Microsoft publishes details on Windows 10 data collection

The Windows 10 Creators Update coming on April 11 will bring with it a number of changes to privacy settings in Windows 10 and how it informs users what data it’s collecting on them. Microsoft has been criticized on multiple occasions for not having the option for users to completely opt out of its data collection system.

With the update, Microsoft aims to be more transparent about the data it’s collecting and what it’s used for. Windows chief Terry Myerson made a post on the company blog showing how they’re striving for greater transparency, starting by making descriptions of privacy settings more detailed and updating the Windows 10 privacy statement. “For the first time, we have published a complete list of the diagnostic data collected at the Basic level,” he wrote. “We are also providing a detailed summary of the data we collect from users at both Basic and Full levels of diagnostics.”

Another change coming in the update is that users will now only have two options for data sharing: basic and full. The basic setting will now send about half as much data back to Microsoft as it did previously, as Microsoft realized that they were collecting a lot of unnecessary data just for diagnostics. Microsoft does not give users the option to send back no data at all, saying that this could compromise users’ security.

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