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Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#61

Post by brudgers »

Silhouette wrote: post #24
brudgers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having owned 3.1, 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, 7, and 8 boxes and been paid to use 2.0, NT and Vista, my experience has been that each version [except Me which was meh] has been significantly better...and the amount of improvement from version to version has been markedly increasing...that is, 8 a larger improvement on 7 than 7 was on Vista. People can legitimately disagree on the meaning of "user-hostile". If the way in wh…

If well-informed people have voted that way with their wallets, or otherwise, then I agree and of course that's their choice. However, my big concerns with a lot of modern technologies are firstly that non-geek users don't understand what they are really signing up for and secondly that even if people do understand what they're signing up for it doesn't matter if effectively the only choices available to them all hav…

I have an email address or two or more. Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Apple, Microsoft, etc. all have nodes in their graph irrespective of my use of their products or services. They have all read some fraction of my emails. There's location data on me going back potentially 18 years since I got my first cell phone. There's potentially IP logs going back to 1993 when I first went on the internet. I'm possibly in direct mail databases dating back to the early 1970's. Following the graph may lead to all last year's credit card charges of someone I worked with in 1987.

Windows 10 is a tempest in a teapot. It's removed the illusion of anonymity for some people. Not staying logged into Facebook just affects the ads that appear when I turn on JavaScript to see some web page. It doesn't remove my node from the graph. It doesn't even mean I'm leaking significantly less information, it just means that what I'm leaking is different.

Everyone thinks they're sophisticated. They're correct. The people collecting data are sophisticated too. That's why they brought an AFV to the shoving match. Running away from the firepower effectively means living the digital life of Stallman. Networks are networks because every resource announces its presence.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#62

Post by scuba7183 »

jcadam wrote: post #57

Wow. I use Linux and BSD on my own machines, but the rest of the family is on Windows 10. This sort of thing makes me seriously think about trying to get the wife and kids to consider switching :/

I had the Win10 preview on a spare laptop that I just use for Netflix and Pandora, and was planning on just upgrading it to full 10..... until all this came out. Wiped it and installed Xubuntu.

I did like Windows 10 though, but then they kinda ruined it

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#63

Post by mtgx »

jammycakes wrote: post #7

In all these discussions about Windows 10 phoning home, there are a couple of things that I haven't yet seen properly discussed. 1. Do the different versions of Windows (Home/Pro/Enterprise/Education) behave differently? If so, how? 2. Do the pro/enterprise versions behave differently when they're connected to a domain? I'd imagine that the answer to at least one of these questions would be "yes." This kind of behavi…

Only in Enterprise you can fully disable "telemetry", but just in all the other versions expect most of this stuff to call home by default and send data to Microsoft. I wouldn't assume the opposite by default if I were you.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#64

Post by interdrift »

TsomArp wrote: post #58
thescrewdriver wrote: post #36

Until recently Microsoft had taken a far more reasonable approach to privacy than say Google. Anyone remember the MS "gmail man" ads mocking the way Google inspects your email when MS doesn't? It seems that MS under Nadella has taken a decidedly Google-like turn away from privacy with Windows 10. MS seems as hell-bent as Google and Facebook to collect as much data about you as possible, even if it is for seemingly in…

An algorithm reading your email to look for words to server better ads is hardly spying imho. I rather see ads of things that interest me than ads for casinos. And I'm hardly a MS lover.

Then open-source the algorithms and give security to people!!

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#66

Post by Silhouette »

brudgers wrote: post #61
Silhouette wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If well-informed people have voted that way with their wallets, or otherwise, then I agree and of course that's their choice. However, my big concerns with a lot of modern technologies are firstly that non-geek users don't understand what they are really signing up for and secondly that even if people do understand what they're signing up for it doesn't matter if effectively the only choices available to them all hav…

I have an email address or two or more. Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Apple, Microsoft, etc. all have nodes in their graph irrespective of my use of their products or services. They have all read some fraction of my emails. There's location data on me going back potentially 18 years since I got my first cell phone. There's potentially IP logs going back to 1993 when I first went on the internet. I'm possibly in direct…

Running away from the firepower effectively means living the digital life of Stallman.

