What Windows Phone 7 sends in its Feedback Data




With recent talk of the Windows Phone 7 data bug and whether it is caused by enabling "Send Feedback" or not, an interesting discovery has been unearthed. Rafael Rivera from the Within Windows blog has posted about the information sent in the Software Quality Management service, the service that the Send Feedback option reports to. When packet sniffing the information sent by the phone, some interesting information was discovered, including the fact that your email domain name is sent to Microsoft on a repeated basis. The information sent includes (quote):

Phone make, model (e.g. Samsung SGH-i917)
Operating system build string (e.g. 7004.WM7_7.0_Ship(mojobld).20100916-1429)
Carrier (e.g. AT&T US)
Carrier support information (e.g. http://www.att.com/devicesupport, 1-800-331-0500)
Email domain names (not entire addresses) configured (e.g. withinwindows.com, contoso.com)
Entire contents of the equivalent services file on Windows Phone (e.g. \\etc\\services)
Name of enabled email services (e.g. Windows Live, Google)
Processes and configured SIDs running on the device (e.g. servicesd.exe, clocknot.exe, …)
While none of this information is personally identifiable (unless you're one of us who owns their own domain name, in which case it potentially is), it is interesting to think about what possible use Microsoft could have for this information. Thankfully, the transmitted data is reported to be between 1kb and 6kb, which is does not amount for any significant data charges.

Hopefully, this information sent will help Microsoft focus on getting quality updates to their users in the future.

Source: (WP7Central)

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