It looks pretty creepy.
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I guess that would be for the personal Outlook accounts, not the Office365 ones which are under enterprise agreements. Apart from that, I see nothing that I would not expect from a free email service. If Google is not doing that with Gmail is because they basically own the programmatic advertisement arena with Google Marketing Platform so they would need fewer advertising partners.
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What do you mean personal Outlook accounts? I pay for a home Office 365 account and that version of Outlook is identical to the free version for the masses as far as I can tell. The thing is I expect Google to sell my info, that’s why they exist, I don’t expect that from MS. Or should I say, I didn’t expect that from MS. Them trying to force MSN type stuff into Windows 11 and generally being extremely annoying now makes me wish for a paid version of Windows that was less annoying. (Maybe I want the Pro version?)
I’ve seen this reported in numerous places and ALL linking back to that Proton article. I’ve yet to see any independent coverage of this issue. Remember, Proton are in the business of selling secure email (and other services) so are a competitor to Microsoft.
If it’s such a big deal, I wonder why it’s not making it into mainstream security reporting.
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It’s completely believable though. Microsoft is definitely pivoting to that kind of company.
Edit: I have Outlook on all my devices, because I used to use it more, and liked it. Then they added a feature called “Channels”. On one iPad, and only that one iPad there is a Channel for MSN (they call it something else). You can hide it, but you can’t remove it. I did a bunch of searching and couldn’t find anything on it, so best I can tell it’s something they must be testing and that iPad was picked.
For non-Windows 11 users here, they turned the weather app, which used to be good little app comparable to Apple’s app, into a widget. But when you click it, it’s not a link to weather, it’s all MSN click bait articles. They also added some of this to the suggested area of the Start menu (although I haven’t seen that because I turned it off immediately). All of it you can turn off/hide at least.
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Sorry, I was equating “personal” accounts with “free” accounts where I would expect that data selling (with the mandatory user opt-in, at least in Europe).
For corporate users there is no way a multibillion company would allow their employees activity to be tracked by Microsoft or any of their “data partners”.
Yes, my work is on Windows 10 and Office365 and the version of Outlook is very different than the home version. I don’t think that version of Outlook is even available to the home user anymore. Not that the free version of Outlook is bad, I quite like it, but as I said, MS is changing, so I stopped using it.
Back in the day when I was an MCSE certified email consultant employed b a large multinational computer manufacturer Outlook was known amongst my colleagues as Lookout. See nothing has change in the intervening years.
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The other one we use is Outhouse.
I certainly don’t have trouble believing Microsoft would do icky stuff like this, but the apparent lack of independent reporting is a bad smell for the story.
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Here’s an interesting development…
Possibly clarifying here, “the new Outlook for Windows” seems to be Microsoft’s FREE email client that replaces the default Windows Mail app. It comes with a free web-based usage tier of apps like Word, Excel, etc. as well.
From the Microsoft Answers site:
As stated, the: new Outlook" is not intended as a replacement of the Outlook desktop program. It is a replacement for those using the Win 10 / 11 Mail / People / Calendar app. It doesn’t come close to offering the features of the Outlook desktop app
From the sounds of it, Microsoft is monetizing data in exchange for free access to various things. And that’s disconnected from their paid 365 offering.
There might be differences under the hood and they might treat my email different behind the scenes, but the paid desktop version of Outlook I have looks exactly the same as the free version on Windows 11. Which looks nothing like the the Windows 10 version I use at work. When MS turned Outlook into a web wrapper (I think that’s the term for an app that isn’t a real stand alone app, it’s just a web page) its look and functions drastically changed.
it’s funny because old MS got busted for them forcing IE on us, but it is far worse now. They are trying to make OneDrive/Teams/Edge (and now Copilot) a fundamental part of Windows 11 and they are constantly sending little reminders to let you know.
Edit to add a side note: On Windows 10 the web version of Outlook looks exactly the same as the stand alone desktop app, but it is much faster to use. My desktop version is very sluggish and slow compared to the web app. I only use it because if I use the web version I always feel like I am having to manage Edge windows and end up closing it on accident 10x a day.
The main issue is that once you log into Outlook with any non-Microsoft account, it is apparently the Microsoft Cloud that has your credentials (for your Gmail or any other account) and it does all the syncing, passing the messages on to the Outlook client. The Outlook client is now not much of a ‘client’, talking just to Microsoft cloud for all your accounts – so they don’t just have your stored credentials (or tokens) but are actually syncing your Gmail account to their cloud first.
It has been that way on iOS for quite a while (you need to allow Microsoft cloud to sync with Gmail – and it will mess up your contacts list on Gmail while doing so), and now it seems to work the same way on the desktop, according to these reports.
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Well at least they finally have “feature parity across platforms.” 
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Not that anyone here really cares, but I immediately thought of this thread: my Window’s machine with Office 365 Outlook just had a banner across the top saying “Windows Mail/Calendar/Contacts is becoming Outlook in 2024”. I looked at the title bar to be sure I was already running Outlook, yep I was. So why do I have a banner about Windows Mail? There was a new button to switch to Outlook 2024 though, hit that and I got the new version (it just restarted). No idea what changed.
What-is-what is all just one big mess with Microsoft now. The line between free and paid is blurring.