like that. Not surprising as I consider Windows 10 the first "Freemium" OS. I'm still in the tweaking phase though.

One neat solution I found was O&O ShutUp10.... let's you disable much of the telemetry built into Windows 10.

A key difference is that Microsoft Windows Professional's core customer is business, and Microsoft knows that data privacy matters to that segment.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

Originally Posted by howarmat

I can see it if people are paying for the apps. There are still plenty of us out there that do not pay that they can make the money on.

Well like I always said: "nothing is free".

Originally Posted by bb10adopter111

Microsoft's new Online Services Terms Ave been released, and they unambiguously commit that they will not use customer data for profiling or advertising purposes. Data will only be used for the following three purposes:

Delivering Services
Troubleshooting
Ongoing Service Improvements

This is a guaranteed level of privacy protection that privacy advocates have long demanded, and one which Google does not offer, even for G Suite customers.

Hopefully this will put pressure on Google to offer the same level of protection for all Google App users. It's ridiculous that my paid G Suite account terms can't guarantee that my information won't be used to create an advertising profile.

To read more:

Https://zdnet.com/article/microsofts...g-or-profiling

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

Fantastic news indeed, the customer wins, I love what Satya is doing at MS, it’s a long way from the Balmer days [emoji1787]

At the same time, I hope MS realise they have just done to themselves what Apple did to itself with Siri, LOL! This is exactly what Google wanted, IMO, because their suite will look better in terms of customer experience and giving customers more relevant results in exchange for their data, this is how Google Assistant managed to leap frog Siri, by being incredibly invasive while Apple pulled back heavily on that.

I believe Google is gambling on the fact that the perceived majority of people don’t know/care much about their data, but it will be a terrible day for them when more people start caring, much like how climate change has become a more focused on issue in the last 2 years or so, and some car manufacturers have been caught slacking.

The good thing is that MS has an incredible grip on corporates with 365, so this could actually help them get more contracts. On the other end I believe Google are incredibly competitive for startups.

Originally Posted by Tsepz_GP

Fantastic news indeed, the customer wins, I love what Satya is doing at MS, it’s a long way from the Balmer days [emoji1787]

At the same time, I hope MS realise they have just done to themselves what Apple did to itself with Siri, LOL! This is exactly what Google wanted, IMO, because their suite will look better in terms of customer experience and giving customers more relevant results in exchange for their data, this is how Google Assistant managed to leap frog Siri, by being incredibly invasive while Apple pulled back heavily on that.

I believe Google is gambling on the fact that the perceived majority of people don’t know/care much about their data, but it will be a terrible day for them when more people start caring, much like how climate change has become a more focused on issue in the last 2 years or so, and some car manufacturers have been caught slacking.

The good thing is that MS has an incredible grip on corporates with 365, so this could actually help them get more contracts. On the other end I believe Google are incredibly competitive for startups.

Zoho is a better option for most start ups and SME's with good integration with G Suite, SalesForce, Microsoft/Office 365 and most cloud services.

Office/Microsoft 365 remains arguably the best.