5 ms·

> This isn't some nefarious plot by big tech to steal your data It is though. They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no acce

> This isn't some nefarious plot by big tech to steal your data It is though. They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. If that was a priority to solve, it would be solved. > it's the product people want. These two things are not mutually exclusive. Despite which, this is not true. There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore, or of the Adobe Creative Suite. This stuff has been forced on us, often by work, and then the other options were removed. Hence the nefarious plot thing.

dayvid 4y ago
To my knowledge, they make money off of selling SAAS software here and not ads. It being cloud based is done to get recurring revenue. Office and Photoshop hit a point where it will satisfy vast majority of customer needs a while back. That's when the recurring payment model was put in place. To deal with piracy and paid customers not updating their software for years.
- boringg 4y ago
  That might be the case now but who knows where the future takes them. A smart legal council once told me even though you have a great relationship with the organization right now the contract you sign is binding and when ownership changes and revenues needs are different you really don't know who you are up against and what they will do with your data. Not that we have any real power except to try and use another product...
  - dayvid 4y ago
    A lot of their money is from enterprise contracts. These businesses have strict privacy requirements and would immediately end their Microsoft contracts or sue the company is they were monetizing their data. Let alone businesses with regulated privacy laws like medical or fintech. No business would touch them with a 10 foot pole. For Windows Home or other free/bundle solutions, it's a different situation. But not for enterprise or pro/higher-tier customers.
- kornhole 4y ago
  MS is a big ad player now. They have the ad contract with Netflix and are growing the business. Advertising is not the only use of this data. MS also makes billions from service contracts with the DOD. The services sold are not detailed or disclosed to the public.
huslage 4y ago
> They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. That is exactly what Google and Microsoft do with their enterprise products (free or not). They don't crawl your data at all.
- baxuz 4y ago
  > They don't crawl your data at all. This is impossible to prove.
  - sz4kerto 4y ago
    Law often doesn't need 'proofs', it's enough to state that they don't.
  - mrspuratic 4y ago
    But they do. Viva and Cortana read my O365 hosted work email (and I believe other data, including Sharepoint files) to provide a "daily briefing" email which picks up topics and queries from recent emails and foist some primitive organisational methods. AFAICT this is a service that has been subscribed to over and above any vanilla O365, but I'm not interested in the legal osculum infame. Both I and the data are in the EU, so they have to appear to play by those rules.
    - kornhole 4y ago
      These daily briefing emails I get at work remind me that "We are watching you." I complain about this to our security team and ask why they let Microsoft read our emails. They do not give me much of a response. I assume they get something out of the bargain.
    - someguydave 4y ago
      It is possible that microsoft segregates the processing state of Viva and Cortana such that no human outside your organization has access to the data without accessing the permission-controlled keys. Yes, ultimately Microsoft holds the keys to your encrypted data at rest but billions of dollars are riding on them managing customer keys well. In fact, Microsoft makes that claim about Viva Topics https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/m365-dr-commitments?view=o365-worldwide#viva-connections https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/m... “Machine Learning ("ML") models are trained on public web data, and as such do not contain any customer data from your tenant. In the future it's possible we will use customer data to improve accuracy of the ML models, in which case the data handling of ML models will follow the same policies as any other customer content (including data residency, retention, access control, sensitivity).”
catach 4y ago
> There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore That's thankfully not true. For example: https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/CFQ7TTC0HHJ9 https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-profe...
kryogen1c 4y ago
> There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore This is wrong. https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-home-student-2021/CFQ7TTC0H8N8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-home-... Additionally, if you're a business There are various non-cloud volume licensing options available.
- galleywest200 4y ago
  See the price difference though. $140 for this version of Office, up front, against Office 365 for 6.99/mo. Most people will pick the latter for cost. It would take a full two years of payments for O365 to equate the price.
  - maximus-decimus 4y ago
    But that's the thing, at 6.99 you're also paying with your data. What you're really saying is you want it for free. Also, 2 years to make back the cost really isn't that bad. I have a 2007 Office dvd and it still works fine on W10, so if you keep this new version of office for 16 years, you made back your money 8 times over.
Joeri 4y ago
They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. If that was a priority to solve, it would be solved. If you’re thinking of end to end encryption, that doesn’t discharge from GDPR. When person-related data is processed outside of the EU, even just to store encrypted bits, it must comply with all aspects of GDPR. The genie is out of the bottle, cloud cooperation is a given for modern software. The question has moved on to how to regulate those clouds in ways that prevent the harmful sides. GDPR is one attempt to do that.

