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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

#131

Post by morganvachon »

happycube wrote: post #126
morganvachon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a desktop OS, try OpenBSD, Slackware Linux, Debian, or Arch Linux, or if those are too obtuse (they can be difficult for the uninitiated to get into) try Ubuntu or Linux Mint. If you go with Ubuntu you'll want to go to the Security & Privacy tab and disable online search results and tracking. For a smartphone, you have to dig back into the past and find a Nokia N900 or an old-school BlackBerry; anything based on…

What about an Android phone running a AOSP variant without Google Services?

It takes a lot more than cutting Google out of the OS to truly make it secure and private:

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardenin...

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

#133

Post by joshstrange »

time4hn wrote: post #116
ikeboy wrote: post #86

Just changed two rules in Windows Firewall to blocked and it appears to no longer send anything. https://i.imgur.com/a5yu5vb.png Wondering if I should go through all the Windows stuff there and turn them off. Edit: just did (except for Edge and obvious internet related stuff). Is there a way to change Firewall rules with a registry tweak? That would be the ideal way to distribute this.

FYI jug5: it looks like you've been shadow banned for some time now. Sorry for the useless comment that he may not see. I just hate seeing this.

I'd hate seeing it too if this was the result of 1-2 bad comments or a mistake but a quick look through this poster's history shows their "contribution" is hardly better than spam.

Things like:

> No. Way. Everything big business does is for the greater good of man. Not for their own bottom line. Who are you vegetables? [0]

> Why don't you just... Exercise? [1]

> No shit. [2]

> Thanks for that captain obvious [3]

> Hope you go away forever chairman Pao. [4]

> Have you heard women talk? [5]

And many more you can read for yourself. Being shadow banned sucks, no doubt, but this poster is obviously not contributing anything of worth to this site. It was just under a year ago that they appear to have been shadow banned for the last comment and nothing of any real value has been submitted since. So while I'd normally hate seeing this I can't help but think this is exactly what the system was put in place to do. The poster is free to create a new account and try to follow the rules and and realize this isn't reddit.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10031953

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10031725

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9954209

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9915459

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866755

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874811

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

#134

Post by louthy »

mahouse wrote: post #3

Do "normal" applications look blurry on high DPI screens?

It looked OK on my 4K screen when I installed it. I however fairly quickly went back to 8.1. It's soooo slow, lagging mouse pointer slow. There are lots of 'proportion' issues as well that aren't there with 8.1 (task bar too small, title bars too large), I couldn't get the Display settings to anything close to comfortable.

It also looks a mess, mainly the random font sizes, but also the fact that they've tried to modernise everything, like menus, etc. (that they clearly didn't get around to with W8), but there's still aspects that have been forgotten and are in the W7 style. So there's W7+W8+W10 all in one. I didn't mind so much with W8 because 'modern' was 'over there', and W7 with some flat tweaks is 'over here'. But now it's all thrown together. Not pretty.

Then when it would only randomly 'see' certain domains on my work VPN, and just be blind to others, I'd had enough... and bailed. I've never bailed on an OS before, always given it a chance to settle in. W10 just doesn't feel finished.

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

#136

Post by oliyoung »

Macha wrote: post #33
Paul_S wrote: post #8

Reminds me of when canononical did something similar with ubuntu and extended searching your applications to searching merchandise on amazon and other stores. It's really funny when you open the start menu equivalent at work to launch the terminal* and as you type "t" you get to see items you can buy - one of them being "The Simpsons". Genius. * before you complain I use the start menu to launch the terminal: I never…

This behaviour bit me in the ass in work today. Had a new Mac, just installed Polycom (our video conferencing program), typed Polyc out of habit in spotlight to launch it, ended up on the wikipedia page for polycystic ovarian syndrome...

You can change the order (and availability of) Spotlight results in the System Prefs http://imgur.com/iElMwe7

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

#137

Post by dripton »

anigbrowl wrote: post #93
mackal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free as in freedom, not beer. You can look at the code of the free software, therefore tell if it's phoning home or not. More importantly, changing it.

How many people have the time or inclination to validate everything that way?

Not many, but the effort is parallelizable. If you find a security problem and report it in public, others can verify it, and still others can benefit from the fix even if they never would have bothered to look for themselves.

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

#138

Post by ashmud »

ikeboy wrote: post #86

Just changed two rules in Windows Firewall to blocked and it appears to no longer send anything. https://i.imgur.com/a5yu5vb.png Wondering if I should go through all the Windows stuff there and turn them off. Edit: just did (except for Edge and obvious internet related stuff). Is there a way to change Firewall rules with a registry tweak? That would be the ideal way to distribute this.

You can use "netsh advfirewall firewall" commands to view rules. And you can use "netsh exec" to execute a script to modify rules. Unfortunately the "dump" command is not implemented, so there is some work involved to turn the "show rule" output into a script.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd734783%28v=ws....

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

#140

Post by mikegioia »

ptx wrote: post #130
mikegioia wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if there's any solution or if privacy is just a remnant of the past. This always irritates me when I see it (not specific to you). It's not a remnant of the past and there is of course a solution! The solution is trading some of the conveniences you think you need. The solution is for once trying something other than what you're used to. The reason why you (and everyone else who thinks this way) feel the…

> There are new phones coming out like Ubuntu's and Mozilla's that, while not perfect, absolutely are better alternatives. The last time I checked, Mozilla's Firefox OS phones appeared to be sending all home screen search queries to some unknown company in Israel, with no clear way to disable it.

Where did you hear that? I'm unaware and couldn't find anything about it.
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