{"id":25502,"date":"2024-11-26T14:10:04","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T22:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/11\/26\/news-19232\/"},"modified":"2024-11-26T14:10:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T22:10:04","slug":"news-19232","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/11\/26\/news-19232\/","title":{"rendered":"Explained: the Microsoft connected experiences controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Recently we&#8217;ve seen some heated discussion about Microsoft\u2019s connected experiences feature. As in many discussions lately there seems to be no room for middle ground, but we&#8217;re going to try and provide it anyway.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, it\u2019s important to understand what the \u201cconnected experiences\u201d are.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft describes it like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cConnected experiences that analyze your content are experiences that use your Office content to provide you with design recommendations, editing suggestions, data insights, and similar features.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If that sounds like auto-correct on steroids, you\u2019re close. You like it or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>But I found that there are two types of connected experiences.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with a locally saved document created in Microsoft 365 (Word). To find the connected experiences settings, you\u2019ll need to<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Click on<strong> File<\/strong> &gt; <strong>Options<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"140\" height=\"160\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/11\/O-3.jpg\" alt=\"File &gt; Options\" class=\"wp-image-123637\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Options<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Select <strong>Trust Center<\/strong> and click on <strong>Trust Center Settings<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"816\" height=\"378\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/11\/TT-2.jpg\" alt=\"Trust Center Settings\" class=\"wp-image-123638\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Trust Center Settings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Select <strong>Privacy Options<\/strong> and click on <strong>Privacy Settings<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"812\" height=\"437\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/11\/PP-1.jpg\" alt=\"Privacy Options &gt; Privacy Settings\" class=\"wp-image-123639\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Privacy Options &gt; Privacy Settings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Then you\u2019ll see three entries for Connected experiences:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Experiences that analyze your content<\/li>\n<li>Experiences that download online content<\/li>\n<li>All connected experiences<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My tinfoil hat warns me that the second one is bound to show up in some vulnerability, but nowhere does it say that anything you produce will be shared with anyone, let alone train an AI model. If anything is worrying in there, it\u2019s the fact that it uses content in your documents to find online information that might be of interest to you.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"763\" height=\"951\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/11\/local_settings.jpg\" alt=\"Connected experiences\" class=\"wp-image-123640\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Connected experiences<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Feel free to turn these options off.<\/p>\n<p>For <strong>online<\/strong> documents created with Microsoft 365 apps it\u2019s a different topic, and depends on what the administrator of the organization that provided it has decided to make available to you.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-apps\/privacy\/optional-connected-experiences\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">overview of optional connected services<\/a> provided by Microsoft says:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cIf you have a work or school account, your organization&#8217;s admin may have provided you with the ability to use one or more cloud-backed services (also referred to as &#8220;optional connected experiences&#8221;) while using the Office apps, like Word or Excel, that are included with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It then goes on to list all the possible optional connected experiences. The settings for these are of the type &nbsp;\u201call or nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You can find these settings if you have a document open in your browser by following the path <strong>File &gt; About &gt; Privacy Settings &gt; Optional connected experiences<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"596\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/11\/Optional_Connected.jpg\" alt=\"Optional connected experiences\" class=\"wp-image-123641\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Optional connected experiences<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The official Microsoft 365 account on X <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Microsoft365\/status\/1861160874993463648\">tweeted<\/a> to say it didn&#8217;t use customer data to train large language models (LLMs)\u2014a type of artificial intelligence (AI) program\u2014in M365 apps:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cIn the M365 apps, we do not use customer data to train LLMs. This setting only enables features requiring internet access like co-authoring a document.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So, turning that option off might result in some lost functionality if you\u2019re working on the same document with other people in your organization.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to turn these settings off for reasons of privacy and you don\u2019t use them much anyway, by all means, do so. The settings can all be found under <strong>Privacy Settings<\/strong> for a reason. But nowhere could I find any indication that these connected experiences were used to train AI models.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background is-style-wide\" \/>\n<p><strong>We don\u2019t just report on threats\u2014we remove them<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/for-home\">downloading Malwarebytes today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2024\/11\/explained-the-microsoft-connected-experiences-controversy\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Microsoft connected experiences have been the subject of heated online discussions. So what are they, and do they train AI with my data? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[32171,10516,32,3245,5897],"class_list":["post-25502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-connected-experiences","tag-microsoft","tag-news","tag-office","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}