Writing as someone who has been the victim of a data-driven screw-up and spent several months of having life turned upside down while trying to fix it, I am increasingly wondering if Stallman has been right all along.

More practically, privacy is not a binary measure. We all interact with other people and organisations, and data gets shared as part of those interactions, and often there's nothing inherently wrong with that; some degree of communication is both desirable and inevitable. That doesn't mean we should just give up and condone covert collection, arbitrary sharing, and unrestricted use of personal data by whichever disproportionately powerful organisations can get hold of it.

For example, Facebook can't effectively follow me around the web. I have installed simple browser plug-ins that mean it is not technically possible using the usual techniques like phone-home Like buttons. The sites I visit would have to actively and covertly send data about my visit to Facebook behind the scenes, and most sites aren't going to do that.

For the record, I do also have a problem with the likes of Google being able to operate a mail service that is actively scanning things I wrote or even blocking messages I've sent to colleagues, which they can do if a recipient of my message uses their service. In effect, they have co-opted someone else to provide data I might have sent that person in confidence, just as mobile apps scan my name and number from a friend's address book often without even their knowledge never mind mine. (Of course that kind of action is probably already against the law in my country, but that doesn't matter very much unless the relevant authorities have the resources to enforce that law effectively.)

I believe almost everything is better when essential infrastructure is neutral and serves a specific purpose. Organisations like Google don't so much blur that line as totally erase it, and because I have no way to know that I am participating in their system in the first place, in practice I can't even choose not to send that e-mail to that recipient. I'm sad that Microsoft now appear to be joining that group.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#67

Post by enqk »

This highlights what we really lost when consumer operating systems started replacing enterprise-grade operating systems. I would have never imagined this kind of things happening on something like Solaris or Irix, which were the base operating systems of many workstations. At some point when Linux became popular it suggested that the regular consumer would benefit from the robustness, focus, reliability of an entreprise grade OS. Not so..

That large companies accept this state of affair is extremely surprising.

That we accept that our electricity and communication bills are being diverted to serve the interest of an operating system's creator.. that sounds crazy. It's like letting the creator of your fridge eat your food and drive your car.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#68

Post by scorpioxy »

inversionOf wrote: post #26
irixusr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In canada that's a big concern

It's a concern anywhere with caps, which increasingly includes much of the US as well. FWIW I'm in Canada and recently my provider (Cogeco) switching my 120Mbps plan to unlimited data per month, which is nice. This actually brings up a great point which is that systems need some sort of bandwidth conservation setting. We recently were traveling and had a couple of laptops and pads with us. Having no data connection a…

That's without setting the connection as a metered connection, right?

Once i saw that option, I immediately set it because I also use my mobile data connection for access.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#69

Post by a3n »

blackbeard wrote: post #55
EvanAnderson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're using DNS to resolve the name of the "mothership" just put a bogus record (or zone) in your DNS. If they're not using any name resolution protocol and you can isolate the IP addresses they're talking to just blackhole them at your border.

We're already doing that but it's hard work keeping up with it all.

And then Microsoft will fix that, ...

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#70

Post by [deleted] »

blackbeard wrote: post #18
jammycakes wrote: post #7

In all these discussions about Windows 10 phoning home, there are a couple of things that I haven't yet seen properly discussed. 1. Do the different versions of Windows (Home/Pro/Enterprise/Education) behave differently? If so, how? 2. Do the pro/enterprise versions behave differently when they're connected to a domain? I'd imagine that the answer to at least one of these questions would be "yes." This kind of behavi…

We have an enterprise edition VM in test and it appears to react the same as Pro at least. Haven't tried home. What is scary is the lack of GPOs to turn this stuff off which you'd expect in an enterprise product. Technically we can't apply policy to make this compliant with our data protection requirements. Their funeral to be honest.

[deleted]
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