As Microsoft announced last week, the Windows 10 Creators Update will start rolling out to users on April 11. As part of this update, the company is also making some changes to the privacy settings in Windows 10 and how it informs its users about the data it collects from them (because it doesn’t give them the option to completely opt out of its data collection system).
The overall theme here, Microsoft’s privacy officer for its Windows & Devices group Maris Rogers tells me, is to highlight the company’s commitment to its customers and to put them in control of their privacy and keep their devices secure.
So with this update, Microsoft is providing users with better transparency about which information it collects and how it’s used. This includes both an improved set of descriptions about each privacy setting and an updated privacy statement.
What’s maybe more important, though, is that Microsoft has pared down the data sharing options from three to two: basic and full. As Rogers told me, the basic level now sends about 50 percent less data back to Microsoft, largely because the company learned that it didn’t need quite as much data as it previously collected to get the diagnostics data it needed.
As you can see, though, there is still no “none” option here. “We feel it’s really important that users have this minimum level of security,” Rogers argues, but many users will surely probably argue that it’s perfectly possible to have a secure system that doesn’t regularly send usage data back to Microsoft. This has obviously been an issue since the launch of Windows 10 and it doesn’t look like Microsoft will back down anytime soon.