321–330 of 391 posts
This seems blindingly obvious? They use a cloud powered feature, then complain that information is sent to the cloud? According to this help article using designer for the first time will request permissions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-profession...
>Fire up PowerPoint. Turn off all the cloud options.
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That is a help page guiding the user on how to use the feature. Of course it’s going to be “hidden” when turning on the feature is the smallest step to using it. If to use the feature you are explicitly asked to turn it on, with an option to view a privacy policy, that is “blatantly obvious”. It isn’t hidden or buried under a dozen other settings when you install PowerPoint, it’s done at time of use. How, exactly, wo…
IT has disabled the feature for us, and quick googling didn't turn up any screen shots, so I can't see the prompt myself, but given how it is described it doesn't seem adequate to me. When software asks permission it needs to say what it is asking permission for. Something like: "This feature will send your slide contents to Microsoft's cloud servers to search for relevant design ideas. See our Privacy Policy for mor…
[1] https://slidehunter.com/how-to-automatically-design-slides-w...
This could be as "simple" as Microsoft phoning home with the layout of the data (bullets vs title vs paragraph of text) combined with perhaps hash codes of any topical features (things that indicate technology vs food).
I've never been "surprised" by the feature the way I am with Github Copilot where it sometimes feels like it's reading my mind. The Designer is just a simple way to click a button and get back 5+ recommendations on how you can layout the data.
Without some kind of evidence, my explanation is just as valid as the blog. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The next era will be of Offline Apps because of stuff like this
What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…
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If you're putting PHI in a presentation, you probably already have HIPAA problems.
Doctors routinely need to present cases to each other. It often involves pictures of the patient and other identifying information that is essential to describe the case in detail. They need some way to do this.
[1] https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities...
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Yeah, I'm surprised every healthcare related business doesn't either ban PowerPoint or block this "feature" somehow. HIPAA is a hell of a drug.
If you're putting PHI in a presentation, you probably already have HIPAA problems.
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I think it's worth clarifying that this is just Chinese users, though that was probably clear to most. The Chinese and rest-of-the-world iClouds are completely separate.
It's very comforting to know that they treat the data of their Chinese users with such respect. For a company that insists on privacy being a human right, they sure do seem to have a flexible definition of human!
Not that I really disagree. I wish more companies would refuse to do business under those kinds of conditions.
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Doctors routinely need to present cases to each other. It often involves pictures of the patient and other identifying information that is essential to describe the case in detail. They need some way to do this.
Any healthcare institution is going to have a Business Associate Agreement[1] with Microsoft. OneDrive is one of the allowed/suggested ways to transmit PHI where I work. [1] https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities...
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Many folks are aware MS has been all-in on telemetry for perhaps a decade now. They pioneered activation two decades ago. Explicitly in the TOS. Producing more evidence is left as an exercise at this point. Edit: no more posts allowed for me. Reply below: That’s exactly what telemetry is, today. Grammarly built a whole business on this. Copilot, etc. Refusing to believe that times have changed because you’ve not been…
"Telemetry" is not "sending the contents of your documents" (or at least, not necessarily so). This comment kind of demonstrates my point about the complete lack of nuance in these conversations. And to reply to your reply: > That’s exactly what telemetry is The common understanding of telemetry is sending metadata about how people are using software. That is, things like "this button was clicked", "this feature was…
The article states that text content is being sent, and that it makes sense according to the touted feature. Enough details given what we already know, though stingy.
More info would be useful to folks less familiar with the subject however the core issue here is somewhat old news.