Microsoft has updated its privacy policy to explicitly state that its employees or other external partners can listen to recordings of the company's Cortana and Skype Translator products.
The traffic comes after finding that company employees could hear the sound from both services, along with sensitive personal data which they contained. Apple, Google and, recently, the Facebook they seem to have done exactly the same with various of their respective products.
"We realized from recent questions that we could do better to clarify that sometimes there are people who are looking at this content," a Microsoft spokeswoman told Motherboard.
So while Microsoft's previous privacy policy or Skype Translator FAQs did not say anywhere that conversations could be listened to by people to improve each service, Microsoft has updated its terms and now explicitly states so.
"The processing of personal data for these purposes includes both automated and manual (human) methods ofwork,” Microsoft's privacy policy states.
The company goes on to say how conversations made using Skype Translator are collected and used.
So in the Frequently Asked Questions of the product the company he says:
“This may include transcription of audio recordings by Microsoft employees and vendors, subject to procedures designed to protect privacyof users, data that requires non-disclosure agreements with vendors and their employees and requires vendors to meet high privacy standards set by European law and elsewhere.|”
The new terms for Cortana digital assistant contain now an identical paragraph.
Microsoft, however, allows users to delete their recordings with one special electronic tool.
But while others Companies report that they have stopped that behavior, Microsoft says it will continue to use the recordings in the same way, at least for now.
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