{"id":5808,"date":"2019-05-01T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-sg\/2019\/05\/01\/microsoft-office-new-privacy-controls\/"},"modified":"2022-06-28T10:50:45","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T17:50:45","slug":"microsoft-office-new-privacy-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-sg\/microsoft-365\/blog\/2019\/05\/01\/microsoft-office-new-privacy-controls\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Office brings you new privacy controls"},"content":{"rendered":"
Earlier this week, Julie Brill, Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Microsoft, published a blog<\/a> that outlined Microsoft\u2019s ongoing commitment to privacy and provided details on the direction we are taking as a company. In her blog, Julie introduced principles that guide our approach to increasing transparency and customer control over data collected by Microsoft\u2019s major products.<\/p>\n We are excited to announce that earlier this week we released an update to Office that reflects these principles.<\/p>\n The way we use technology to be productive at work and at home is changing. We work more on the go, we use more than one device to complete our tasks, and we often collaborate as part of a team\u2014even when that team is our family and friends. At Microsoft, we\u2019re committed to providing you with the best-in-class applications and experiences to meet these modern needs, while respecting your privacy and keeping you in control of your data.<\/p>\n We continue to introduce new and exciting capabilities to Office to help you create, communicate, and collaborate more effectively. Sometimes it\u2019s as simple as helping you find a document you wrote a week ago, or helping you find the perfect image for a school report. Or maybe your team needs to collaborate and communicate on a project in real-time across different devices. Office can help you create professional-looking presentations by suggesting design layouts for your PowerPoint slides, and it can also help you find key insights in complex data sets.<\/p>\n To deliver these experiences, Office uses the power of the Microsoft Cloud. Like any other connected service or website, required<\/em> service data<\/em><\/a> must be shared between your computer and Microsoft to enable these features.<\/p>\n For example: Perhaps you would like PowerPoint to provide live subtitles as you present and even translate your words into a different language<\/a>. To transcribe and translate your spoken words, PowerPoint sends a recording of your voice to our Speech and Translation service, where it\u2019s automatically machine transcribed and translated. The generated text is returned to your computer, so that PowerPoint can display it on the screen in (almost) real-time. Your voice and words are used only to do the transcription and translation you\u2019ve asked us to do.<\/p>\n If you want to learn more about which connected experiences are available to you in Office, please read Connected experiences in Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n We understand the importance of keeping you and your organization in control of connected experiences when working in Office apps. With this update, you now have settings that allow you to disable or re-enable the following types of connected experiences, including:<\/p>\n Some services are essential to how Office apps function and cannot be turned off<\/strong>. For example: syncing your mailbox in Outlook, authenticating and verifying your Office license, and determining if Office is up to date.<\/p>\n Although these improvements have come to Office on Windows first, in the coming months, similar controls and experiences will be introduced in Office on other platforms.<\/p>\n If Office is connected to your work or school account, your IT administrator is empowered to make choices about which connected experiences are available to you in your organization. To learn more about improvement to the IT controls and the options available, please see Overview of privacy controls for Office 365 ProPlus<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our customers choose Office because of its strong track record of capability, quality, security, reliability, and compatibility. Just as with our cloud-backed experiences, we use data to keep the Office apps secure, up to date, performing as expected, and to make product improvements.<\/p>\n For this purpose, we collect diagnostic data to detect, diagnose, and rapidly address issues before they become large-scale problems or cause security risks. If one of our apps runs too slowly, or has some other error, we want to know about it as quickly as possible, so we can work on fixing it. This diagnostic data helps us keep your Office working the way it should.<\/p>\n Consistent with the data collection framework outlined in Julie\u2019s blog<\/a>, there are two levels of diagnostic data for Office desktop applications:<\/p>\n For more information about diagnostic data in Office, and how to control which category you provide, see Diagnostic data in Office<\/a>. If you\u2019re using a work or school account, your IT administrator will have additional options to disable collection of diagnostic data and may have made some choices about options available to you.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether you stay with required data or opt in to optional data, the diagnostic data we receive doesn\u2019t include your name or email address, the content of your files, or information about apps unrelated to Office. We take great precautions to ensure your privacy, including how we handle your diagnostic data.\u00a0Our system creates a unique alphanumeric ID that it associates with the diagnostic data before it leaves your computer. Although unique, this ID by itself cannot be mapped back to any individual person. We use this ID to help us differentiate between an issue happening on 100 different devices or 100 instances of the same issue happening on a single device.<\/p>\nOffice is a connected experience<\/h3>\n
You\u2019re in control of cloud connected experiences<\/h3>\n
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Keeping Office secure, up to date, and performing as expected<\/h3>\n
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