Microsoft is committed to protecting your privacy. Please read the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement below and also any supplemental information listed to the right for additional details about particular Microsoft sites and services that you may use.

This Microsoft Online Privacy Statement applies to data collected by Microsoft through the majority of its websites and services, as well as its offline product support services. It does not apply to those Microsoft sites, services and products that do not display or link to this statement or that have their own privacy statements.

Collection of Your Personal Information

At some Microsoft sites, we ask you to provide personal information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address or telephone number. We may also collect demographic information, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites. If you choose to make a purchase or sign up for a paid subscription service, we will ask for additional information, such as your credit card number and billing address, that is used to create a Microsoft billing account.

In order to access some Microsoft services, you will be asked to sign in with an e-mail address and password, which we refer to as your credentials. In most cases, these credentials will be part of the Windows Live ID or Microsoft Passport Network credential.  You can use the same credentials to sign in to many different Microsoft sites and services, as well as those of select Microsoft partners. By signing in on one Microsoft site or service, you may be automatically signed into other Microsoft sites and services. If you access our services via a mobile phone, you may also use your telephone number and a PIN as an alternative credential to your username and password. As part of creating your credentials, you may also be requested to provide questions and secret answers, which we use to help verify your identity and assist in resetting your password, as well as an alternate email address. Some services may require added security, and in these cases, you may be asked to create an additional security key. Finally, a unique ID number will be assigned to your credentials which will be used to identify your credentials and associated information.

We may collect information about your visit, including the pages you view, the links you click and other actions taken in connection with Microsoft sites and services. We also deliver advertisements and provide website analytics tools on non-Microsoft sites and services, and we may collect information about page views on these third party sites as well.  Much of this third party ad delivery is done through our Atlas subsidiary, and you may read the Atlas privacy statement at http://www.atlassolutions.com/privacy.aspx.  Additionally, we collect certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, browser type and language, access times and referring Web site addresses.

When you receive newsletters or promotional e-mail from Microsoft, we may use web beacons (described below), customized links or similar technologies to determine whether the e-mail has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused e-mail communications or other information.

In order to offer you a more consistent and personalized experience in your interactions with Microsoft, information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined with information obtained through other Microsoft services. We may also supplement the information we collect with information obtained from other companies. For example, we may use services from other companies that enable us to derive a general geographic area based on your IP address in order to customize certain services to your geographic area.

Use of Your Personal Information

Microsoft collects and uses your personal information to operate and improve its sites and deliver the services or carry out the transactions you have requested. These uses may include providing you with more effective customer service; making the sites or services easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information; performing research and analysis aimed at improving our products, services and technologies; and displaying content and advertising that are customized to your interests and preferences.

Many of the websites and online services we offer are supported by advertising, and as indicated above, we may use some of the information we collect in order to personalize the ads we show you.  However, we designed our systems to select ads based only on data that does not personally and directly identify you.  For example, we may select the ads we display according to certain general interest categories or segments that we have inferred based on (a) demographic data, including any you may have provided when creating an account (e.g. age, zip or postal code, gender), general demographic data acquired from other companies, and a general geographic location derived from your IP address, (b) the pages you view and links you click when using Microsoft’s and its partners’ web sites and services, and (c) the search terms you enter when using Microsoft’s Internet search services, such as Live Search. 

When we display personalized ads, we take a number of steps designed to protect your privacy.  For example, we store page views, clicks and search terms used for ad personalization separately from your contact information or other data that directly identifies you (such as your name, e-mail address, etc.).  Further, we have built in technological and process