Inside Google

Microsoft Expands Gathering and Use of Data From Web Products

”What Microsoft is doing is no different from what Google did,” said John M. Simpson, who monitors privacy policy for Consumer Watchdog, a California nonprofit group. ”It allows the combination of data across services in ways a user wouldn’t reasonably expect. Microsoft wants to be able to compile massive digital dossiers about users of its services and monetize them.”

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White House, Consumers in Mind, Offers Online Privacy Guidelines

“The real question is how much influence companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook will have in their inevitable attempt to water down the rules that are implemented and render them essentially meaningless,” John M. Simpson, privacy project director for Consumer Watchdog, said in response to the administration’s plan. “A concern is that the administration’s privacy effort is being run out of the Commerce Department.”

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