Notes on Windows-10 Privacy Concerns

There were a whole lot of privacy debates and concerns when Microsoft had launched the technical preview some time back, but many people are even now concerned about privacy in Windows-10, especially those coming from Linux world where utmost privacy is taken for granted (there are some exceptions though, most notably the Ubuntu fiasco that happened in 2012 when Canonical did a nasty deal with Amazon and received community backlash for that).

Coming to Windows-10, its natural to have privacy concerns since its a closed-source black box and the OS source isn't available for the open source geeks to see. Since I wanted to try out Windows-10 technical preview (which is considered by many to be a "rolling release" distro equivalent in the Windows world specially made for testing), I had these concerns too.

The basic problem is lack of any specific information in this regard, nobody seems to know exactly what it is that Microsoft is collecting for analytics or whatever. Hence, people are usually concerned about things like their private pictures, videos, documents and other assets, lest they land in the hands of a shady third-party only remotely associated with Microsoft. My search lead me to this post and the Privacy Statement for Windows Technical Preview which clarifies some points in this regard. An answer in that post seems to suggest that the poster had called Microsoft Sales team regarding these exact concerns and they seem to suggest that only your name and other details which you've filled in the registration for technical preview are collected.

The Privacy Statement page answers this question very vaguely, but its understandable considering the complexity and integrity of their various apps and services:

Microsoft collects data from you, through our interactions with you and through our products. You provide some of this data directly, and we get some of it by collecting data about your interactions, use, and experiences with our products. The data we collect depends on the context of your interactions with Microsoft and the choices you make, including your privacy settings and the products and features you use. We also obtain data about you from third parties.  

Below that, there are some reasons and justifications given for the data collection too, but the most important and interesting part is this:

Access and clear some of your data through the Microsoft privacy dashboard.

I clicked on the linked privacy dashboard and sure enough, I saw all records regarding my Bing searches, Skype logins, Hotmail logins, etc. The important thing here is that I was able to see exactly what is being collected and I have the ability to clear that historical data and even stop the collection if I want to from that dashboard.

Microsoft Account Privacy Dashboard

The dashboard vaguely reminded me of Google's which also provides similar privacy controls. After looking at this, I feel that Microsoft is no different than Google or the tons of other companies that collect your data There is no need to be particularly paranoid about Microsoft. And to those insisting that Microsoft could still be stealthily collecting data without us knowing, they should know that the same could be said about any Linux Distro too. This reminds me of the famous quote by Mark Shuttleworth in 2012:

"Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already." - Mark Shuttleworth