Dutch privacy regulator says Windows 10 breaks the law

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | KrulUA)

The lack of clear information about what Microsoft does with the data that Windows 10 collects prevents consumers from giving their informed consent, says the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA). As such, the regulator says that the operating system is breaking the law.

To comply with the law, the DPA says that Microsoft needs to get valid user consent: this means the company must be clearer about what data is collected and how that data is processed. The regulator also complains that the Windows 10 Creators Update doesn’t always respect previously chosen settings about data collection. In the Creators Update, Microsoft introduced new, clearer wording about the data collection—though this language still wasn’t explicit about what was collected and why—and it forced everyone to re-assert their privacy choices through a new settings page. In some situations, though, that page defaulted to the standard Windows options rather than defaulting to the settings previously chosen.

In the Creators Update, Microsoft also explicitly enumerated all the data collected in Windows 10’s “Basic” telemetry setting. However, the company has not done so for the “Full” option, and the Full option remains the default.