Microsoft Makes Last Minutes Privacy Tweaks to the Fall Creators Update
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 13, 2017
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Following a set of largely meaningless privacy changes in the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft revealed today that it is making further tweaks in the Fall Creators Update.
“Continuing with our commitment to privacy and data control, today we’re announcing privacy enhancements coming to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update for consumers and commercial customers that further increase your access to information and provides you more control over what information is collected,” Microsoft’s Marisa Rogers writes.
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Consumers will see the following changes:
Privacy Statement in Setup. Now, when you are setting up a new computer or completing the upgrade to the Fall Creators Update, you will have direct access to Microsoft’s Privacy Statement.
Learn more about specific privacy settings in Setup. Also during Setup, you will see links to “Learn More” pages for specific privacy settings such as location, speech recognition, diagnostics, tailored experiences, and ads. “You no longer need to sift through the privacy statement if you only want to read about a specific feature, simply click the Learn More button for easy access,” Rogers explains.
App-level privacy controls. To date, Windows 10 apps that need to use your location information were forced to prompt you so that you can approve of this usage. With the Fall Creators Update, this is being extended to other device capabilities like access to your camera, microphone, contacts, calendar, and more. This is similar to how mobile devices already work.
Business customers will see the following additional change:
Diagnostic data limits. Enterprises can now limit the amount of diagnostic data that is transferred from PCs to Microsoft, to the minimum required by Windows Analytics.
Windows Insiders will get a first peek at these changes “in the coming weeks.” In the coming weeks? Guys, you only have weeks. 🙂