this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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I actually appreciate this. The only place I use Word is at work, and nothing I create in Word at work is 'mine'. I do not care at all about the security of things I do at work (that's for our IT Security team to care about), and all this means is that if I accidentally screw up, or if my computer just up and dies on me... all of my work files should be 'safe'.
My employer has been going very hard towards ensuring that our work computers can ONLY be used for work purposes. Once I accepted this and embraced it I found that I'm now 100% free of Microsoft for anything personal, and it is amazing.
there is a reaching hand that goes further than just using it for work.
lets say you open libreoffice writer and write a party invite. you send this party invite to a friend - they are invited to your party.
your friend opens it in MSWord, its uploaded to the cloud and scraped for all of your personal data to train their AI and to be sold to the lowest bidder.
you had and want nothing to do with microsoft, but they are still harvesting your data.
Export to a .pdf, automatically opens by default in user browser via local storage as a reader, bypasses MS
This is still problematic shit though, on the same level as enabling Recall by default and encrypting W11 storage devices by default.
i have been trying to understand what information i send to people and how i send it in an attempt to try and get as lottle data into msrecall as possible.
im not quite there yet (and probably wont be before the oct cutoff) because my mother still uses windows & emails me sometimes, and a few of my friends on discord use windows. its really difficult because i have no control over my data being scraped by products i do not use and have never accepted a eula for. its...... aggravating :(
The unfortunate fact is if a user who views what you post is using a windows machine, the likelihood of the information on their screen being captured by Microsoft is overwhelmingly high.
I guess you may have to approach the issue how you would the public-facing internet at large: if you cannot verify who and how people are viewing your material, do not post any material that can be accessed by windows. If you must, post it through a trusted circle of users who also understand the issue.
I agree, however you're never going to be able to fully control things that you've sent out for other people. Even this post can, and likely will, end up as training data for AI. 'The only winning move is not to play' applies to a lot of things in life, and if you truly want to protect your data then the best move is to not create any data. The second best move is to not share any data that you've created.
Part of why I still hate it at work; work knows almost everything about me. People with poor understanding of PII have my personal information, and use MS products. Microsoft knows all of that, and everything that I type, the notes I make, the phrases I use, inferences on my interests, and can combine that with other profiles. It helps put together a much more complete picture and profile of me and why I interface with. And I can't opt out, can't use Linux, and can't just go somewhere else to avoid it.