In a response to the cries last week about the SmartScreen application sending data to Microsoft, Microsoft has responded to the claims. It’s very good news, although all the worries aren’t resolved.

"We can confirm that we are not building a historical database of program and user IP data," a spokesperson told El Reg. "Like all online services, IP addresses are necessary to connect to our service, but we periodically delete them from our logs. As our privacy statements indicate, we take steps to protect our users’ privacy on the backend. We don’t use this data to identify, contact or target advertising to our users and we don’t share it with third parties."