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Muxaan Saxena
Techradar
Over 700 third parties, including Microsoft, could be reading parts of your emails
It looks like Microsoft’s penchant for collecting its users’ data may get it in more trouble, with a worrying new report suggesting that it’s sharing more information from emails sent by the new Outlook for Windows app than people may know.
This is particularly concerning as most people check their emails daily, to keep up with friends and family, or send important documents and information at work, and with the Outlook for Windows app now being the default program for emails in Windows 11, this discovery could impact a lot of people
MSPoweruser reports that the team behind ProtonMail, an end-to-end encrypted email service and competitor to Microsoft Outlook, has discovered the worrying scale of user data being collected by Outlook for Windows, which reportedly includes your emails, contacts, browsing history, and possibly even location data.
ProtonMail’s blog post goes so far as to call Outlook for Windows “a surveillance tool for targeted advertising”, a harsh comment, certainly, but people who downloaded the new Outlook for Windows app have encountered a disclaimer that explains how Microsoft and hundreds of third parties will be helping themselves to your data.
It seems like the majority of the data is being used primarily for advertising purposes, with users having to opt out of sharing their data for each of the 772 companies manually. This means that by default you may be sharing a heck of a lot of information, and if you wish to opt out, the process is time-consuming and annoying.
Here we go again …
Microsoft has a rather dubious past of being quite greedy with user data. This time last year you might remember our report detailing serious privacy concerns users had with Windows 11, with the PC Security Channel uploading a YouTube video that demonstrated that before you even connect to the internet or open an app, Windows 11 was collecting and sending data to Microsoft – and possibly third-party servers.
That being said, we should remember that ProtonMail is a direct competitor of Microsoft’s email apps and services, and the team behind it would be very keen to direct criticism at Outlook for Windows. ProtonMail is a service dedicated to user privacy and keeping users’ email (as well as calendar, file storage, and VPN) encrypted, so we do have to keep in mind the team’s motives for highlighting this, as the company would want to make its privacy and security look much better than Outlook.
We also have to consider the fact that Outlook for Windows is a free app, so you could argue that Microsoft can support the app and continue adding features by providing user data to paying third parties. Regardless, while you can technically opt out of the data sharing, it’s still cheeky of Microsoft to have the opt-out option be a per-advertiser toggle click rather than a simple ‘reject all’ button. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Opt out as fast as you can!
If all of this has you concerned and itching to opt out entirely, we’ve got you covered. Head over to the General section of your Outlook for Windows settings and you should see an option called ‘Advertising Preferences’. When you click that you’ll see a large list of company names and toggles near their name set to ‘enable’.
Unless you create a brand new Outlook email, from what we can tell there’s no single button that will deselect all of them, so you may have to set some time aside to sit down and deselect them all. Each advertiser has an option for you to read more about their privacy policies, and once you open that you’ll see another option to opt out.
I created a new Outlook email account just to test it out, and the option to reject all did pop up when Outlook for Windows first opened, and I also have the option to deselect all the advertising preferences at once in the Settings page as well, though that might not appear for people who have already set up the app with an existing Outlook account.
If sharing our data by default is the price we have to pay for free apps like Outlook for Windows, at least Microsoft seems to have made turning off that sharing easier than ProtonMail’s team have made out. Still, this shows that it’s well worth paying attention to user agreements and disclaimers for free apps, especially from Microsoft, so you know exactly how much of your data you’re sharing – and who has access to it.
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The Most Revolutionary Act 
Well, I love to confuse the hell out of these entities since my smartphone(I only have one because it was free and came with the internet service) has me showing up as living in Washington state, I don’t live in Washington state. My fucked-up laptop was purchased, used and has an onscreen message stating, “Activate Windows, go to settings to activate windows.” I have done that, and it still does not “activate windows.” There are probably so many viruses in this computer, the good thing about that is I would never put my card information on it in order to purchase anything online, which is a plus.
And at this point, since my service providers for various services, from the internet to grocery stores to health care entities have all been victims of Ransomware attacks, it’s a wrap on my identity situation, and at this point, I don’t even care since the last time I applied for an apartment, I was told, “we don’t check credit anymore.” Everybody’s identity and credit is fucked up. Just another sign of the times.
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I agree. I have never put private information online, don’t use credit or debit cards, and hand write journal and letters. My e-mails are meant to be shared with anyone who cares. Yes, I’m swamped with advertising, but this is not new.
Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would post private information of any kind on line.
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Frankly, Katharine, at this point, if anyone tried to use any information about me, they would be DECLINED since I have received not one, not two, but THREE letters stating that my information has been a victim of Ransomware attacks and so indulge in a bit of “free credit monitoring services.” I refuse since at this point; it would do no good. No matter what I try and purchase “OFFLINE,” I use cash and my small purchases are ALL from thrift stores or used electronic stores which is where I purchased this fucked up laptop, which if you saw my setup, you’d fall out of your chair laughing.
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I was at Goodwill the other day, looking for shoes, because I destroy them so fast, in all the rain and mud puddles I have to run through. I’ve found the thrift stores have many useful items. A benefit is No Packaging.
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Funny, you should mention thrift store shopping, I was just in one the other day and purchased a really nice, thigh length warm sweater, a long sleeve shirt and a nice pair of good Sketchers. If not for thrift stores, I would be stringing leaves together to make clothing and twine for moccasins.
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I also shop in thrift stores, as do most of my Kiwi friends. It’s the only way we can find stuff that actually fits.
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I guess I’m really lucky, Shelby. Three years ago, a friend of mine took Windows off my computer and installed an open source operating system call Ubuntu (a version of Linux) on my computer and a number of open source programs including Libre Office (instead of Microsoft Office). The good thing about open source is that the code is published openly so computer scientists all over the world help to find and correct the bugs in it. So I get fewer crashes, no one spies on me and I don’t need antiviral software because no one has invented any viruses for Linux yet (there’s no profit in it).
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Microsoft is since long already sharing private information with US terror agencies, at some degree since Windows 95. Basically since Windows 10, all private information are dumped on the servers in Redmond and related locations in USA. This makes the STASI information gathering petty in comparison … I discovered at work, that when saving Office software locally, it also sends the data somewhere else at the same time. When I saved those files, it was long delays involved, when the local network was not working or disabled. When the network worked again, the delays was gone. Network connection or not, it should not matter, but it does apparently …
They are not alone, as Google (and what it seems Apple too) are indirectly phishing since long too. Anyone who bought a new Android phone, has to answer a number of questions during the initial setup. One of the questions is about automatic “backup” of private data. Knowing that many people don’t think for themselves, the probability that they just accept and continue is huge. For us living within EU, there is one aspect. The automatic “backup” transfer all data from ‘contacts’ (phonebook), SMS/”text”, ‘phone log’, data from the e-mail client etc. to “backup” servers in USA. As these servers are located outside EU, the GDPR don’t apply once the data arrive there. The related EU agency and national equivalents either have no clue or are corrupted. Considering that all types of network hardware used in USA must have ‘backdoors’, according to US law, the rest is easy to figure out … That CIA and FBI are lurking behind Google, is no secret either. Combine this with clueless politicians and dito company leaders …
Part of it is agreements and I do not understand how most of them are legal. At least here, an agreement can not bypass existing laws, unless stated in the specific law. The legal system doesn’t bother though … Replacing the word “spy” with “backup” do not change anything! A pig with lipstick … If this was possible during The Cold War, we would have had a huge political international crisis …
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I haven’t used Google in years. I used to use DuckDuckGo but quit when they started censoring articles critical of the Covid narrative. I use Presearch now.
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