Microsoft changes policy on telemetry collection from business users – IT Pro – News

Microsoft is changing the way it collects telemetry from European business customers. Currently, the processor is determined via policies per device, but in the future this will be done via a single policy in Active Directory.

Microsoft writes in a blog post that it will stop with the policies it now uses. These are options within an enterprise environment to set who is the processor of data per device. Instead, there will be an ‘organization-wide configuration based on Azure Active Directory to determine Microsoft’s role in processing data’. This means that administrators can now arrange this via AD, with Microsoft being the processor and the company the controller. That happens ‘from compliance-point of view’, writes the company.

The rules only apply to companies based in Europe. Microsoft is changing its policy to meet the stricter requirements of European privacy regulators. The company has been criticized several times in the past for the way it collected diagnostic data, including in services such as Office 365 at the Dutch government. In the future, all data of European users processed by Microsoft will be stored in the EU.

The changes are in Windows builds 25169 and above, which is currently in the Dev Channel. The company will announce more later this year about how that goes for other Windows versions, such as Windows 10 and Windows 11. The changes will only be finalized in the last quarter of this year.