What comes after a privacy violation? Of course further violations. I’ve update my list of violations and infringements because of this Heise Article “Anwenderüberwachung durch Microsofts Office-Software”: Here is the full list (free to copy/use): The collection of user data in a Windows 10 based corporate network cannot be prevented by proportional resources.1 With 23,000 to 25,000 data points, a Microsoft Office package collects significantly more metrics than a Windows 10.2 Collecting metrics also includes document content.3 Using mobile devices with O365 or Azure Cloud offerings, Microsoft by Design gets direct access to the mailboxes of local Exchange server instances and stores data (emails, contacts, appointments) unencrypted on its own servers.4 Dependence on Microsoft products, also known as lock-in5, blocks technological progress and increasingly represents a structural disadvantage.6 Microsoft systematically undermines best practice recommendations and EU standards7 in procurement and competition law.8 Microsoft does not manage to explain on what basis it claims its own interests, including the transfer of data to third parties, as a data processor on behalf of a client.9 Microsoft collects users’ work-related habits and provides companies with a detailed, personalized “Productivity Score” for employee monitoring.10 This new addition of employee monitoring is just a recycled version of an existing feature Microsoft has been using internally for years. It is not very surprising that it has now become a product called “Workplace Analytics”. It is a well-known anti-pattern called “Function Creep”.11 Read more

The Microsoft cashcow gets scratches. This is not what I write but what the FAZ writes in its today’s article: “The quasi-monopoly of Office gets scratches”1. Some might say the FAZ has no expertise in IT. Well aactually this could be correct, because their undisputed circle of competence is the economy. But this should make you even more concerned. According to a representative survey by the market research company Nielsen2, Microsoft’s position in its own US home market is now at only 80%, and the trend is continuing to decline. One reason for this development is that more and more people are working online and apps in a web browser are better acessible than their classic, locally installed counterparts. Read more