What does Microsoft do with my contacts list?

Let me address specifics in the order you folks posted.

TimAitch1000, your point related to another application is one that I haven't yet had time to study, but I have put that on my ToDo list.  I think one of the members here might have also posted a question about whether other apps also fall outside of the expected Microsoft respect for privacy with their own odd terms of service.  It certainly is an issue that is related and needs studying.

ZigZag3143, I was sort of hoping that your colleague Entegy would turn up some useful nugget of information, as he stated something about looking around.

Your point about this being peer-to-peer, I see that a job title of "Support Engineer" pops up from time-to-time and it would seem they are Microsoft employees and where there is a team of Microsoft employees there has to be a boss.  That "boss" was my first hope for some feedback.  I sincerely do not want to have to take this into the brick-and-mortar environment, including snail mail.  If I go brick-and-mortar, I might just throw a few thousand dollars into the new fund we'll have to create and go with some newspaper advertisements in you-know-which-city.  I will repeat a point I made a bit back, I will not give up.  I will not go away until Microsoft addresses this issue.  It's plain and simple that something is wrong.  I would hope Microsoft would see the way to fix that "wrong" without having pressure placed upon it by outsiders.

Your contention, ZigZag3143, that Microsoft will do prety much as it pleases, is logical and no surprise.  And it might very well be that will be the reason this issue spills out into the brick-and-mortar world.  Unfortunately, it wouldn't be the first time a Net company allowed that to happen because they were wearing glasses that only focused on their own corporate goals and not that focused on the good of the Net as a whole.  We always see Net company PR folks printing and saying things about how much they support all manner of cyber rights, but when a cyber rights issue conflicts with a particular corporate goal, guess what happens?

Now, I figure some folks will think to themselves that I have made quite a jump there, referring to cyber civil rights.  But eventually, maybe a decade or two into the future, that's where these types of issues will reside in the public's mind.  That is for sure.  The Internet is not just a utility, as the FCC would now have us believe.  It is a whole new environment of the human experience.  It is like a territory as real as any on the surface of the planet, but it is in cyberspace.  And that is cyberspace without the idea of "notional" used to modify the noun.  Let's start thinking 21st Century, instead of remaining stuck for ideas from the past century.  We have to move forward.  We have to think forward.  We will have "rights" eventually.  It's inevitable.

HFM47

This is a peer to peer site staffed mostly by volunteers who have little or no contact with Microsoft.  You will not get a "management type" to respond to this thread.

I suspect you, like the rest of us, will have to ferret out what information you can via the usual public sources

IMHO  Microsoft will do what ever it likes with the data and I act accordingly.  They own the system and have rigged it to their advantage.

Good luck

If I think it is worth the risk, if there is a risk, I wouldn't mind a third-party having access to my email account information.  -*JUST MINE*-  That is the thing, to be able to allow that third-party access to any information in my contact list, even just names, I would have to ask each individual himself/herself.

Even in the brick-and-mortar world I don't give out phone numbers or addresses or anything about a friend, associate, etc. without first asking them if it's okay.

In some work related situations, it is a tad different.

The truth is I have been like this since way back when.  I'm afraid, in my case, that is a fair bit way back.  I guess it probably started after I got drafted and stuck into the military.  Maybe before that, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I am still waiting for a Microsoft management type to answer a few questions here, otherwise I'll have to take this to snail mail and that will start to get expensive, even if I use our branch office in Canada to send out and receive the mail.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how much access an app is granted when asking permission to:

Access your email addresses*<Application name> will be able to see the email addresses in your profile.*

Is this my email addresses only? - Or does it include the email addresses of my contacts, when the app in this case is granted access to the contact list also? (Which in itself is only a list of the contact's names).

• I expect it has access to the email addresses of the contacts also, just can't find the official description.

Access your email addresses is a requirement when an app need to send emails to the user who installs the app, or when the user in this case subscribe to a promotion via an app-like website thing.

It's the combination of View your profile info and contact list + Access your email addresses that alerts me.

The third-party company will be bound in a contract with Microsoft, obviously.

Big Data is a big thing.

--

Hans