Under the leadership of new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has changed their company policies to violate the trust of their customers by collecting personally identifiable data without our knowledge or consent in the Windows 10 consumer version of their operating system. Microsoft has made some progress in the latest Windows 10 Creators Update to disclose some the information they are gathering but offer no mechanism to disable the personal data gathering entirely on the consumer based versions of their Windows 10 Operating System.

The Enterprise versions of their software have off setting to prevent Windows 10 from sending any personal data to Microsoft from machines running that variant. However, they have not extended this option to the consumer versions of Windows 10 that we all run on our desktops and laptop computers. Microsoft has disclosed some of the information they gather in the two available modes called 'basic' and 'full' however the basic setting which is the lowest level of personal data gathered still collects thousands of fields, many of which people are uncomfortable sharing.

Microsoft has also gone on record stating that the data they collect is not 'personally identifiable' because they don't have access to the databases that contain details about the end user but they fail to mention that everything is logged under the 'Windows Live' account the person is using on the system along with their IP address which can be traced back to the system and confirmed with the MAC address of the networking hardware which is also sent to them as a part of the data that is gathered. Not to mention they collect text fields that could contain your name, address, phone #, credit card information, etc. This means that Microsoft has the capaibility to link all the data collected from your system in the background 24/7 back to you personally if they chose to or they are compelled to by a 3rd party.

This petition is to encourage Microsoft to offer the same 'off' option for data collection in all versions of the Windows 10 operating system and not just the enterprise version of the software. Microsoft has no right to consume our bandwidth to send our personal data to their databases for their own personal gain. Microsoft hides behind the message that this data is all collected to make the product better for us and it should not concern us in the slightest. If you do your research on the data actually gathered you will see that much of it has absolutely no use in debugging or making software better but rather would have a purpose for market research and targeted advertisement. 

Let's all sign this petition and encourage Microsoft to do the right thing by providing an 'off' option for data collection in every version of the Windows 10 operating system and not just the enterprise version that is used by businesses. I would also like to note the reason that an 'off' option exists in the enterprise version of the product is because hospitals and other instutitions would be violating their policies and laws by allowing Microsoft to collect potentially private and sensitive data from those machines. Now ask yourself.

"Why don't I have this same right to protect my information, bandwidth, identity and intellectual property on my own machine?"

Please watch my full video on this topic and please share it with as many people as you can and let's hold Microsoft accountable and get them to do the right thing. The CEO Satya Nadella of Microsoft will personally receive this petition as more signatures are gathered and I've also received some interest from some local and international news outlets to cover this story if we get enough exposure.

Link to video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFbAqICUJo