This week Microsoft officially addressed the wide range of privacy concerns that have been reported regarding large-scale data collection in Windows 10. Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, posted to the official blog and reiterated the company’s commitment to listening to customer feedback regarding privacy concerns: 

“…we welcome the questions and the feedback we’ve received since launching Windows 10.”

“We look forward to the next round of questions and feedback on these new posts.”

“Listening to your feedback has been the foundation of Windows 10…”

“We really appreciate the rich dialogue in making Windows 10 better…”

The sentiment of respecting customer feedback was at odds with the blog post itself having had the user comments disabled. Additionally, the post often refers to the feedback from the Windows Insider Program, a Microsoft initiative catering to fans of the Windows operating system who have access to insider previews of upcoming versions and upgrades. Since members of the Windows Insiders program are likely to be fans of the company and its operating system, their privacy concerns are probably not as pointed as those of casual users or those hesitating to adopt the new operating system. 

Myerson offers only scant references to the problematic telemetry features of the new operating system. Telemetry refers to the remote measurements taken from user machines and transmitted to Microsoft. The Windows 10 Privacy Policy identifies some of the data the operating system collects: phone numbers, credit card details, GPS location, file history and SMS information. These default settings allow Microsoft to collect this information and to share parts of it with advertising partners. Myerson only mentions the positive, functional aspect of such telemetry through an example: “aggregate data showed us that a particular version of a graphics driver was crashing on some Windows 10 PCs, which then caused a reboot…We immediately contacted the partner who builds the driver and worked with them to turn around a fix to Windows Insiders within 24 hours. We used the data on Insiders’ devices to confirm that the problem was resolved, and then rolled out the fix to the broad public via an update the next day.”

Myerson also used the opportunity to make an indirect reference to his competitors, in all likeliness Google’s collection of email data from Gmail to offer targeted advertising: “Unlike some other platforms, no matter what privacy options you choose, neither Windows 10 nor any other Microsoft software scans the content of your email or other communications, or your files, in order to deliver targeted advertising to you.” He also failed to acknowledge that, even with all privacy settings optimized, Windows 10 still sends information to Microsoft’s servers as soon as the user clicks the Start menu.