Microsoft informed 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 listen to the audio from both services, along with the sensitive personal data 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 the questions that were put to us recently, that we could clarify better that sometimes there are people looking at that content," a Microsoft spokesperson 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 non-automated (human) processing methods," states Microsoft Privacy Policy.
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 transcribing audio recordings from Microsoft employees and vendors, subject to procedures designed to protect users' privacy, data requiring non-disclosure agreements with vendors and their employees, and requiring vendors to comply with high standards of privacy set by European law and elsewhere. "
The youth terms for the digital assistant Cortana contain now an identical paragraph.
Microsoft, however, allows users to delete their recordings with one special electronic tool.
But while other companies say they have stopped this behavior, Microsoft says it will continue to use the recordings in the same way, at least for now.
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