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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The privacy implications of Windows 10 and its data collection have been a talking point since the operating system was released. And today, Microsoft published a response of sorts [arstechnica.com].

For the most part, the new blog post reiterates the company's (lengthy) privacy policy. Terry Myerson, leader of the Windows and Devices Group, describes three classes of data and describes Microsoft's approach to each.

First is the safety and reliability telemetry data, information about system and application crashes. Myerson says that this information should be anonymous; most of it has no personal information at all, and to the extent that personal information might be included (disclosed in, for example, file and directory names or fragments of memory included in crash reports), Microsoft tries to scrub all data that it receives.

The post also loosely describes why this information is useful: a third party graphics driver was recently found to be causing crashes. The telemetry data let Microsoft know that the crash was occurring and which driver was at fault, and it gave some hints as to what the bug was. Within 24 hours of finding the bug, a fix was rolled out to members of the Windows Insider program. Another 24 hours later and the fix was rolled out to all affected Windows users.

Microsoft has heard your privacy concerns...and chooses to ignore them.

Original Submission