Windows 10 violates European legislation regarding user privacy, and now a first authority in Europe has accused the American company that the operating system collects too much data. More precisely, Windows 10 collects too much data from the users' computers on which it is installed, and the authorities in the Netherlands have established that the Microsoft operating system violates the country's legislation regarding the privacy of user data.
Windows 10, according to the authorities, does not inform users clearly enough about the data it collects from computers, not even in the Creators Update, which will be released this week. Windows 10 does not even provide information about the reasons why it collects data from users, the authorities stating that users do not even have settings to decide whether they agree with this collection or not.
Windows 10 has activated by default the setting by which data is retrieved from users' computers and encourages customers to accept this setting. The authorities also say that although users do not change that Windows 10 setting, this does not necessarily mean that they agree to data collection, but also that the Creators Update does not maintain the settings that disabled data collection.
Windows 10 violates Dutch user privacy legislation
Windows 10, through the Edge browser, constantly collects information regarding Internet browsing and the applications used by users for this purpose. The Dutch authorities say that the Edge browser has natively activated functions that collect information in Windows 10 during its use, so the authorities claim that these practices violate local legislation regarding user privacy.
Windows 10, according to those from Microsoft, is not really that bad and still offers some information regarding the data it collects from the users who installed it. Microsoft claims that it needs some data from users to solve compatibility problems of some components used in computers running Windows 10, but also to discover various security problems.
Windows 10 will still have solved the problems that were reported by the Dutch authorities, but of course it is not known when this will happen. Meanwhile, the Dutch authorities claim that they could take somewhat tougher actions against Microsoft in the event that a version of Windows 10 that respects user privacy is not released by Microsoft in the near future.
Windows 10 is slowly but surely approaching the title of the most used operating system on the planet, but its problems will not disappear soon.
