Microsoft vs Standard Notes

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.

Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted note-taking app that genuinely cannot read your notes; analytics are self-hosted via Plausible with no IP retention, apps collect zero usage data or location, and the subprocessor list is short and transparent — the main weaknesses are US jurisdiction and AWS hosting, the absence of published security audit reports, a thin policy that lacks GDPR rights language, and email marketing enabled by default.