As I was browsing away, my IE crashed. Vista then asked me if I wanted to send collected data to Microsoft. I said yes.

This is when I started thinking what information is being collected from my computer and how is it used. A quick search resulted in a pleasant surprise.

The surprise was how much information is published about each feature of Vista, what information it collects, processes and transmits. How the information is used by Microsoft and what choices users have.

If you are an Enterprise administrator and ask, forget Vista, tell me how do I control communications from my Windows Server 2008 machines. What features of Windows Server 2008 communicate to Internet and how the information flows? What ports do they use? What if I want to prevent Windows Server 2008 from communicating over Internet to satisfy my organization’s security requirements?

Well, I am glad to inform Microsoft has provided detailed documentation on this as well. you can access it here.

I like it the way the documentation is clearly defining each component and how it communicates back to company servers, information collected and choices users are provided with. I have yet to find such details from other vendors.

I don’t believe anyone reading this post would not care about privacy policy. For those who don’t, I would let you read the quote below.

Quote of the day:
An ignorant person is one who doesn’t know what you have just found out. – Will Rogers