Microsoft Online Privacy Statement
(last updated May 2008)

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 Web sites 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. Some products and services mentioned in this statement may not be available in all markets at this time.

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 postcode, age, gender, preferences, interests and favourites. 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, which 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 Windows Live ID or Microsoft Passport Network credentials. 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 alternative e-mail 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 interaction with Microsoft sites and services. For example, we may use website analytics tools on our site to retrieve information from your browser, including the site you came from, the search engine(s) and the keywords you used to find our site, the pages you view within our site, your browser add-ons and your browser's width and height. We may also use technologies, such as cookies and web beacons (described below), to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on our sites and services. 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. We also deliver advertisements (see the Display of Advertising section below) and provide Web site analytics tools on non-Microsoft sites and services, and we may collect information about page views on these third party sites as well.

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