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> Microsoft collects and stores personal data about the behavior of individual users I feel like this sentence is phrased maliciously. The adjective "personal
by cptskippy 8y ago
> Microsoft collects and stores personal data about the behavior of individual users
I feel like this sentence is phrased maliciously. The adjective "personal" is applied to the more generic term data, rather than the more specific term behavior.
By placing the adjective on data, it encourages the reader to imagine the worst possible scenario. By simply moving the adjective you can more accurately describe what Microsoft is doing and avoid allowing the reader's imagination to run wild.
> Microsoft collects and stores data about the personal behavior of individual users
You could also remove the adjective entirely because the term individual has the same implication. This makes it sound even more innocuous.
> Microsoft collects and stores data about the behavior of individual users
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoPersonally, I don't find any of your revised phrases to be less disconcerting at a gut level. "Personal data", "personal behavior", etc is all the same to me.
- cptskippy 8y agoPersonal data could be anything like your SSN, CC# or other secrets. Personal behavior is a more specific classification like "user scratches his butt every morning" or "user picks nose". In the context of Office Applications it's going to be even more specific things like "user always tries to click on URLs in emails before CTRL+clicking them."