European Watchdogs: Microsoft Sells User’s Personal Data To Third Parties, Collecting It Thru Windows 10 [REPORT]

Windows 10 privacy settings has earned negative feedbacks from privacy watchdogs such as European Union, Article 29 Working Party and others because of the alleged collection and processing of user's data. For this reason, Microsoft has been asked to provide explanation for the unprecedented amount of usage data in the absence of users' consent form. Read more!

Microsoft Allegedly Sells User's Personal Data To Third Parties

Windows 10 privacy settings has raised criticisms from the European watchdogs such as Article 29 Working Party because of Microsoft's excessive collection and processing of user's personal data. The EDRi European digital rights group presumed that the Windows-maker company is likely selling these data to third parties because of its broad exercise of their rights to collect whatever information the user has put into the device, Tech Crunch reported.

For this reason, Microsoft has done significant tweaking to Windows 10 privacy set-up through launching a web-based privacy dashboard that allows the users to amend privacy settings which refers to data collection including location, search, browsing, Cortana Notebook and other Microsoft service. However, the European watchdogs seem to be unimpressed and still show concern for the current set-up.

What The European Watchdogs Wants To Hear From Microsoft

Despite the changes done to Windows 10 privacy set-up, the European Watchdogs wants to clear out from Microsoft their purpose of collecting such data and what they are for. They added that failure to release such explanation, the said consent from the users is considered not valid, The Verge reported.

Aside from the Article 29 Working Party, Frances CNIL also wants Microsoft to address the following breaches: breach of cross-border data transfer restrictions, failure to file an authorization request for processing data for fraud prevention, absence of security protections for personal data, breaking the required cookie law, absence of notice for data transfers and data proportionality requirements.