What does Microsoft do with my contacts list?

I tried to sign up to receive email information from the program related to the Windows 10 upgrade and during the process I was informed that Microsoft wants to have access to my contacts list.

Now that is a very serious request, so there must be a fair bit of documentation about why Microsoft wants access to my contacts list -- where might that documentation be found?

What exactly will Microsoft do with my contacts list?

Who at Microsoft will be able to view the list?

And I will probably have more questions as those answers come in.

I did try to use the search tool here for answers, but without any luck, so if I made a mistake during that search, please forgive me.

Thank you to all that may be able to offer some help here.

I can tell you it is a lot less than Google does with it when you use Android.  The Google TOU tells you they monitor every keystroke, every entry, every email, and simply every everything you input/output through ANY Google product and that the you volunteer the information belong to Google and that you authorize them to use it in any fashion you see fit.

One of the reasons I switched to Windows is their new look on the privacy of our data and how they will keep it just that, private.  Google sells us out to anyone with a dollar; without investigation of who the dollar comes from.  That means ID Thieves, criminal organizations, etc.

MSFT does much better with what they do with the data they collect, as far as keeping it yours.

I appreciate the clarification and thank you for the quick response.

The business about the access to email addresses I confess I did not brief myself on, but if you think this is something that needs some study, I have no problem with anyone posting those results here.

Or I will get back to this in about 48 hours and go and study that myself, if I see nobody else has.

I'm afraid I am presently locked in a struggle with Google that is taking up what spare time I have for such matters on the Net.  Actually, there are over one hundred of us "locked in the struggle" I noted.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far off-topic, just want to explain why I need about 48 hours before I can devote time to study the "access to email information" matter that has been brought up.

Maybe we can get one of those Community fellas/gals to help us with some information.  At this writing I forget their proper title -- sorry about that (as Maxwell Smart used to say).

DaviesTigger, please let me confirm one aspect of your post above.

Did you go to this page?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/about

And then, did you see a bit down that page the big blue banner with the title?

Free Upgrade Offer*

And then see the little box for:

Sign up for email

Because I just checked at my end and that "We want to access your contacts list" was not showing, but I am on the other side of the planet and so I am now wondering if those of you with a UK IP address are still seeing the old page which was the subject of this thread and which I thought there had been a rethink at Microsoft about.

Sorry, to be quite explicit in answer to your question, the answer is yes - went through the same route, saw the same options, and got the same result.  Just in case I caused any confusion

Hi - apologies if I freaked anyone - nope, I'm just seeing the "access your email addresses", NOT the contacts list as well.  So I believe you successfully got that removed - well done.  

However I still believe this is only a partial success, and :

a) the leap from "sign up for Microsoft email notifications" to "allow some unknown 'application' to access my account" is completely unacceptable - most  other sites would simply let you enter the email address you want notified, and confirm you actually own it, of course.

b) any implication that "this is normal, everyone does it" just reinforces my concerns re differentiating between legit requests and scam artists.  I'm vaguely intelligent and can tell the difference for the most part, but not everybody will be as well-equipped, and so someone could easily set up a pseudo-Microsoft site and dupe a percentage of people into opening up a security loophole.

Apologies if I'm hijacking your thread, but I feel it's an extension of your efforts towards the principle of protecting other, not only ourselves. If this warrants a separate thread, just let me know and I'll leave this one in peace :-)

Kind regards