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Microsoft is phoning home the content of your PowerPoint slides (rogermexico.bearblog.dev)
27 points by i_am_proteus on Oct 27, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments


> Did we consent to this?

According to several screenshots I found online: yes, at least in the EU. There will be a prompt at the first time that warns that search queries and document content will be collected by Microsoft.

Unless they removed this screen outside the EU, I'd say the answer is yes.

However, the fact that the author couldn't then find an opt-out/reset button is questionable. Clearly they tried to disable the cloud crap, but they did not get prompted for consent again.

Of course, this is Microsoft. Every click will be sent to Microsoft, no matter what program or website you're using. They're as bad as Google and business should start considering this cloud crap a business confidentiality risk.


The person clicked the "Designer" button and is then surprised that the design needs the slide content to create?


Why does it need to be sent to a server though?


Right? Next up, downloads are phoning home to a CDN!


Surely the author who is using Bear "A privacy-first, no-nonsense, super-fast blogging platform" is being a tad rhetorical with that question.

S/he asks;

> Did we consent to this?

Yes you absolutely did. Tacitly at least. By using a Microsoft product knowing of their reputation, values, business model and technical model of slurping everything into their "cloud".

The best way not to consent to abuses is by simply never using Microsoft products in any way shape or form. There are many good, free and safe ways to make excellent slide decks without having to compromise your privacy.


I see worst things: some users who choose ON PURPOSE, stating that's good for their data's safety, to put anything on OneDrive living only a local cache to work with.

I do not care about privacy on Windows/Android/iOS etc simply because it can't exists on proprietary systems, but people apparently LIKE such behaviors, or like the big cucumber if properly presented as a good stuff, omitting "good for whom".


On related note inspired by this submission I tried to open my invoice excel sheet in LibreOffice Calc and it was unusably slow and mind that's only 0.5MB document just with lots of equations. Meanwhile everything works instantly with no delays in Excel 2019, so LO it's making it really hard for me to witch if it can't deal even swith simple document.




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