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This has been my objection to Microsoft's maze-like privacy policies for a long time. I once asked - on another forum and before the recent "AI" coding assista

This has been my objection to Microsoft's maze-like privacy policies for a long time. I once asked - on another forum and before the recent "AI" coding assistants were widely available - whether Microsoft's privacy policy allowed them to upload and do things with your own code if you used VS Code with telemetry enabled. At the time I was downvoted to invisibility and told I was being silly. But not one person showed me anywhere in Microsoft's terms or privacy policy wording that limited the scope of the data processing clearly and transparently to exclude that kind of thing. Today there's a bit of an obsession with training ML models using any large data set available and perhaps my caution from yesteryear wouldn't look so silly to the critics now.

dspillett 3y ago
> But not one person showed me anywhere in Microsoft's terms or privacy policy wording that limited These policies don't exist to tell you what they are limiting themselves to. These documents exist as a defence to use against you (because you agreed to the policy by continuing to use their services) if you try to stop them doing something. Unless for some reason there is commercial or legal advantage in saying “we will not to X”, a large company will never knowingly impose such limits on itself.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  Fortunately since I'm in the UK the legal position is rather more enlightened. The default is that any processing of personal data is not allowed and they have to justify it and explain their justification. Of course even if they flagrantly ignore the rules and carry on while treating any fines as a cost of doing business - which is hardly unusual in GDPR world for certain big tech companies - there is only so much you can do as one individual and you still need the regulators to step in and enforce the rules with meaningful sanctions.

dspillett 3y ago

> But not one person showed me anywhere in Microsoft's terms or privacy policy wording that limited These policies don't exist to tell you what they are limiting themselves to. These documents exist as a defence to use against you (because you agreed to the policy by continuing to use their services) if you try to stop them doing something. Unless for some reason there is commercial or legal advantage in saying “we will not to X”, a large company will never knowingly impose such limits on itself.

Silhouette 3y ago
Fortunately since I'm in the UK the legal position is rather more enlightened. The default is that any processing of personal data is not allowed and they have to justify it and explain their justification. Of course even if they flagrantly ignore the rules and carry on while treating any fines as a cost of doing business - which is hardly unusual in GDPR world for certain big tech companies - there is only so much you can do as one individual and you still need the regulators to step in and enforce the rules with meaningful sanctions.