What does Microsoft do with my contacts list?

Nokia and Microsoft have not let me down so far. There has been no ill effects after providing additional personal information, requested by Nokia and Microsoft staff during beta-tests and on other occasions during more than 4 years.

My interest is the short-term technical aspects of permissions granted to apps and the privileges they get. The long-term social aspects could be more important, so it's good to see you have the persistence to follow up on this.

On a side note, Microsoft is currently in court regarding the right to keep European customer's information in Europe and operate under European jurisdiction here. That's another + point earned from me.

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Hans

After all, there is not a clear answer, I am thinking on removing winpreview.catalysis.com (Windows Preview) from the permissions to access my account.

A look at that company's privacy policy <http://catalysis.com/Privacy.aspx> doesn't really help a lot.  There seems to be contradictions, but to outline all of what I am having trouble understanding (I've called "contradictions") just doesn't seem proper to do in this discussion.

BUT there is this that is of concern to us in this discussion:

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USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will only use your personal information in the way we specified when it was collected, and will not subsequently change the way your personal information is used without your consent. Your personal information may be used to respond to your inquiries, customize your visit to the website, communicate with you about changes to our policies, send you newsletters, process your employment application, optimize and improve our website and/or our services, or detect or investigate activities that are illegal or violate our policies. Use and disclosure of non-personal information is at our sole discretion.

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The "we" has to be the company, catalysis.com, and on the Microsoft page where we are supposed to give this company access to our contact list there is NOTHING about the way they will use the contact list.

In fact, if their only purpose is to do what their customer, Microsoft, wants them to do, why do they need our contact list?

In fact, there isn't diddly squat on their Privacy Policy page about why they want to collect information about our friends and colleagues, which is what the contact list is all about.

On the other hand, I have thought about setting up a new email account and creating a very interesting contact list for them to collect.  You know, my buddy President Obama, my buddy the director of the FBI, and all those spies I frequently correspond with over at NSA.  Yep, I'll bet that would be an interesting contact list for them.

All kidding aside, I still want to know why Microsoft wants my contact list just so they can send me information about one of their products!?  It just don't make no sense to this country boy that you want to send me information about your products, but you also need a list of my friends.  Unless, of course, you will send stuff to those on my contact list.  And that has to be illegal.  And if it ain't, we write to those State officials in that State's justice department and ask why it's not illegal.

Heck man, we've been waiting patiently for an answer from Microsoft here and ain't nothing happenin'.  Somebody don't wanna answer the question, right?  Somebody's got something to hide, it seems, by default.

We as in Microsoft since it is off Microsoft.com and please feel free to remove yourself from the preview program but dont gripe about something you could have had input on not working or another windows 8 being released because those with technical minds and the ability to understand what they are doing by releasing the right for Microsoft and any partners working on feedback were the only ones providing "useful" feedback and error data.