Microsoft/privacy changes

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/t...g-and-use-of-data-from-web-products.html?_r=0

 

Interesting indeed. Something to be aware of (the move by both MS & GOOG) to have unified and ever growing control over the info about its free to use services.

 

Am I the only one who felt like there were contradicting statements about what they planned in that article? Either way, I'm not surprised. This is both just more movement towards "people being products" and the continuing obsession with knowing everything about our lives.

 

With all the new MS products and services being introduced and released, MS needs a new Legal lease on how many ways they will mine your data.

 

Another good reason for disabling Microsoft/Windows Update and updating manually when needed.

 

But it only (supposedly) applies to online products such as Outlook.com and other web-based services. So, turning off Windows Update does nothing to protect against the policy. Only switching to other web-based service providers will and, with Google your next major alternative and many other providers implementing similar policies, options are running low.

 

For mail & messenger you have enough alternatives. It sucks on search providers, but I think a macro can solve the problem. A macro full of crap search.

 

https://www.duckduckgo.com/ continues to be my home page.

 

If you put on your attorney hat and very carefully study such corporate policies, trying to determine the extent to which the legalese may bound the nearly unlimited technical possibilities, looking for things which aren't mentioned and vague phrases like "to improve our products and services" and other loopholes, you'll eventually realize that the policies allow for far more than what you thought they did after the first read. You must add to those conclusions the potential for future policy changes that apply in a retroactive fashion to whatever data and/or metadata the company has on you. The metadata part is critical to note, because even a "we discard the data our servers receive after X days" policy *does not prevent them from datamining that data and continuing to hold and expand a separate, detailed profile of you and your activity*. Do not make the mistake of thinking that corporate privacy, whatever policies offer you any protection. Don't design your computing patterns around the idea that a company will keep some information separate, will refrain from using it to acquire additional information, will refrain from building a profile of you, etc. Do try to identify every service and piece of software you use that sends information to the company and what that information could include. Those are the threats you need to address somehow.