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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

#251

Post by jessaustin »

k8tte wrote: post #219
bitmapbrother wrote: post #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…

The only host i expected to see is not even there... time.windows.com

Haha, maybe they've given up on NTP. It never seems to work on Windows anyway. b^)

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

#252

Post by pdkl95 »

userbinator wrote: post #214
chatmasta wrote: post #34

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.

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 I don't think it's an unforseen effect, but one that is highly downplayed by advocates pushing the security angle. When it was revealed that smart TVs phoned home with detailed viewing information, including filenames,…

The "feature" to worry about is the new SGX instructions. With those, the secure boot/TPM stuff is locked down at the hardware level, and we lose root access.

Unfortunately, given how many in this very thread are willing to apologize for MS's behavior and justify their power grabs, I don't expect there will be much resistance in this War On General Purpose Computing.

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

#254

Post by chatmasta »

userbinator wrote: post #214
chatmasta wrote: post #34

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.

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 I don't think it's an unforseen effect, but one that is highly downplayed by advocates pushing the security angle. When it was revealed that smart TVs phoned home with detailed viewing information, including filenames,…

Yep. 100x this.

In general, as long as you have root access to a machine, you can decrypt any traffic coming out of it, either by locating the private key in the filesystem or memory, or by patching the encryption methods to skip the encryption step.

If you do not have root access to a machine, and software on it signs traffic with a certificate you do not have access to, then you simply cannot see the traffic. If you ask me, that's a huge problem, especially when coupled with the "locking down" of ecosystems that you describe.

The skeptic in me wonders if the same entities pushing the privacy agenda are the same ones with vested interest in encrypted traffic that phones home.

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

#255

Post by ericlaw »

ultramancool wrote: post #4
mahouse wrote: post #3

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

Applications without DPI scaling support on Windows are like that. More and more apps are getting there, but still not Fiddler apparently.

Pass the -dpiAware command line argument into Fiddler to have it report that it is DPI aware.

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

#256

Post by wang_li »

MichaelGG wrote: post #69
unluckier wrote: post #47

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?

> just pin their own CA cert.

No. No application or OS should impose it's own CA on an end user without choice. I get the importance of encrypted traffic flowing over the internet, but I also have concerns about traffic leaving my own network. Neither at my home or my business do I want an encrypted stream of traffic flowing out of my network without my being able to inspect the contents and know who the recipient is.

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

#257

Post by ultramancool »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #230

The following fix worked for me. I don't see any outbound traffic on Fiddler when typing searches in the Start menu or when actually running the search. Granted, Microsoft needs to make this MUCH easier to do; the VAST majority of Windows users have no idea what group policies are. 1. Run gpedit.msc 2. Navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Search 3. Set the State to Enabled fo…

A few people including myself have done some GPO changes and not had any luck.

I'm not sure I was quite as thorough, so I'll retest this tonight using your specific suggestions.

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

#258

Post by RaleyField »

throwaway7767 wrote: post #213
leni536 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Linux any better? The Iceweasel bug that downloaded some icons silently on the first run was a big deal few days ago. The problem was that iceweasel doesn't ship the search icons with the package (legal reasons maybe), so it downloads them on the first run [1]. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/07/msg00226.html And this is considered a bug that will be fixed. Compare this to the privacy issues on an…

I can't read your link unfortunately (get an SSL error when trying to connect), but that's interesting, given the sheer amount of trackable requests firefox makes silently in the background (like safe search/content blacklists from google, etc). Based on the goals stated by the iceweasel project, I assume they have not patched those things (as their goal is to be firefox-without-trademarks and nothing more). I'm real…

> See for example all of the patches sent by the Tor Browser developers for various info leaks that have been rejected as they would be inconvenient for average users.

I wasn't aware of this, what kinds of leaks are you talking about? Care to supply us with some references?

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

#259

Post by Istof »

bratch wrote: post #195
Istof wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hopefull…

A WiFi-only cellphone with Ubuntu, Cyanogenmod, FirefoxOS or Sailfish as an OS along with a mobile hotspot device that provides a WiFi access point might be able to get around this issue of the baseband modem having access to your CPU and memory [1].

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

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

#260

Post by scholia »

ionised wrote: post #240
scholia wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean you're blocking CDNs? What's the effect on performance?

Can't say I've noticed any issues. That said, I'm not using the Windows Store, Cortana, ModernUI apps, OneDrive or even a Microsoft Account at all so your mileage may vary.

OK. A bit like Hamlet without the prince!

I take it you don't believe in app stores, secure apps, AI, deep learning, cloud computing and similar modern rubbish ;-)

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