Viva Microsoft!

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One day in what seems the distant past, Microsoft Cortana starting sending me email messages. I didn’t ask for them; they just started showing up. For
[See the full post at: Viva Microsoft!]

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I find the report of that privacy intrusion horrifying.
Thank goodness for Macs!

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Tom-R, Will Fastie

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PKCano wrote:

I find the report of that privacy intrusion horrifying.

It’s remarkably easy for Will to unsubscribe when he’s finished experimenting with this helpful assistance:

Can I stop receiving these emails?

Yes. To stop receiving these emails, select Unsubscribe at the end of the email footer or unsubscribe at https://cortana.office.com/briefing.

Briefing email from Microsoft Viva FAQ

But there’s really no privacy intrusion as it’s all within your mailbox:

How it works

Briefing emails are personal and private and are only sent to you directly in your mailbox, which cannot be accessed by anybody else in your organization, including your IT admin or your manager. Briefing email data uses Exchange Online email and calendar data and processes and stores any insights or actions inside your Exchange Online mailbox, so data security is built in and enforced by Exchange.

Briefing emails do not include any new personally identifiable information about anybody else in your organization. Your Briefing emails are based on information that you already have access to but can’t quickly aggregate without help. For example, if you want to determine what commitments you made to others, you could manually review each email in your mailbox. The Briefing email helps you avoid this time-consuming process.

How Cortana helps you in Briefing email from Microsoft Viva

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When “Viva Cortana!” starts ordering things off the Internet by itself, it will be too late.

But with the M1 and future custom Apple silicon in Macs, we’re only a few years away from full Mac sentience anyway.  Maybe Apple just respects our privacy enough not to intrude?

 

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Microsoft has always been able to code.  Its just that now they don’t do a very good job of testing the code that gets churned out!

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GreatAndPowerfulTech, Will Fastie

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I actually disable this at my firm.  We actually left it enabled on AskWoody to see how well (or not) it worked.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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b wrote:

It’s remarkably easy for Will to unsubscribe

I unsubscribed from the Cortana emails. Didn’t stop the new Viva thing. When Microsoft switched over, they just started coming. Neither Cortana nor Viva ever asked permission.

b wrote:

But there’s really no privacy intrusion as it’s all within your mailbox:

My mailbox is on Microsoft servers. This couldn’t be done if MS software wasn’t sifting through the content. What’s to prevent a human being from looking at the result? And what’s to prevent some other MS app from doing something with the information?

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AlexEiffel, GreatAndPowerfulTech, plodr, windbg, doriel, Tom-R, Cybertooth, PKCano

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What’s to prevent a human being from looking at the result?

Good question. Especially when:

Neither Cortana nor Viva ever asked permission.

The idea of automated analysis may have good intentions, but at the same time, it brings a lot of questions. This should be definatelly opt-in feature, not ON by default.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

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Alex5723

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Will Fastie wrote:

I unsubscribed from the Cortana emails. Didn’t stop the new Viva thing. When Microsoft switched over, they just started coming. Neither Cortana nor Viva ever asked permission.

Doesn’t each Viva Briefing email contain an unsubscribe link at the bottom?

A user can then select Unsubscribe at the end of any Briefing email to individually opt out.

Privacy guide for Briefing emails

 

Will Fastie wrote:

My mailbox is on Microsoft servers. This couldn’t be done if MS software wasn’t sifting through the content. What’s to prevent a human being from looking at the result? And what’s to prevent some other MS app from doing something with the information?

Wasn’t that information already within your mailbox before the Briefing email summarized it?

If Microsoft wished to profit somehow from knowing that you were looking into something for Brian, couldn’t they have already done that before you got the reminder?

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EricB wrote:

Its just that now they don’t do a very good job of testing the code that gets churned out!

There’s something to that point of view. I’ve made the point about less testing many times. But when a Microsoft App like OneNote doesn’t use the same keyboard shortcuts or UI features that have been a mainstay of MS apps for the last 25 years, it’s not about testing. It’s about design and coding.

And, of course, about subservience to touch as opposed to mouse and keyboard.

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Cybertooth

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PKCano wrote:

Thank goodness for Macs!

Certainly an option, but if you subscribe to Microsoft 365 and you have Macs, Viva’s going to be there, too.

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GreatAndPowerfulTech

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Never will “rent a Microsoft App” (or MS anything, for that matter).

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GreatAndPowerfulTech

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Cortana?

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This morning, Viva’s email buttons worked. It was the Friday edition, where Viva makes recommendations about the use of my time. Among other things, it suggested I spend two hours working to advance my career.

I’m 73. What it should have suggested was a nap.

One of the buttons allowed me to vote on whether the suggestions were helpful.

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Will Fastie wrote:

One of the buttons allowed me to vote on whether the suggestions were helpful.

Did you give thumbs up or thumbs down?

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Can’t Microsoft code any longer?

 

No. MS has not been able to code for years now since they hired people with hacking backgrounds to help them spread telemetry–AKA spyware.

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Will Fastie wrote:

What it should have suggested was a nap.

Disobedient computers need to be re-trained constantly

Amazing Truths Revealed: Link to Simply Magnificent AskWoody Knowledge Bases

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Upon reflection, I probably don’t need to be reminded about naps.

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b wrote:

Did you give thumbs up or thumbs down?

Obviously, I’m not being sarcastic enough. I must work on that.

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