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Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

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Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#71
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. These days we have to protect ourselves more from our own software than from viruses. Assume any software is a trojan horse, even the OS.

Or you could use free software.

Counterexample: Ubuntu sending local file system searches off to Amazon because apparently online shopping and file searching are things you want to do simultaneously.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#73

Is it really necessary to use a host that requires JavaScript to display an image? Anyway, I've confirmed this. I've disabled web search and all of the other privacy options I've seen with Windows 10 during and after install. As soon as the first character is typed into the Windows 10 search box, the request goes out to www.bing.com. It doesn't say what you searched for (as the request happens before you complete the…

Yea i don't like this image hosting service either. I'm on some bad wifi atm and it actually froze my UI for a minute.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#74

This also happens on iOS with spotlight. As far as I can tell there's no way to turn it off. Source: MITM your iOS traffic. Sidenote -- a possibly unforeseen side effect of end to end encryption everywhere is that it makes it far more difficult to man in the middle your traffic and hold companies accountable for their privacy policies.

It's pretty simple if the OS you're using allows you to install a trusted root CA certificate.

Doesn't work with cert pinning.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple if the OS you're using allows you to install a trusted root CA certificate.

Except apps like this should probably not be using the OS CA store, and instead just pin their own CA cert. Doesn't seem to be the case here but in general I think pinning is getting more adoption, isn't it?

Not really, heck, on Android and iOS around 40% of banking apps don't even check the certificate at all.

Most people, even most developers seem to be pretty clueless with this stuff.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#76
Here's a list of servers Windows 10 contacts on startup. There are probably more, but these are the ones that showed up.

BN1WNS2011508.wns.windows.com

OneSettings-bn2.metron.live.com.nsatc.net

a978.i6g1.akamai.net

americas2.notify.windows.com.akadns.net

any.edge.bing.com

bingads.microsoft.com

bl3302.storage.live.com

bl3302geo.storage.dkyprod.akadns.net

client.wns.windows.com

corp.sts.microsoft.com

diagnostics.support.microsoft.com

directory.services.live.com

directory.services.live.com.akadns.net

dns.msftncsi.com

en-us.appex-rf.msn.com

fe3.delivery.dsp.mp.microsoft.com.nsatc.net

fe3.delivery.mp.microsoft.com

i1.services.social.microsoft.com

i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net

ipv6.msftncsi.com

ipv6.msftncsi.com.edgesuite.net

login.live.com

login.live.com.nsatc.net

pre.footprintpredict.com

register.mesh.com

settings-win.data.microsoft.com

settings.data.glbdns2.microsoft.com

skyapi.live.net

skyapi.skyprod.akadns.net

skydrive.wns.windows.com

ssw.live.com

ssw.live.com.nsatc.net

statsfe1.ws.microsoft.com

travel.tile.appex.bing.com

v10.vortex-win.data.metron.life.com.nsatc.net

v10.vortex-win.data.microsoft.com

watson.telemetry.microsoft.com

watson.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net

wildcard.appex-rf.msn.com.edgesuite.net

win10.ipv6.microsoft.com

win10.ipv6.microsoft.com.nsatc.net

wns.notify.windows.com.akadns.net

www.bing.com

www.bingads.microsoft.com

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple if the OS you're using allows you to install a trusted root CA certificate.

Except apps like this should probably not be using the OS CA store, and instead just pin their own CA cert. Doesn't seem to be the case here but in general I think pinning is getting more adoption, isn't it?

What do you mean "apps like this" ? The OP is talking about the Windows 10 OS, which uses the OS CA store.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#78

I wish this was happening on my machine so I could investigate, but it's not. Searches in Start ask if I want to search the web then open a browser. I have the default search settings.

I can confirm this: it also does not happen on my machine.

However, it does download some app images that are displayed in my start menu for apps that are advertised in a "play and explore" category in the Start menu.

If I select Settings in the search menu it says "Online search isn't supported in your region". I can enable Online Search, but even then I need to explicitly select "Web" as opposed to the default "My Stuff" before it opens a browser and connects to Bing.

This machine including privacy settings was migrated from Windows 8.1. When I installed that I selected custom settings and disabled most of the privacy sensitive settings.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#80

This also happens on iOS with spotlight. As far as I can tell there's no way to turn it off. Source: MITM your iOS traffic. Sidenote -- a possibly unforeseen side effect of end to end encryption everywhere is that it makes it far more difficult to man in the middle your traffic and hold companies accountable for their privacy policies.

Privacy is a double-edged sword. If you want perfect privacy, you also throw away a lot of potential optimizations.

For example, you may leak information about sites recently visited, updates applied, etc. if you have a local proxy cache and subsequently look at response timings.

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