When you try to share content from your personal OneDrive, Microsoft reviews that content for compliance with laws and our policies. In some jurisdictions, Microsoft also conducts a limited review of content when you upload it to your OneDrive.
Moderation and Complaint Handling
If you come across content that you find violates the Microsoft Services Agreement, we encourage you to let us know by using the “Report a concern” menu.
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Select the file you would like to report.
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Select the … to open the menu
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Select “Report a concern” item
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Choose the category that fits the content and enter an optional comment
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Click Report to submit
The report a concern dialog identifies multiple categories of content. If you are not sure which category applies to the content, pick the “other” category. You can type in additional details to assist our moderation team.
Content that applies to these categories:
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Sexually inappropriate – content that depicts gratuitous sexual acts or any sexual violence. This includes pornography.
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Terrorist or violent extremist content - content that promotes or glorifies violent extremists, helps them to recruit, or encourages, glamorizes or enables their activities. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Child sexual exploitation or abuse – content or activity that harms or threatens to harm a child through exploitation, trafficking, extortion, endangerment, or sexualization. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Imminent harm to persons or property – content that is intended to hurt people or property, including to cause or coordinate physical harm. The following content also should be reported in this category:
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Suicide or self-harm – content that advocates, instructs or otherwise encourages/facilitates suicide or self-harm. Self-injury content that demonstrates, praises, or inspires physical harm to oneself, including through cutting, burning, or carving one’s skin. Depressive content that promotes or glorifies feelings of deep sadness, hopelessness, or despair, especially when it may influence vulnerable users. Content that encourages or instructs on eating disorders or systematic over or under-eating. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Dangerous stunts or challenges – content that encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt that is likely to result in serious injury.
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Harmful substances – content that encourages or provides the means for a person to ingest, inject, inhale, or self-administer a physically harmful substance, whether or not that substance is illegal.
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Bullying, harassment, or threats – content that targets a person or group with abusive behavior, content that shames, mocks, or stigmatizes individuals based on body type, weight, physical features, or appearance, or content that encourages violence against other people through violent threats or incitement. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Graphic violence and human or animal gore – content that promotes real-world violence or human gore. This also includes animal cruelty or animal gore. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Hate speech - content that attacks, insults, or degrades a person or group of people because of a protected trait, such as race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, or caste. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Malware or viruses – content that contains harmful software such as viruses, spyware, and malware. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Fraud or spam – spam content that is excessively posted, repetitive, untargeted, unwanted or unsolicited. Fraud content includes any intentional act or omission designed to deceive others to generate personal or financial benefit. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
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Copyright infringement – content that violates or infringes someone else’s copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights. Learn more about Microsoft policy at Digital Safety | Policies.
Actions taken if content is against policy and requesting an appeal
After content is reviewed and if there is a policy violation, we may remove or restrict visibility of content to protect our users. Depending on the type of content violation, this can result in restricting certain features for the user that created or shared the content.
You will receive an email notification of the policy violated and what enforcement action was taken. If content was permanently removed from the service and your Microsoft account suspended, the notification will contain a link to appeal the decision and recover your account.
You have the right to request a review of your content if it was blocked from sharing. When content is blocked from sharing, it will have blocked icon in the file list and a “Request Review” item in the file menu.
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Select the file in the document file list
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Select the … to open the menu
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Select “Request review” item
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Click Submit to request the review
You will be informed through email on the decision and if the content is not violating policy, it will be able to be shared again.
