Milena Dimitrova reports:
….. Investigators outlined eight issues in ProPlus subscriptions of Office 2016 and Office 365, as they identified a “large scale and covert collection of personal data”. The covert data collection is possible thanks to MS Office’s built-in telemetry, and users are not aware of it. Furthermore, the authorities couldn’t find any official documentation outlining the type of data that is being collected. To top that off, they also didn’t find a way to turn off the telemetry.
This is a serious violation not only of GDPR but also of the privacy of all MS Office users. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is collecting diagnostics data which is considered a standard practice. But the real issue is located in the way that Office apps collect the content from users’ apps.