Austria Orders Microsoft to Stop Tracking Students

VIENNA: (Web Desk) – Austria’s data protection authority has ordered Microsoft to stop using tracking cookies in its education software, a victory for privacy advocates raising concerns over children’s data. The ruling follows complaints filed in 2024 by the European Center for Digital Rights (Noyb), which argued that Microsoft’s widely used school software violated data protection rights for minors.

The Austrian authority, Datenschutzbehörde (DSB), determined that Microsoft lacked a “legal basis” to process students’ personal data and must cease “within four weeks” the use of non-essential cookies, which track user behavior for advertising and other purposes without consent. Last year, DSB had already ruled that students must be granted access to their personal data collected via the software.

Felix Mikolasch, a data protection lawyer at Noyb, said, “Tracking minors clearly isn’t privacy-friendly.” A Microsoft spokesperson stated that the company is reviewing the decision and affirmed that “Microsoft 365 for Education meets all required data protection standards,” adding that educational institutions can continue using it in compliance with EU regulations.

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Since the introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, Noyb has initiated hundreds of legal cases, frequently prompting action from regulators against major tech firms for privacy violations.