Microsoft vs Apple

Microsoft's privacy statement covers an enormous product surface — Windows, Office, Azure, Bing, Xbox, and Copilot — and the data practices vary dramatically across them. The umbrella policy is deliberately vague, deferring almost all specifics to product-level documentation. Cross-product data combination, AI model training on your content, and employer/school access to your files and communications are the key risks most consumers don't realise they're accepting.

Apple collects significantly less data than other big tech companies and explicitly commits — using both Nevada and California legal definitions — to never selling or sharing your data for advertising. Their own ad platform doesn't use data brokers or cross-app tracking. Private personal data isn't used to train Apple's AI models. The main caveats are health, fitness, and financial data collection, government ID in some cases, and personalised ads that exist but are easy to turn off.