Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., questioned in a letter Monday recent...
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., questioned in a letter Monday recent changes to the way Microsoft handles its user data (http://xrl.us/bnvidv). Markey, who co-chairs the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, asked Microsoft to provide details on its new Services Agreement (http://xrl.us/bnvid7), which…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
took effect last week and allows the company to track users’ activities across its free, Web-based services, such as Hotmail and Bing. The changes to the Services Agreement do not alter the company’s privacy policy or paid software products, such as Microsoft Office or Internet explorer, according to The New York Times (http://xrl.us/bnvidt), which first reported on the changes. In the letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Markey wrote that he is “concerned about the privacy and security implications of Microsoft’s new policy of aggregating information about consumers across a suite of Microsoft services, stitching together detailed, in-depth consumer profiles.” Customers are wondering “whether and to what extent consumers will be able to opt-in to information sharing across Microsoft’s many Web-based products, whether they will have to opt out of such sharing, or whether they will have no choice at all in the matter,” he wrote. Markey asked Microsoft to provide information on the company’s previous user information sharing practices, which Microsoft products and services will be affected by the changes to the Services Agreement, how the changes affect children and teenage users, how the company notified users of the changes and the new information sharing policies, including what information will be collected, how it will be shared and for how long it will be retained. The changes to the Services Agreement did not change Microsoft’s privacy policy or the “fact that over the years we have consistently informed users that we may use their content to improve the services they receive,” Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, told us. Additionally, he said, the changes did not affect Microsoft’s policy that it does not use “the content of our customers’ private communications and documents to target advertising.” Evans said the company “will be changing our services agreement to make it explicitly clear that we don’t target ads based on user content” as a result of feedback it’s received.