STOP MICROSOFT’S PROGRAMS WATCHING YOU
Microsoft Office
Office has many privacy options that let you control what information it sends back to Microsoft’s servers. But, because these options are buried deep within the program’s sub-menus, most will remain unused. To find them, click File, Options, Trust Center and then the Trust Center Settings button. Click Privacy Options (at the bottom of the left-hand column) to see a list of options with tickboxes.
In Office 2013, untick ‘Send us information about your use and performance of Office software to help improve your Microsoft experience’. In Office 2016, you should untick ‘Send personal information to Microsoft to make improvements to Office’. Office 2016 users should also untick ‘Let Office connect to online services from Microsoft to provide functionality that’s relavant to your usage and preferences’. This stops the program sharing your personal details with Microsoft’s online services like Bing Maps, Insights and Bing Weather.
Depending on how you initially set up Office, you might be including more of your personal information in your documents than you realise. Hidden information (known as metadata) is stored in all Office documents. To see it in a Word document, right-click it, then select Properties. In the Properties window that appears, click the Details tab and scroll down to see the names, dates and history associated with that file.
This info can be useful if you like to keep records of such data yourself. But it’s a good idea to remove it if you want to share the document or post it online. To remove the data (you may want to make a copy of the original for your own reference), open the document, click File, Info, ‘Check for Issues’, then Inspect Document (see screenshot left). Click Yes when prompted and the Document Inspector window will open. Leave all the boxes ticked and click Inspect.
After a few seconds you’ll see a report detailing all hidden information within the document, which includes metadata and any hidden text. It will be flagged up with an exclamation mark and a brief description.