Microsoft Office Tools Reportedly Collect Data for AI Training, Requiring Manual Opt-Out

[jardows]

Just checked my install. We are a large MS 365 client, and are constantly pushed the latest updates. I don't know if this is managed my our Microsoft team, but the box was unchecked, and I had never been in this setting before on this install. All this could just be a bunch of FUD. Considering most of the posters here are claiming to not have used recent MS Office for a decade or more, and not verifying if their latest version of Office 365 has this or not, I'm going with FUD.

 

[Draconis]

This is their list of FAQs

How Google protects your organization's security and privacy - Google Workspace Admin Help

Two of the most common topics of questions regarding Google in general, and Google Cloud specifically, are security and privacy. We take both topics very seriously and offer tools that let you co

support.google.com

Claims they are compliant with ISO/IEC 27018:2014. For our org that's good enough for compliance.

Thank you, very informative. It makes more sense that USAID Missions are allowed to use the service. Crazy how things have changed in the last few years, the loops we had to jump through to allow a USAID project office to use 365 in 2018/2019 was insane.

 

[csendesmark]

Microsoft is hopeless.

 

[Vayra86]

Y2k happened with cloudstrike.


I loved 97, 2000 was good as well. 2007 is the beginning of the doc(x) format compatibility, that is why i use it, nothing newer

Yeah no docx compatibility is an issue. But to be fair, the last time I used Word outside my workspace is years ago.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yeah no docx compatibility is an issue. But to be fair, the last time I used Word outside my workspace is years ago.

Word really has become unnecessary in the consumer space, as spellcheck is built into almost everything now, and formatting tools are so ubiquitous that we even have such options in forum posting software. Just comes down to things like tracking changes and sharing at that point, and even then Google docs probably does that just as well. If it weren’t for Excel and Power BI, there isn’t much that’s special about Office tools anymore. Imagine if MS was still trying to sell regular releases of Office. People would have stopped upgrading years ago. Now we get rewarded with the one thing most users seem to hate—perpetual updates and minor changes.

 

[Thorfinnsson]

I've been using Microsoft Office for decades, and it is and always has been a generally excellent product. That's much more than can be said about Windows.

Using a Microsoft product like this has however always made me uncomfortable, and there is a steady drumbeat of news indicating that it may finally be time to bail.

I have no interest in training anyone else's artificial intelligence models for free, and especially not those of an anti-user criminal enterprise such as Microsoft let alone an openly anti-human organization like OpenAI.

There are other reasons to jump ship as well. I resist tapeworm software models (better known as subscriptions) as much as I am able, and to this day I've evaded Microsoft Office's criminal "365" platform. I rely on the gray market to obtain legal license keys for Office, and this has served me well for the past decade.

Something has changed lately. Gray market keys for Office 2024 cost ten times what keys for 2021 did, and none of these versions have Microsoft Access (which I use). Likewise, despite being out now for more than a month I've yet to see a Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC license key on the gray market. LTSC versions of Windows are essential ever since the release of Windows 10 in order to evade Microsoft's constant assaults on users.

2025 may be the year that I not only shift to LibreOffice but Linux as well.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I've been using Microsoft Office for decades, and it is and always has been a generally excellent product. That's much more than can be said about Windows.

Using a Microsoft product like this has however always made me uncomfortable, and there is a steady drumbeat of news indicating that it may finally be time to bail.

I have no interest in training anyone else's artificial intelligence models for free, and especially not those of an anti-user criminal enterprise such as Microsoft let alone an openly anti-human organization like OpenAI.

There are other reasons to jump ship as well. I resist tapeworm software models (better known as subscriptions) as much as I am able, and to this day I've evaded Microsoft Office's criminal "365" platform. I rely on the gray market to obtain legal license keys for Office, and this has served me well for the past decade.

Something has changed lately. Gray market keys for Office 2024 cost ten times what keys for 2021 did, and none of these versions have Microsoft Access (which I use). Likewise, despite being out now for more than a month I've yet to see a Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC license key on the gray market. LTSC versions of Windows are essential ever since the release of Windows 10 in order to evade Microsoft's constant assaults on users.

2025 may be the year that I not only shift to LibreOffice but Linux as well.

I think Access is dead. Power BI seems more the direction MS wants to go with presentation from databases. I do know it’s far more user friendly for someone like me, and I can easily build some complex tools and then just as easily share them via publishing to the browser. Access has more security risks. I can’t even open some older Access content and have it function like it used to.