Patent 11373003 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on June, 2022 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Aspects of the present disclosure relate to techniques for mitigating inadvertent user information collection in telemetry data. In examples, user information is used to evaluate telemetry data associated prior to transmission to a server device. If an instance of user information is identified within the telemetry data, a warning indication is generated. The warning indication may be transmitted to the server device either instead of or in combination with the telemetry data. As a result of the warning indication, the software may be modified to resolve the issue that caused the introduction of the user information into the telemetry data, thereby avoiding future instances of inadvertent data collection. In response to the warning indication, the server may be configured to reject similar telemetry data from other devices, thereby avoiding collecting such data from the other devices. The server device may also use the warning indication to remove or otherwise censor previously collected user information from stored telemetry data.