Is my Microsoft Account gathering information on me...?

[Jcmg62]

Hey all

A lot of my posts recently have been about Cortana....I'm pretty psyched about this feature coming to the WP platform and really hope that it'll set a new standard in personal assistant technology

My question here ties into Cortana but has more to do with our Microsoft Accounts (I'm assuming the vast majority of WP users have MS Accounts).

Lately there have been a number of Bing apps that have asked for MS Account login permissions (Bing Health, Food & Drink & Travel). I'm pretty sure there are other apps that require MS Account logins to function properly. OneDrive definitely does, I can't remember if there are others....

As far as I can see from the many, many leaks, Cortana will also require a login to our MS Accounts to work.

So......the question: is MS building a file of our interactions with our phones (what websites we visit, what we look at and do with the various Bing apps, what we upload to OneDrive.....)? My thinking is that they must be, why else would they want so many of their apps linked back to your MS Account?

Personally, this doesn't worry me too much...if MS want to collect info on where I go and what I do in order to make my Windows Phone experience a better one...then hey, go for it. The NSA are probably doing it already anyway

But it does raise the question of just how much information MS collects about us. Is there a file sitting on a server somewhere in a Microsoft lab with your name on it? What information does that file contain? And, possibly the most important question.......how secure is it?

How much personal information would you be willing to give up to make Bing or Cortana relevant to your life?

 

[N_LaRUE]

As you seem to be aware all the tech companies collect data. Data is worth a lot of money. That's why they do it.

The MS Account linking is more to do with syncing your information rather than collecting data. Though I'm sure they collect as much data about you as they can. Thing is what does it matter? Unless you're overly paranoid I'm sure it's more about things you do rather than specifically about you. It's about getting trends and making the experience better like you said.

Since MS is apparently one of the companies that's concerned about security I can only hope they keep their word about it. Other than that, I can personally care less if they want to know how often I visit Facebook.

 

[Jcmg62]

As you seem to be aware all the tech companies collect data. Data is worth a lot of money. That's why they do it.

The MS Account linking is more to do with syncing your information rather than collecting data. Though I'm sure they collect as much data about you as they can. Thing is what does it matter? Unless you're overly paranoid I'm sure it's more about things you do rather than specifically about you. It's about getting trends and making the experience better like you said.

Since MS is apparently one of the companies that's concerned about security I can only hope they keep their word about it. Other than that, I can personally care less if they want to know how often I visit Facebook.

Couldn't agree more. The reality is that everytime we go online there's a better than average chance that someone is watching us. If MS believe they can create a better user experience in exchange for some bing and/or social network data then hey....go nuts Redmond

 

[anon(123856)]

Yeah, the sad reality is that no matter ecosystem you decide to place your bets with (MS, Crapple, or Android), someone is going to be collecting your data. I don't see any let up coming. It's probably just going to get worse. I guess it comes down to which option works the best for you and which one you're the most comfortable with.