You may remember a few weeks ago we told you that Microsoft was looking for unsupported Office installations. To that end, those from Redmond have released update KB5021751 for Windows 10 and Windows 11. As we said at the time, no one can deny Microsoft honesty, at least in this case, when it comes to clarifying the purpose of said update. , we could read this in his description on that date:

«This update is designed to help Microsoft identify the number of users who are using unsupported (or soon-to-be-unsupported) versions of Office, including Office 2013, Office 2010, and Office 2007. This update runs silently once without installing anything on the user. apparatus.»

What exactly is this data? That’s the problem it was not clear what Microsoft wanted to find out about each Office installation that “expired”. or at the end of its life cycle. Just the version? Version and operating system? Maybe a country or region? Any patterns of productivity suite usage? It is well known that statistics can be worth their weight in gold and are therefore highly valued by companies, but it is also undeniable that obtaining them without the necessary transparency can be a violation of user privacy. .

That’s exactly what many voices started saying when they learned about the feature of this controversial update. With some dubious precedents in Microsoft’s history with Windows telemetry, suspicions were raised almost immediately and many users began questioning the information collected by the KB5021751 update.

That is, just over two weeks after the launch Microsoft has updated the description of a Windows update that collects data about Office. In this description, he goes on to clarify that he wants to get information about these old versions because of security risks (for those that have already completed their life cycle and therefore do not receive updates) and also have a negative impact on the productivity of their users because it is not up-to-date in terms of features and optimization of suite tools.

Microsoft has updated the description to clarify this update does not collect personal data from users on whose systems it runs. This is what we can read about it:

«This update collects performance and diagnostic data to estimate the usage of installed versions of Office and determine the best way to support and service those systems. This data is collected from log and API records. The update does not collect license details, customer content, or data about non-Microsoft products. Microsoft values, protects and defends privacy«.

Will it be true or not? Personally, I think so, because they’ve been transparent about the raison d’être of this update from the beginning. However, I believe that more situations like this could be avoided in the future if they made it clear and clear from the start what information they wanted to obtain.