Windows 10 has a keylogger?

I just found this story this morning regarding a possible keylogger in Windows 10.

Microsoft hit hard for Enabling Windows 10 built-in keylogger feature

Is this true?

Microsoft's explanation sounds a little hokey...

keystrokes are collected to improve handwriting and pronunciation recognition

Since when do keystrokes improve handwriting? They are two completely different things. And pronunciation refers to the "spoken word".

My setting (in privacy/general) is still set to off.

Even if there is a legitimate explanation from Microsoft, I don't want them monitoring my activities on my laptop. I have all the privacy settings set to "off". If I find one is justifiably needed, I can easily re-activate it. My advice ... just set all the privacy settings to "off". It's just not any of Microsoft's business what I do on my laptop. If they need data for improvement, let them gather it voluntarily, not by using default settings most don't know about.

This is not a new issue, and has been argued about since early in Windows 10's lifetime. It's been discussed in this forum on several occasions.

The point here is that MS needs to send information to their servers to enable certain functionality, because the OS itself does not do the work (their servers do). This is the same thing as how when you use Siri, it actually listens 24x7 to everything going on around it and sends that data to Apple so it can analyze it, looking for commands. In effect, any apple device is essentially a "wiretap" bug. The same is true of Google devices with the "Hey google" feature, or even when you use the voice recognition functions.

MS doesn't retain that information after it is processed, but the privacy policy describes it anyways to be safe. This is just the way cloud services work, and more and more devices are using them.

Mystere said:

The point here is that MS needs to send information to their servers to enable certain functionality, because the OS itself does not do the work (their servers do).

And yet people can go months at a time without an internet connection....heck, there are probably some Windows 10 computers that have never been connected to the internet.

NavyLCDR said:

And yet people can go months at a time without an internet connection....heck, there are probably some Windows 10 computers that have never been connected to the internet.

And those computers aren't benefiting from the cloud services provided. Simply put, modern devices have features that are cloud oriented. The inclusion of those features means that the privacy policy needs to include that, whether or not you're using them.

I ticked almost everything off.