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Microsoft's Increasing Invasiveness

Preview:

Microsoft's horrible new Outlook continues their movement toward being a marketing company, selling your personal information. It achieves new levels of invasiveness, previously unimagined.

The New Invasive Outlook

Microsoft has been upgrading users to the new Outlook, which will be free on all new Windows 11 computers. Here's what they say at Microsoft.com.

The newest Outlook for Windows is here
Outlook email and calendar is now included for free with Windows. Enjoy a best-in-class experience with intelligent tools to help you stay on top of your day, your way.

However, if we were in the European Union, where companies must disclose how they share your data, we'd see more. We'd be informed that Microsoft will collect data on you and share it with 813 "partner" companies (as of May 2024).

Some privileges these 813 companies would have included:
  1. They can store information on MY device. All 813 of them.
  2. Personalize ads and CONTENT!
  3. Derive insights about me
  4. Scan my computer, its files, drivers etc.
  5. Get precise location data
Number 4 above might freak you out. The purpose of their scanning our computers is to develop unique profiles about us so they can target ads more effectively and differentiate us from anyone else. However, this is freaky. Can they really control over 800 companies from reading our email or documents or accounting?

Data Storage, wrong place

One of the things which has consistently bothered me about Microsoft and where I fundamentally disagree with their approach is data storage. We encounter this consistently.
  • Microsoft wants you to log in to their servers, and I want my clients to log in to their own computer with local accounts.
  • Microsoft wants your documents stored on their servers with OneDrive, I want documents stored locally.
  • Microsoft wants spell checking and grammar checking done centrally, on their servers. They want everything you type going to them to analyze. I want everything held locally on your computer. Spell checking and grammar checking should be kept as local as possible.

This basic division is that I believe in local data and Microsoft's wants to keep everything on their systems. This division is displayed with the updated Outlook as well. If you don't use a Microsoft Exchange Server, but instead Gmail, or Comcast, or any other provider for your email, Microsoft will still keep your login name and password on their servers. They will log you in. They will control your credentials. I believe the login credentials should be stored locally on your computer, the way Thunderbird or Essential Pim do it. It should be an agreement between you, your local email program and your chosen provider, not Microsoft.

What do I do?

Many companies chose Microsoft and there is nothing you can do. You must use Office 365 to fit in. However, if you have a choice, there are many good alternatives.
  • I pay for a real email provider who does not make their money by selling me. The cost is minimal, the support excellent and the service very good. I use Runbox to host my email. I avoid my website host (who didn't do a good enough job) and Comcast and Google.
  • I use EPIM for my Email program, not Outlook. Essential Pim (Personal Information Manager), not only handles email, but also my task list, contacts, and calendars. Thunderbird is also exceptional and does all that.
  • I use LibreOffice for my office software, not MS Office. It will read and write Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
  • I use specialized programs for special purposes, so don't need to use an office suite very often. I write this newsletter in Scrivener, and take my notes in Joplin.

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Date: August 2024


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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

 
 
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