Microsoft is changing policies around telemetry collection from business users

Microsoft is changing the way it collects telemetry from European business customers. Currently, policies per device determine who the processor is, but in the future this will be done through one policy in Active Directory.

Microsoft writes in a blog post that it will stop with the policies it now uses. These are options for setting who the processor of data is per device within an enterprise environment. Instead, there will be an “organization-wide configuration based on Azure Active Directory to define Microsoft’s role in processing data.” This means that administrators can now arrange this via AD, with Microsoft being the processor and the company being the controller. This is done ‘from a compliance point of view’, writes the company.

The rules only apply to companies based in Europe. Microsoft is changing the policy to meet the stricter requirements of European privacy regulators. The company has been criticized several times in the past for the way it collects diagnostic data, including in services such as Office 365 for the Dutch government. In the future, all European user data processed by Microsoft will be stored in the EU.

The changes are in Windows builds 25169 and above, which are currently in the Dev Channel. The company will announce more later this year about how this will work for other Windows versions, such as Windows 10 and Windows 11. The changes will not be finalized until the last quarter of this year.