dayvid 4y ago

To my knowledge, they make money off of selling SAAS software here and not ads. It being cloud based is done to get recurring revenue. Office and Photoshop hit a point where it will satisfy vast majority of customer needs a while back. That's when the recurring payment model was put in place. To deal with piracy and paid customers not updating their software for years.

boringg 4y ago
That might be the case now but who knows where the future takes them. A smart legal council once told me even though you have a great relationship with the organization right now the contract you sign is binding and when ownership changes and revenues needs are different you really don't know who you are up against and what they will do with your data. Not that we have any real power except to try and use another product...
- dayvid 4y ago
  A lot of their money is from enterprise contracts. These businesses have strict privacy requirements and would immediately end their Microsoft contracts or sue the company is they were monetizing their data. Let alone businesses with regulated privacy laws like medical or fintech. No business would touch them with a 10 foot pole. For Windows Home or other free/bundle solutions, it's a different situation. But not for enterprise or pro/higher-tier customers.
kornhole 4y ago
MS is a big ad player now. They have the ad contract with Netflix and are growing the business. Advertising is not the only use of this data. MS also makes billions from service contracts with the DOD. The services sold are not detailed or disclosed to the public.

huslage 4y ago

> They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. That is exactly what Google and Microsoft do with their enterprise products (free or not). They don't crawl your data at all.

baxuz 4y ago
> They don't crawl your data at all. This is impossible to prove.
- sz4kerto 4y ago
  Law often doesn't need 'proofs', it's enough to state that they don't.
- mrspuratic 4y ago
  But they do. Viva and Cortana read my O365 hosted work email (and I believe other data, including Sharepoint files) to provide a "daily briefing" email which picks up topics and queries from recent emails and foist some primitive organisational methods. AFAICT this is a service that has been subscribed to over and above any vanilla O365, but I'm not interested in the legal osculum infame. Both I and the data are in the EU, so they have to appear to play by those rules.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    These daily briefing emails I get at work remind me that "We are watching you." I complain about this to our security team and ask why they let Microsoft read our emails. They do not give me much of a response. I assume they get something out of the bargain.
  - someguydave 4y ago
    It is possible that microsoft segregates the processing state of Viva and Cortana such that no human outside your organization has access to the data without accessing the permission-controlled keys. Yes, ultimately Microsoft holds the keys to your encrypted data at rest but billions of dollars are riding on them managing customer keys well. In fact, Microsoft makes that claim about Viva Topics https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/m365-dr-commitments?view=o365-worldwide#viva-connections https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/m... “Machine Learning ("ML") models are trained on public web data, and as such do not contain any customer data from your tenant. In the future it's possible we will use customer data to improve accuracy of the ML models, in which case the data handling of ML models will follow the same policies as any other customer content (including data residency, retention, access control, sensitivity).”

catach 4y ago

> There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore That's thankfully not true. For example: https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/CFQ7TTC0HHJ9 https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-profe...

kryogen1c 4y ago

> There are no non cloud options if MS Office anymore This is wrong. https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-home-student-2021/CFQ7TTC0H8N8?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/p/office-home-... Additionally, if you're a business There are various non-cloud volume licensing options available.

galleywest200 4y ago
See the price difference though. $140 for this version of Office, up front, against Office 365 for 6.99/mo. Most people will pick the latter for cost. It would take a full two years of payments for O365 to equate the price.
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  But that's the thing, at 6.99 you're also paying with your data. What you're really saying is you want it for free. Also, 2 years to make back the cost really isn't that bad. I have a 2007 Office dvd and it still works fine on W10, so if you keep this new version of office for 16 years, you made back your money 8 times over.

Joeri 4y ago

They could design it in a way that it operates on your data but they have no access to the data outside of these strictly defined operations. If that was a priority to solve, it would be solved. If you’re thinking of end to end encryption, that doesn’t discharge from GDPR. When person-related data is processed outside of the EU, even just to store encrypted bits, it must comply with all aspects of GDPR. The genie is out of the bottle, cloud cooperation is a given for modern software. The question has moved on to how to regulate those clouds in ways that prevent the harmful sides. GDPR is one attempt to do that.