No licensing details and customer content is collected

Feb 5, 2023 08:35 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has recently started the rollout of a mysterious update that some people were afraid to install. Update KB5021751, which went live in mid-January, was listed as aimed at Office 2007, Office 2010, and Office 2013 users.

Its role was simple, Microsoft said: KB5021751 was only supposed to help the company determine the number of users who are still running out-of-the-date Office versions, but at the same time, also identify the devices where editions of the productivity suite that would soon be retired are still installed.

“This update is intended to help Microsoft identify the number of users who are running out-of-support (or soon to be out-of-support) versions of Office, including Office 2013, Office 2010, and Office 2007. Versions of Office that are no longer supported do not receive security updates that provide the latest protections against known vulnerabilities. Also, unsupported versions might face performance and reliability issues over time,” Microsoft said.

Shipped via Windows Update for those users who enabled the option that allows them to “receive updates for other Microsoft products” (but only if the aforementioned Office versions are installed), KB5021751 was seen by some people as a way to collect data from users’ devices.

And that’s precisely the purpose of the update in the first place, only that no user content or files are collected. Microsoft just wants to look into diagnostic and performance data, the company says.

As noticed by BleepingComputer, Microsoft has recently updated the technical advisory to explain what data it’s looking for.

“This update gathers diagnostic and performance data to estimate the usage of installed Office versions to determine how best to support and service these systems. This data is gathered from registry entries and APIs. The update does not gather licensing details, customer content, or data about non-Microsoft products. Microsoft values, protects, and defends privacy,” the company says.

As such, the update will only run on the device once and then remove all its files.