3 ms·

I'm a little late to this party, but I couldn't agree more (except that I'm in the fortunate position of making decisions about my businesses, so we can decide

I'm a little late to this party, but I couldn't agree more (except that I'm in the fortunate position of making decisions about my businesses, so we can decide not to use Windows 10 at all for much the same reasons). We also don't use VS Code at all, for one simple reason: we tried to determine what the privacy policy actually was, and we couldn't. In particular, there appeared to be wording among the various indirectly linked documents that implied Microsoft might at some point upload our source code without our knowledge or consent, with no guarantees and nothing to indicate how it would or might then be used. Combine that with an organisation that has a recent deliberate strategy of pushing updates whether wanted or not, collecting data whether volunteered or not, and attempting to coerce or deceive users into accepting those things whether it's in their interest to do so or not, and unfortunately while certain people who work for Microsoft and comment here may have no ill intent, it simply isn't safe to trust the company as a whole with the same benefit of the doubt.

TheIronYuppie 8y ago
Good news! The privacy policy is specifically listed in our FAQ on our website - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ We _only_ collect telemetry data. NEVER user data. And you can opt out! (it's right there during set up - or you can go here - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-di...). Again, to reiterate, we would never collect data if you didn't consent. It's the law!
- Silhouette 8y ago
  Good news! The privacy policy is specifically listed in our FAQ on our website Unfortunately, if you go down that rabbit hole (which we did before) it follows various redirect links and ends up at https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement, which is a generic document that changes frequently and includes by reference ambiguous additional product-specific documents that may or may not exist. What you need here is an absolutely clear, unambiguous statement to the effect that you will never under any circumstances upload our source code or other proprietary data to any external system without our explicit opt-in. It's really that simple. Otherwise, I'm afraid those of us working under commercial confidentiality agreements or other legal controls are just going to run away. Again, to reiterate, we would never collect data if you didn't consent. It's the law! Perhaps you could explain to me how to turn off the telemetry in Windows 10 then? Or for that matter how consent was obtained for the telemetry that was silently added to earlier Windows versions after release by anyone who installed Microsoft's recommended updates? I appreciate that your personal intentions may be honest and good here, but the simple fact is that your organisation has a very clear, very bad track record at this in recent years, and its senior leadership has not only been entirely unretentant about that policy despite widespread criticism but actively doubled down on it. Anything Microsoft does will naturally be contaminated by that history now, unless as a minimum it makes a clear, legally actionable statement and/or imposes verifiable technical measures to guarantee different behaviour.
  - TheIronYuppie 8y ago
    From the linked FAQ: VS Code collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. If you don't wish to send usage data to Microsoft, you can set the telemetry.enableTelemetry setting to false. From File > Preferences > Settings (macOS: Code > Preferences > Settings), search for telemetry.enableTelemetry and uncheck the setting. This will silence all telemetry events from VS Code going forward. Telemetry information may have been collected and sent up until the point when you disable the setting. That's ALL telemetry. So, the second you don't actively opt-in, we collect no telemetry data in VS Code AT ALL. You'll also want to disable crash reporting: VS Code collects data about any crashes that occur and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. If you don't wish to send crash data to Microsoft, you can set the telemetry.enableCrashReporter setting to false. It's that simple. Absolutely nothing - and CERTAINLY no user code (which we never collected in the first place.
    - Silhouette 8y ago
      Thank you for the further response. I'm not sure whether this is your area at work or you're just trying to help here, but as further feedback in return, that reads like an opt-out scheme to me. I'm also immediately struck that this relies on a setting (which Microsoft products have a history of changing when installing later updates) and that we still haven't resolved whether VS Code has its own separate privacy policy (which is mentioned as a possibility in the generic Microsoft privacy statement we were discussing before, without any specific indication of how to determine the answer definitively or where it would be found if it exists). So again, while I appreciate that individuals involved may have honest intentions and be trying to help here, this is still a very long way from the kind of clear, unambiguous official statement that would make me trust any Microsoft product enough to use it in the current data-harvesting, forced-updates climate. I have specific legal obligations to clients when dealing with their source code and the proprietary knowledge implicit within it, and there's no way I can take this sort of documentation to my lawyer and say "Can I use this?".

TheIronYuppie 8y ago

Good news! The privacy policy is specifically listed in our FAQ on our website - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ We _only_ collect telemetry data. NEVER user data. And you can opt out! (it's right there during set up - or you can go here - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-disable-telemetry-reporting https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-di...). Again, to reiterate, we would never collect data if you didn't consent. It's the law!

Silhouette 8y ago
Good news! The privacy policy is specifically listed in our FAQ on our website Unfortunately, if you go down that rabbit hole (which we did before) it follows various redirect links and ends up at https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement, which is a generic document that changes frequently and includes by reference ambiguous additional product-specific documents that may or may not exist. What you need here is an absolutely clear, unambiguous statement to the effect that you will never under any circumstances upload our source code or other proprietary data to any external system without our explicit opt-in. It's really that simple. Otherwise, I'm afraid those of us working under commercial confidentiality agreements or other legal controls are just going to run away. Again, to reiterate, we would never collect data if you didn't consent. It's the law! Perhaps you could explain to me how to turn off the telemetry in Windows 10 then? Or for that matter how consent was obtained for the telemetry that was silently added to earlier Windows versions after release by anyone who installed Microsoft's recommended updates? I appreciate that your personal intentions may be honest and good here, but the simple fact is that your organisation has a very clear, very bad track record at this in recent years, and its senior leadership has not only been entirely unretentant about that policy despite widespread criticism but actively doubled down on it. Anything Microsoft does will naturally be contaminated by that history now, unless as a minimum it makes a clear, legally actionable statement and/or imposes verifiable technical measures to guarantee different behaviour.
- TheIronYuppie 8y ago
  From the linked FAQ: VS Code collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. If you don't wish to send usage data to Microsoft, you can set the telemetry.enableTelemetry setting to false. From File > Preferences > Settings (macOS: Code > Preferences > Settings), search for telemetry.enableTelemetry and uncheck the setting. This will silence all telemetry events from VS Code going forward. Telemetry information may have been collected and sent up until the point when you disable the setting. That's ALL telemetry. So, the second you don't actively opt-in, we collect no telemetry data in VS Code AT ALL. You'll also want to disable crash reporting: VS Code collects data about any crashes that occur and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. If you don't wish to send crash data to Microsoft, you can set the telemetry.enableCrashReporter setting to false. It's that simple. Absolutely nothing - and CERTAINLY no user code (which we never collected in the first place.
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    Thank you for the further response. I'm not sure whether this is your area at work or you're just trying to help here, but as further feedback in return, that reads like an opt-out scheme to me. I'm also immediately struck that this relies on a setting (which Microsoft products have a history of changing when installing later updates) and that we still haven't resolved whether VS Code has its own separate privacy policy (which is mentioned as a possibility in the generic Microsoft privacy statement we were discussing before, without any specific indication of how to determine the answer definitively or where it would be found if it exists). So again, while I appreciate that individuals involved may have honest intentions and be trying to help here, this is still a very long way from the kind of clear, unambiguous official statement that would make me trust any Microsoft product enough to use it in the current data-harvesting, forced-updates climate. I have specific legal obligations to clients when dealing with their source code and the proprietary knowledge implicit within it, and there's no way I can take this sort of documentation to my lawyer and say "Can I use this?".