For the most part Windows 10 has been a raging success, gathering positive reviews from the whole gamut of tech media right from the start. Only when it seemed to come to light that a FREE version of the software allegedly meant that pretty much your entire personal information was going to be collected and nefariously sold off; or perhaps forwarded to a cynical and zealous government organization that wants to spy on you without constitutionally approved probable cause; or even that your emails will be scanned by the omnipresent eye of Windows 10 so that your chats with friends about craft beer and Madame Bovary become the sustenance of insatiable advertisers, did people start to wonder if number 10 wasn’t a little shifty.

Some of the defaults in Windows 10 can of course be turned off, but as we all learned, that in itself could take some effort. We should remember that Windows 10 is free, and as technologist and tech guru (now a scientist at Microsoft) Jaron Lanier said, nothing is really free.

Surprisingly, given the ubiquitous Microsoft is Spying on You headline was printed in pretty much the world’s most respected, and less respected but widest read news media, Microsoft did not respond. Not until now.

In answer to the criticism, some of which a minority of tech critics have now said was a little harsh, Microsoft opened:

“In today’s connected world, maintaining our privacy is an incredibly important topic to each of us, thus we welcome the questions and the feedback we’ve received since launching Windows 10.”

The company goes on to say that, “Trust is the core pillar of our More Personal Computing vision.” This sounds a little like Mark Zuckerberg telling us that connecting the world, peace and prosperity is Facebook’s vision. Profit is the core pillar of any tech business and its relationship with its consumers; trust is just a means to improve it. But anyway…

Microsoft adds:

1. Windows 10 collects information so the product will work better for you.
2. You are in control with the ability to determine what information is collected.
3. With Windows 10, information we collect is encrypted in transit to our servers, and then stored in secure facilities. We think of the data we do and don’t collect at 3 levels.

Those levels, that include ‘Safety and Reliability Data’; ‘Personalization Data’; ‘Advertising Data We Don’t Collect’, are explained in detail by Microsoft’s Executive vice president Terry Myerson, the new boss of the Windows and Devices Group.

Much of the concern about the settings and Microsoft’s Windows 10 ‘spying’ relates to ads. Was Microsoft really going to take information from your personal email messages and sell it on? Was your every move going to become someone’s fortune?

This is Microsoft’s response, along with many other responses to what some people have called Windows 10 paranoia:

“We don’t use what you say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail, or your documents, photos or other personal files to choose which ads to show you…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.”
Kudos to Microsoft for clearing some things up. Redmond has supplied some information as to how change their settings here. It may sound a little skeptical, but such explanations and easy-to-follow settings preferences should have come out right at the time of the launch. I guess the folks at Microsoft have been busy…

Photo credit: Didier Baertschiger via Flickr