Sharing Microsoft Office Data — What about ‘None of the Above’?

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
«Business @ the Speed of Thought» by Bill Gates

Just updated Microsoft Office on my Mac. After restarting the first app, I was greeted by the following message:

The radio buttons indicate that you have to chose either the first or the second option, there is no “none of the above”. Funnily enough, if you simply close the window, Microsoft goes for the “let’s share more” option. It defaults to full sharing.

Meh!

I can understand that developers want to have usage data, but I don’t want Microsoft to get any information about how I use the products I paid for. And I want to have this option.

Yeah, it’s a license, but it’s not limited, it does not need to be renewed after a year or so (unlike Adobe, yuck!, or SPSS, hurg!). And yup, it’s not only because I don’t trust Microsoft (their products are loyal to the company, not to their users), I also don’t want to increase the amount of data that is transmitted, esp. when I’m on the move and using crappy Internet connections.

So, after changing it to sharing “only” basic diagnostic data, I changed the firewall settings (hello Little Snitch) to stop any office app from using the network connection. I’ll have to enable it occasionally to check for updates, but until then, the door is closed.

And yeah, low move, Microsoft, but not unexpected.

2 Comments

  1. Dear Daniel it would be good to add the link to the microsoft forum to upvote this request, so your readers can upvote it there also.

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