Get the weekly research letter
Companies change their terms quietly. We read every version and catch what actually changed. One email a week on the changes that matter and what they mean. No account.
The statement requires parental consent for account creation by children under 13 (or a higher age where required by local law), prohibits personalized advertising to users identified as under 18, and limits data collection from children to what is necessary for the product. Parents can revoke consent and access or delete child data through the privacy dashboard.
This analysis describes what Microsoft's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
This provision establishes the conditions under which children's accounts may be created and the data protections applied to users under 18, including a blanket prohibition on personalized advertising to users identified as minors based on their Microsoft account birthdate. Parent and guardian controls are available through the Microsoft Family Safety tools and privacy dashboard.
The updated privacy statement removes the previous detailed list of third-party sources from which Microsoft obtains personal data, including data brokers, public social media posts, location service providers, co-branded partners, and developers. Under the revised language, Microsoft describes obtaining data from 'Microsoft affiliates, subsidiaries, and third parties' without specifying the categories or types of third parties as explicitly as before. The company states it has reorganized the document for greater clarity and accessibility, but the operational effect is that users receive less specific disclosure about where their data originates from outside Microsoft.
View change record →The updated policy establishes additional grounds on which Microsoft may retain personal data. While the prior version tied retention to specific user expectations and available deletion controls, the revised language authorizes retention for 'operating our business, meeting our contractual and legal obligations, improving and developing our products and services, protecting the safety and security of our systems and customers, and resolving disputes.' This expands the stated purposes beyond transaction fulfillment and legal compliance. The updated policy directs users to product-specific documentation for retention details rather than providing explicit deletion procedures and timelines in the privacy statement itself.
View change record →The updated policy now grounds data retention in five broad business purposes: operating the business, meeting contractual and legal obligations, improving and developing products and services, protecting system and customer safety, and resolving disputes. Previously, the policy articulated specific criteria for determining retention periods, including customer expectations for retention until manual deletion, availability of automated deletion controls, and data sensitivity. The revised language removes these granular criteria and instead requires users to consult individual product documentation to understand when their specific data will be deleted. This shifts the burden of finding retention timelines from the main policy statement to separate product-specific documents.
View change record →Under this provision, children under 13 require verifiable parental consent to create a Microsoft account, and Microsoft commits not to deliver personalized advertising to users whose account identifies them as under 18. Parents can view, manage, and delete child data via the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard and request account deletion through the close your account form.
Cross-platform context
See how other platforms handle Children's Data and Parental Consent Framework and similar clauses.
Compare across platforms →Monitoring
Microsoft has changed this document before.
Receive same-day alerts, structured change summaries, and monitoring for up to 25 platforms.
"When a child is under 13-or a higher age if required in their region-the child will need consent from their parent or guardian to create a Microsoft account. Parents can change or revoke consent at any time. For users under the age of 13 or as specified by law in their jurisdiction, certain Microsoft products and services will either block users under that age or require parental or guardian consent or authorization before use, including when creating an account. We will not knowingly ask children under the age of consent to provide more data than is necessary to provide the product. As mentioned in the Advertising section, we do not deliver personalized advertising to children whose birthdate in their Microsoft account identifies them as under 18 years of age.Excerpt from Microsoft's Privacy Statement (Legacy)
(1) REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: This provision implicates COPPA (U.S.), which requires verifiable parental consent for collection of personal data from children under 13, and is enforced by the FTC. GDPR Article 8 requires member state-defined age thresholds (13-16) for digital services consent, with parental authorization required below the threshold. The UK Children's Code (Age Appropriate Design Code) imposes additional protections for users under 18 on UK online services. The statement's commitment not to deliver personalized advertising to under-18 users engages the advertising restrictions under COPPA and relevant state laws. (2) GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: Medium. The framework aligns with COPPA requirements and discloses parental access and deletion mechanisms. The statement's reliance on the account birthdate as the mechanism for identifying minors eligible for advertising protections creates governance exposure where users provide inaccurate birthdates, as protections would not apply. (3) JURISDICTION FLAGS: U.S. users under 13 are subject to COPPA; the FTC is the primary enforcement authority. EU/EEA users under the applicable member state age threshold are subject to GDPR Article 8 protections. UK users under 18 are subject to the UK Children's Code. The statement acknowledges that the age threshold may be higher than 13 in certain regions, reflecting these varying legal requirements. (4) CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: K-12 educational institutions using Microsoft 365 Education benefit from specific contractual commitments in the statement, including prohibitions on selling student data, using student data for advertising, and building student profiles for non-educational purposes. These commitments should be verified in applicable agreements for educational procurement. (5) COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Compliance teams should evaluate age verification mechanisms across Microsoft consumer products to assess adequacy under COPPA and GDPR Article 8. The 60-day account deletion waiting period for child accounts should be documented in data subject rights response procedures. Parental access and deletion tools via the privacy dashboard should be tested for functionality and accessibility.
Full institutional analysis
Regulatory citations, enforcement risk, and due diligence action items.
Monitor: same-day alerts on the platforms you choose. Analyst: full institutional analysis.
Compliance Governance Intelligence
Need to monitor specific governance provisions?
Compliance includes provision-level monitoring, governance timelines, regulatory mapping, and audit-ready analysis.
Built from archived source documents, structured governance mappings, and historical version tracking.
This provision establishes the conditions under which children's accounts may be created and the data protections applied to users under 18, including a blanket prohibition on personalized advertising to users identified as minors based on their Microsoft account birthdate. Parent and guardian controls are available through the Microsoft Family Safety tools and privacy dashboard.
Under this provision, children under 13 require verifiable parental consent to create a Microsoft account, and Microsoft commits not to deliver personalized advertising to users whose account identifies them as under 18. Parents can view, manage, and delete child data via the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard and request account deletion through the close your account form.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft.