Word 365 is making me choose “personalize” or “don’t personalize” offers

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Just now when I launched Word 365 on my laptop, I saw a large popup with “Your privacy, your choice” and a “Next” button. When I click the button I then see another popup that says “Microsoft can show you personalized offers and discounts for Microsoft products” etc. The only choices are “Personalize” and “Don’t personalize”. It also says regardless which choice I make, I may still receive offers but they may not be as relevant to me. This is extortion. Why don’t they give me the choice to receive NO offers?

I am not able to use Word at all until I dismiss this notice by clicking one of the buttons.

Is there a registry hack that will make this notice go away? If not I guess I will click “Personalize” because if I am going to get offers anyway they might as well be relevant to me but it makes me mad that Microsoft even collects these data because when I first installed Windows and Office I said to NOT collect personal information.

Thanks,
Don

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OscarCP

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Snoopdon wrote:

This is extortion.

Er, no.

extortion

NOUN

the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

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b wrote:

Snoopdon wrote:

This is extortion.

Er, no.

extortion

NOUN

the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

extortion

the practice of pushing “Personalize” ads in order to make money, with no choice to decline.

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Snoopdon

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Alex5723 wrote:

b wrote:

Snoopdon wrote:

This is extortion.

Er, no.

extortion

NOUN

the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

extortion

the practice of pushing “Personalize” ads in order to make money, with no choice to decline.

Yeah, that’s how MS rolls. The thing that irks me about it is that you cannot use the app (Word, Excel, Outlook) until you click one of the two buttons. In the past when MS rolled out some new “feature” you could just decline, or put it off until some future date and still be able to use the app, but there is no declining this. That is one aspect of it that is extortion. But it is an even more pernicious form of extortion that, whichever button I click, I will STILL receive offers. There is no way for me to say I don’t want to receive offers. So I have the choice of clicking “Don’t pers0nalize” and receiving offers that are completely unhelpful to me or I can click “Personalize” and receive offers and discounts (OOH, DISCOUNTS!) that **MAY** be helpful to me. As Mike_884 mentioned in the thread linked by Imacri, MS already collects some data on how we use Windows and Office products, so why not click the Personalize button to receive offers/discounts based on these data (and maybe more if I click the button) that are actually helpful to me? I just don’t like that MS doesn’t offer a third option which is “Don’t send me ANY offers and don’t collect data”. But they are the 800 lb gorilla and you can either do as they want or you can choose to use some other products like Google Docs. I have used Google Docs and I can tell you that it is definitely not an attractive alternative for me.

Oh well, I will probably just bend over for MS and click the “Personalize” button. It just galls me that MS cares so little about their paying customers (I pay $99/year for Microsoft 365) that they will force them to choose between a bad thing and a worse thing.

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Alex5723 wrote:

extortion

the practice of pushing “Personalize” ads in order to make money, with no choice to decline.

That fails the definition of extortion on both the “obtaining money” and “by force/threat” requirements.

A choice to decline personalized ads is exactly why this Office screen appears.

Extortion [Wikipedia]

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I decline Wikipedia’s definition for ‘extortion’.

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Alex5723 wrote:

I decline Wikipedia’s definition for ‘extortion’.

Why do you feel the need to redefine English language?

Good luck if you ever decide to do so in a court of law.

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Ok, let me explain this in a way that maybe you will understand. Microsoft is going to make money from sending me offers whether I click “Personalize” or “Don’t personalize”. But if Microsoft really cared about their customers they would provide a third button labeled “Don’t send me ANY offers” and just let me use the apps for which I have already paid Microsoft. That is the money part of it. Regarding the force/threat part of the definition, Microsoft is FORCING me to click one of these two buttons before I can use the apps for which I am paying them $99.99 per year. Once again, if they cared about their customers they would allow me to just click “dismiss” or click a button labeled “Don’t send me offers” and let me use Word, Excel and Outlook, for which I have already paid Microsoft. Unless I click “Personalize” or “Don’t personalize” I am not able to use the apps for which I have paid. That is force/intimidation. You say “A choice to decline personalized ads is exactly why this Office screen appears.” That is a FALSE CHOICE. It is like when the guy from the mafia goes into a china shop and says to the owner “Gee you have a lot of nice things in here. It would be a shame if it all got smashed. We can offer to protect you from that risk if you just pay us $100 a week”. Now the shop owner has the choice of paying the mafia $100 a week or getting all his inventory smashed. They don’t offer him the choice of “go away and don’t bother me again”. I guess there is no registry hack to make this notice go away, so I’ll have to suck it up and click one of the buttons. I posted here, hoping to get technical advice, because this is a community of Microsoft experts. My intent was not to start a flame war/political discussion about the meaning of a word.

