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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

#191

Post by jevgeni »

RunawayGalaxy wrote: post #183
jevgeni wrote: post #175

I wonder how many people here complaining about privacy have frequent flyer cards or valued customer cards?

Opting into a FF program is voluntarily exchanging your personal info and loyalty to a brand for benefits in pricing. How is that the same as an OS uploading your information from a local search by default in an opt-out model? I'm really not trying to be snarky, I genuinely think I'm missing some point here.

I don't think this is a defining difference here. Sure, doing something by default without telling the customer seems sneaky, but its impact is small in comparison to other leaky privacy products most people use.

What I understand about the matter, the information sent is a regularly regenerated random ID and some machine information. Compare that with a Tesco's Clubcard or Walmart's Credit Card: given the information you provide them with, these companies may know what you eat, how much you spend, where you live. They can judge your income, they can project your financial situation into the future, and they probably know when you go on holiday. And I don't really think people opting in on those products really understand these implications.

I think this issue is overblown only due to it belonging in the area, where most commenters here work. As I see it, there are business practices way more harmful to privacy than this, but are happily ignored by the pop-privacy crowd just because they are convenient and have been in place for a long time.

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

#192

Post by jackweirdy »

x5n1 wrote: post #165
Istof wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it even possible to get perfect privacy with a smart phone?

Nobody cares about perfect privacy, but people do care about Total Information Awareness. This is going in TIA direction, in fact it's already there. It's sickening. So I am happy to be a Linux user, and it's the right time to switch. Say goodbye to your corporate overlords and come on down here. The privacy is fine.

The parent comment was in the context of smartphones though. Do you have a smartphone & how happy are you with the privacy it gives you?

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

#193

Post by creshal »

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?

It doesn't take many. The problem is making sure that someone is doing it (cf., OpenSSL).

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

#194

Post by blackbeard »

ikeboy wrote: post #121
blackbeard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use Powershell: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj554843%28v=wps... You can get the rules and enable/disable them easily.

Thanks! Typing > New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Search" -Direction Outbound -Action Block -Profile "Domain, Private, Public" -Program "C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe" in elevated Powershell should work.

Please note that the manifest id above (cw5n1h2txyewy) may change if they update the app rendering the rule invalid.

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

#195

Post by bratch »

Istof wrote: post #124
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

is it even possible to get perfect privacy with a smart phone?

The biggest problem with mobile phone privacy (assuming you seek it) is that no matter how trustworthy and privacy respecting the operating system and its software is, the baseband modem is usually at the behest of the network provider and also generally has full access to the main CPU and memory. There is one project I am aware of that is looking to address this problem - the Neo900 [1].

The platform should hopefully be 100 % trustworthy (from an "it's free software so I can inspect it" point of view), as long as you do not choose to use a non-free graphics driver.

[1] https://neo900.org/

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

#197

Post by mtgx »

Istof wrote: post #124
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

is it even possible to get perfect privacy with a smart phone?

Let's not talk about "perfect privacy" when we could still be happy with "reasonable privacy". Just because not everything is private by default, doesn't mean we should be okay with the ever more invasive privacy policies of these companies.

It reminds me of the argument that "of course NSA spies, that's what it does" completely merging together the spying on dangerous targets for national security with the spying on every single person on Earth and for economic, blackmail and so on purposes. Reality is more nuanced than that.

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

#198

Post by pjc50 »

Silhouette wrote: post #187
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want perfect privacy, you also throw away a lot of potential optimizations. That depends on what you mean by privacy. We share information, sometimes sensitive information, with other parties all the time when we interact with them. I believe the essence of privacy is more about being able to choose when and how and for what purposes information is collected and shared and used. I can't make a purchase using a…

> the essence of privacy is more about being able to choose when and how and for what purposes information is collected and shared and used

This is the core of the EU data protection principles. It's a very concise way of expressing things. There are two limitations:

- figleafing: the "cookie law" problem where everyone is made to agree to a useless dialog box, supposedly signing away their privacy in order to look at any web page with ads on

- it conflicts with the very strong American free speech principles, in which you can say anything you like about anyone on any basis. Privacy enforcement necessarily means silencing people talking about other people. The bad end of this is UK libel law. It's still present in the US "product libel" laws, although fortunately "ag-gag" was recently struck down.

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

#199

Post by jeeva »

deciplex wrote: post #141
justThis1Post wrote: post #36

As time goes by, computer software begins to feel more and more hostile to the user. When I installed Windows 10, all the privacy settings made me feel like I was wrangling a beast rather than setting up something that would help me. I don't know if there's any solution or if privacy is just a remnant of the past. Is Linux any better? And is there any way to own a smartphone which is built not to leak my information,…

Any company that installs adware on an operating system you paid for [1], and even forcibly reinstalls it after you remove it and block it, clearly doesn't give a shit about user experience or your privacy. Some Linux distros will also remind you to update, but they aren't paid updates and anyway you can turn those updates off if you like, and they won't come back. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583

Unless I'm missing something, this isn't a paid update either. And you can turn it off in a few fairly trivial ways[1] (though I'll admit this might be past some users, anyone who has even heard the word 'distro' probably shouldn't have an issue with it)

[1] http://superuser.com/questions/922068/how-to-disable-the-get...

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

#200

Post by awalGarg »

mosselman wrote: post #168
foiboitoi wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference between Ubuntu and Windows 10 is that Ubuntu will respect your decision to opt-out.

"Your information is ours unless you are aware of it and spend unreasonable amount of time searching for the information leaking settings and disabling them." Yaay

This is incorrect. Ubuntu told me in clear words that dash searches will be sent after installation when I used dash. That's how I came to know of it, and that's why I disabled it.

I didn't like the fact that that it is opt-out and not opt-in, but yeah, way way better than Windows 10 for now.

Also note that Canonical took steps to ensure amazon doesn't get to imprint your system by proxying the requests through their server.

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