Microsoft
Ever since Microsoft released the Windows 10 operating system, privacy advocates and interested users are not tired of repeating, That the company should improve and clarify its privacy policy. To date, Microsoft has ignored these words, but the upcoming update for Windows 10 Creators Update has moved the matter off in some significant ways.
Finally, the company decided to explain how, where and when it collects data, how that information is used. The user who installs the Update Creators Update, available from April 11 or right now, will be able to use the privacy screen, where the current device settings for the key sections will be displayed.
Previous updates for Windows 10 did not prevent you from setting privacy options, but Microsoft Still decided to inform users themselves that they can change the settings they probably did not know about before the update.
The corporation also updated the agreement about Confidential Microsoft, where it determined as clearly as possible what data the system collects and under what circumstances. If the user selects the diagnostic data exchange permission level named “Basic”, the system will collect a limited set of information that is important for understanding the device and its configuration: basic information about the device and its compliance, compatibility with applications and Windows Store, as well as safety information. The base level helps to identify problems that may arise on a particular hardware or software device.
For example, it will help identify problems that can occur on devices with a certain volume Memory, or associated with a specific driver version. So Microsoft is going to fix problems with the operating system and applications.
A section of 30,000 words is also attached to Microsoft’s application which defines all the extensions, events and information that can be collected in this mode. This length of the list is due to the fact that Microsoft collects data very carefully. The published list includes various types of information: information about the name, version and build of the operating system, user ID, browser information, passwords. Now some of them can be turned off.
The information collected by the company within the framework of the basic settings is limited to general data about the state of the system, and not personal. The company has long been using tools that can reveal common problems and system errors: it became clear that 22% of the failures in Windows Vista were actually caused by Nvidia drivers errors.
Windows 10 Mobile users will also be able to configure key privacy parameters after updates. The only difference between the operation of the system on the mobile phone – the option “Personalized diagnostic data setting” will be disabled automatically for all clients and will not be displayed as an option on the privacy screen due to the limitation of the mobile platform.
The company has not yet published an exhaustive list The information that is collected when selecting the mode of exchange of diagnostic data “Full”, but it accurately determined what information is collected under different scenarios and under what circumstances elstvah is sent to Microsoft. Most of the data collected in full mode is still general information about the state of the system, but there are situations when personal information can fall into the company’s hands.
Disclosure of this kind of information is an important step towards solving the privacy issues that Windows users have been involved in for at least two years: confidentiality issues in Windows 10 were raised long before the actual launch of the OS. Microsoft’s privacy policy was also updated.
In future updates, Microsoft plans to develop a policy for receiving feedback from users about data collection and privacy settings. Over time, you will be able to access even more information, view and delete data that the company collects using the Microsoft Privacy Control Panel.
With the Creators Update, voice data will also be displayed in this panel, and users will be able to View the data processed by the Cortana Voice Assistant and send it to Microsoft.
The best way for Microsoft to deal with confidentiality issues is to allow users to completely abandon the collection of telemetry. Many users have not yet switched to the new system just because Microsoft does not accept this position.
Those users who still decide Go to this system or put it on a clean hard disk, during the installation they will be able to configure the switches and set the necessary parameters, including system access to the location of the device and speech recognition.
Microsoft can not completely stop sending data. The update of the Creators Update for Windows 10 officially goes out on April 11.
