Microsoft reminds customers that they have complete control over their data

Microsoft has often faced the ire of its customers for procuring data that some deem unnecessary on invasive. Examples of this include telemetry extracted from Windows, along with all the snapshots taken by Recall, among many other things. Today, it is National Privacy Day, so Microsoft has seen fit to remind customers that they have complete control over their data.

The Redmond tech giant says that its organizational philosophy revolves around its Microsoft Privacy Principles, which indicate that users have control over their data, they can move, access, or delete it at any time, and Microsoft will leverage it to show you personalized ads only if you consent first. The firm notes that these principles are evident in its privacy-by-design practices, audits, and internal governance policies.

Microsoft says that its commitment to your privacy extends to giving you control over how your data is used, fighting for better privacy laws, and protecting your rights in case a government body requests access to your data. The last part is rather interesting, though, considering it was confirmed recently that Microsoft supplied BitLocker encryption keys to the FBI so they could access data on encyrpted laptops suspected of being involved in fraudulent schemes. This is the first publicly confirmed instance that the company has surrendered keys to federal investigators.

With the advent of AI technologies and Copilot creeping into pretty much everything that you use, Redmond has also emphasized that Microsoft 365 Copilot protects your privacy in the following ways too:

• Your prompts, responses, and data aren’t used to train foundation large language models (LLMs), including those used by Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Your organizational data stays protected within your Microsoft 365 environment.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot is governed by the same identity controls, permissions, compliance standards, and data protections that already secure Microsoft 365.

You can read more about Microsoft's commitments to privacy here.

Source

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Posted Thursday 29 January 2026 at 6:22 am AEST (my time).

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