Microsoft has been trying to recover the trust of the consumer when it comes to privacy and security. This is something they lost (and lost bad) when Edward Snowden revealed how close of a relationship they have with the NSA. It was pretty bad and they (Microsoft) have been trying to rebuild things ever since. So far they have stood up against a US based search warrant trying to get at data in Europe and have also rewritten their “privacy policy”.

When they announced the latest version they made sure to remind people that Google digs into your data with the purpose of selling you ads. Well you can rest assured that Microsoft will not be doing any of that. No they would never dig into your email and files… to sell ads. Instead they made sure to include verbiage that says they will retain the right to go through your stuff, just not for the purposes of pushing ads at you.

So in the long run it is pretty much business as usual (just with happy sounding words) with one exception: Microsoft will not read your email (or at least let you find out about it). If there is suspicion of criminal or illicit activity they will turn over the keys to your account to law enforcement though. Oh and they will continue to scan Skype conversations looking for links to pirated content, just so you know.

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