What Our Uncle Microsoft Knows
July 18, 2010
They all do it , so it’s unfair to single out Microsoft because pretty much every software vendor or Internet service collects information about you. Even while the experts tell us WAT, Bing and Hotmail do collect data when you use them, they also say they are not as concerned with what Big Brother ( Microsoft) knows as compared to other what other high profile companies collect. Still, they do collect data and here’s a few ways they do it. WAT, the validation process you go through when you first start your computer, doesn’t get too personal in an Orwellian sense but they do get the make and model of your computer and the region and language that applies. Bing and Hotmail get a little closer with IP addresses and unique identifiers contained in cookies. Perhaps you don’t need to worry through. Microsoft asserts that it deletes the IP addresses after six months.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2010
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