Configure Windows 10 Enterprise Telemetry

[straycat19]

At Microsoft, we use Windows telemetry to inform our decisions and focus our efforts in providing the most robust, most valuable platform for your business and the people who count on Windows to enable them to be as productive as possible. Telemetry gives users a voice in the operating system’s development. This guide describes the importance of

 

Windows telemetry and how we protect that data. Additionally, it differentiates between telemetry and functional data. It also describes the telemetry levels that Windows supports. Of course, you can choose how much telemetry is shared with Microsoft, and this guide demonstrates how.

 

To frame a discussion about telemetry, it is important to understand Microsoft’s privacy principles. We earn customer trust every day by focusing on six key privacy principles as described at privacy.microsoft.com. These principles guided the implementation of the Windows telemetry system in the following ways:

 

•Control. We offer customers control of the telemetry they share with us by providing easy-to-use management tools.

 

•Transparency. We provide information about the telemetry that Windows and Windows Server collects so our customers can make informed decisions.

 

•Security. We encrypt telemetry in transit from your device and protect that data at our secure data centers.

 

•Strong legal protections. We respect customers’ local privacy laws and fight for legal protection of their privacy as a fundamental human right.

 

•No content-based targeting. We take steps to avoid and minimize the collection of customer content, such as the content of files, chats, or emails, through the Windows telemetry system. Customer content inadvertently collected is kept confidential and not used for user targeting.

 

•Benefits to you. We collect Windows telemetry to help provide you with an up-to-date, more secure, reliable and performant product, and to improve Windows for all of our customers.

 

 

This article applies to Windows and Windows Server telemetry only. Other Microsoft or third-party apps, such as System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Endpoint Protection, or System Center Data Protection Manager, might send data to their cloud services in ways that are inconsistent with this guide. Their publishers are responsible for notifying users of their privacy policies, telemetry controls, and so on. This article describes the types of telemetry we may gather, the ways you might manage it in your organization, and some examples of how telemetry can provide you with valuable insights into your enterprise deployments. Microsoft uses the data to quickly identify and address issues affecting its customers.

 

Use this article to make informed decisions about how you might configure telemetry in your organization. Telemetry is a term that means different things to different people and organizations. For the purpose of this article, we discuss telemetry as system data that is uploaded by the Connected User Experience and Telemetry component. The telemetry data is used to help keep Windows devices secure by identifying malware trends and other threats and to help Microsoft improve the quality of Windows and Microsoft services.

 

We are always striving to improve our documentation and welcome your feedback. You can provide feedback by contacting [email protected].

Overview

 

In previous versions of Windows and Windows Server, Microsoft used telemetry to check for updated or new Windows Defender signatures, check whether Windows Update installations were successful, gather reliability information through the Reliability Analysis Component (RAC), and gather reliability information through the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) on Windows. In Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, you can control telemetry streams by using the Privacy option in Settings, Group Policy, or MDM.

 

For Windows 10, we invite IT pros to join the Windows Insider Program to give us feedback on what we can do to make Windows work better for your organization.

Understanding Windows telemetry

 

Windows as a Service is a fundamental change in how Microsoft plans, builds, and delivers the operating system. Historically, we released a major Windows version every few years. The effort required to deploy large and infrequent Windows versions was substantial. That effort included updating the infrastructure to support the upgrade. Windows as a Service accelerates the cadence to provide rich updates more frequently, and these updates require substantially less effort to roll out than earlier versions of Windows. Since it provides more value to organizations in a shorter timeframe, delivering Windows as a Service is a top priority for us.

 

The release cadence of Windows may be fast, so feedback is critical to its success. We rely on telemetry at each stage of the process to inform our decisions and prioritize our efforts. 

 

What is Windows telemetry?

Windows telemetry is vital technical data from Windows devices about the device and how Windows and related software are performing. It's used in the following ways:

 

•Keep Windows up to date

 

•Keep Windows secure, reliable, and performant

 

•Improve Windows – through the aggregate analysis of the use of Windows

 

•Personalize Windows engagement surfaces

 

Here are some specific examples of Windows telemetry data:

 

•Type of hardware being used

 

•Applications installed and usage details

 

•Reliability information on device drivers

 

What is NOT telemetry?

 

Telemetry can sometimes be confused with functional data. Some Windows components and apps connect to Microsoft services directly, but the data they exchange is not telemetry.

 

For example, exchanging a user’s location for local weather or news is not an example of telemetry—it is functional data that the app or service requires to satisfy the user’s request.

There are subtle differences between telemetry and functional data. Windows collects and sends telemetry in the background automatically. You can control how much information is gathered by setting the telemetry level. Microsoft tries to avoid collecting personal information wherever possible (for example, if a crash dump is collected and a document was in memory at the time of the crash). On the other hand, functional data can contain personal information. However, a user action, such as requesting news or asking Cortana a question, usually triggers collection and transmission of functional data.

 

If you’re an IT pro that wants to manage Windows functional data sent from your organization to Microsoft, see Manage connections from Windows operating system components to Microsoft services.

The following are specific examples of functional data:
•Current location for weather
•Bing searches
•Wallpaper and desktop settings synced across multiple devices
 

Much More Information Here - Too Long To Post All

[Skunk1966]

I wonder how many people trust and believe this BS by M$

I don't

[melek]

Yes. Better use Blackbird. It's a pity the author does not hurry with the new version. :(