Thanks,
Don

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If you sincerely believe that Microsoft demanded money from you by means of some threat then you should report it to the police as that would be a criminal offence. Otherwise you should stop using the word “extortion” for being offered a choice of telemetry levels which enabled you to express a preference.

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access-mdb

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Hi Snoopdon:

I recently saw the same pop-up in my when I opened MS Outlook 2019 (part of my MS Office Home and Business 2019 Click-to Run suite).  I clicked the blue “Don’t Personalize” button in the pop-up and then confirmed my MS Office privacy setting at File | Office Account | Account Privacy | Manage Settings | Personalize Offers and Discounts for Microsoft Products | Turn On Personalized Offers (a setting I can access from any MS Office program like MS Outlook, MS Excel, etc.) was DISABLED, and I haven’t been bothered again by this pop-up.

See my 18-Mar-2022 post in Chris Thrasher’s thread At startup, a Microsoft window appeared. There was a question “Personalize offers and discounts for Microsoft products”? in the MS Answers forum for screen shots and further details.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H2 build 19044.1586 * Firefox v98.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2202.4-1.1.19000.8 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.7.186-1.0.1645 * MS Office Home and Business 2019 (Version 2203, Build 15028.20160 Click-to-Run)

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I have never seen this particular popup from any of my or my clients Office 365 edition software. (A mix of E3, E5, and some business standard and premium editions.)

Are you willing to let us know which version / edition of the subscription plan you are using to license the Office applications?  Is is a personal or family paid plan?  Or the “Free” edition?

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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I have a subscription to “Microsoft 365 Family”. That is what it is called on my Microsoft account page after I log in. This is not through my employer. I have been retired since November of 2018. I purchased the subscription in March of 2021.  According to the login page on my MS account, he subscription includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, OneNote, ToDo, Family Safety, Calendar and Skype. I only use Word, Excel, Outlook and OneDrive. I am seeing the popups shown in the attachments above when I open Word, Excel and Outlook. As I mentioned, I am not allowed to use the apps unless I click one of the two buttons. I only started seeing these yesterday. I saw them in Word and Excel on the laptop in my music studio at my house in the middle of the day. Then I went to my office in another part of the house and was able to use those apps but about 1 or 2 hours later the notices appeared on that computer as well. My wife, with whom I am sharing the license (you can use it on up to 5 computers), has not seen these popups yet on her computer in another room in our house. I think it is common with Microsoft that certain changes like this are rolled out over time. I expect my wife will see the popups sometime in the next week or so.

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NetDef

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Well . . .  that’s super annoying!  A paid subscription, personal, family, or business, should be free of any advertisements in my humble opinion.

I would totally tolerate it for a free product – devs have to make a living somehow.

Then again, this is also starting to happen in paid (full retail) editions of other things like the OS.  🙁

Not liking this bright new future much.

 

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Further to my post # 2437364, the Microsoft support article Personalized Offers and Discounts Based on How You Use Office gives examples of the type of data that will be collected and type of offers you will see if you answer “Personalize” in the popup (i.e., if you agree to the data collection and ENABLE the MS Office privacy setting at File | Office Account | Account Privacy | Manage Settings | Personalize Offers and Discounts for Microsoft Products | Turn On Personalized Offers). If you choose “Don’t Personalize” in the popup then that setting will be DISABLED and the data will not be collected.

The pop-up and the “Personalize Offers and Discounts for Microsoft Products” section of your MS Office Privacy settings should both have links to relevant Microsoft support articles (highlighted in green in the images below).

I don’t like the fact that you cannot use your MS Office product until you  select “Personalize” or “Don’t Personalize” in this pop-up, but I’m happy that Microsoft at least gave me the option to decline this data collection instead of automatically opting me in.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H2 build 19044.1586 * Firefox v98.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2202.4-1.1.19000.8 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.7.186-1.0.1645 * MS Office Home and Business 2019 (Version 2203, Build 15028.20160 Click-to-Run)

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NetDef

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Like a good little consumer, I clicked “Personalize” and only had to click one more button to dismiss the “Congratulations on drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid” message. I’m starting to feel the Kook-Aid rush already.

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