14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft rolled out a series of privacy improvements with the Windows 10 Creators Update back in April, trying to address criticism regarding the amount of data collected from systems running the operating system, and the company now says that feedback has been positive lately.
One such example of tweaked privacy settings concerns the telemetry data collection levels, with the Basic setting now retrieving only half the information that it did before the Creators Update.
Microsoft says that all these changes have been received with much enthusiasm by the Windows community, and what’s more, users running Windows 10 actually switch to the Full diagnostics level in order to let more data be collected and help the company improve the operating system.
“Since then, feedback we’ve received about the Creators Update has been positive. This is great news to us because what we hear from you directly impacts the improvements we make,” Marisa Rogers, Microsoft WDG Privacy Officer, explains. “71 percent of customers are selecting Full diagnostics data to help us fix things and improve Microsoft products.”
No more spying claims
Rogers also reveals that in addition to the privacy improvements included in Windows 10, users are also pleased with the new web-based privacy dashboard, which gives them easy access to the privacy settings of their accounts.
“We’ve also seen a positive reception to the web-based privacy dashboard which allows you to see and control your activity data across multiple Microsoft services. Announced back in January, the privacy dashboard has been visited by more than 23 million people on accounts.microsoft.com,” she explains.
Probably the more important thing for Microsoft is that the spying claims impacting Windows 10 are gone, as the operating system has been received with much criticism in the first months after launch.
At that point, users claimed Microsoft collected too much information from their computers and many turned to third-party software to block disable telemetry completely, with some discovering a number of data collection services still running despite the applied tweaks.