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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

#171

Post by marcosdumay »

lambda wrote: post #131
rsync wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look. Seriously. I don't want to be a brat, but what is the possible overlap between people caring to use Tor (for whatever reason) and people using Windows 10 as the host OS ? You're at the absolute cutting edge of spyware-in-the-home, defective by design, obscured infrastructure that was designed from the ground up to be user hostile in every conceivable dimension. And you're going to run Tor on that. There's a phr…

> I don't want to be a brat, but what is the possible overlap between people caring to use Tor (for whatever reason) and people using Windows 10 as the host OS ? Journalists. There are many journalists who need to cover sensitive topics, who are not particularly technically literate. They need to be able to buy a system off the shelf, do some minimal and easy amount of installation of privacy protection, and be reaso…

Well, looks like they need to get their systems from some seller that is interested on satisfying their needs.

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

#172

Post by datainplace »

cmurf wrote: post #170
datainplace wrote: post #146

Stupid question, but my Mom lives in a really rural area. Pays quite a bit for internet and is charged by the MB. Can we ask Microsoft to pay for their bandwidth usage? Since upgrading to Windows 10 she's been hit with $200 in overages.

It hasn't even been out that long, so what kind of data amount are we talking about? Century Links 1Gbps has told multiple friends, and friends of friends that they absolutely enforce the 250GB/month limit. That's 33.33 minutes @ 1Gbps before you've hit the cap. That's untenable. XBox games are hitting 100GB each. And now the OS is pushing and pulling maybe 10% of this cap? Umm, yeah, good luck with that.

I'm sure phoning home only uses a small amount of data. But downloading the update and then sharing the update with others is where I think she got in trouble. Sharing is now turned off and the data is starting to normalize.

I know I won't get any money back. But I wonder how many other people ended up paying more for Windows 10 by downloading it then had they been able to purchase it on a DVD.

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

#173

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #129
irq-1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I don't know what it's doing, how can I trust it? It's not enough to examine software: if you don't trust the company , then anything they say or promise is worthless. Automatic updates can change anything, including the TOS! This is the same company that sells a 1984-Telescreen (XBox) with an always-on camera and microphone. _NSA shouldn't be forgotten. Oracle likes to tout Java as GPL, but what does that matte…

Or as I like to put it, at the end of the day you have to trust someone, somewhere in the chain. In the case of software vendors, you have to trust the vendor. You cannot independently verify everything. You do not have the expertise nor the bandwidth. Edit: and if you have the software audited, are you not then trusting the auditor?

[deleted]

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

#174

Post by SixSigma »

chopin wrote: post #104
ised wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change the gateway on the Windows 10 install computer (or "default route" as another commenter calls it) to a computer _you_ control, i.e., a UNIX install, that can do IP forwarding. Turn on IP forwarding. Connect the UNIX install to the internet. Also change your default DNS servers on the Windows 10 install to point to the UNIX install. If you know how, set up DNS on this computer. I recommend using your own cache…

If one can master all this, wouldn't it be easier to use a non-Windows box in the first place?

Right when I have finished porting all of my Autodesk products....

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

#175

Post by k3d3 »

kuschku wrote: post #167
ultramancool wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you have to trust the site and their providers of course. But how do you know your OS provider doesn't serve you backdoored updates? Until it was abused by malware, Windows Update used to accept stuff signed by a 512-bit RSA key. Do you personally reverse engineer every binary you accept? This will change soon though, they're working on browser extensions which will keep all content client side too. EDIT: Clari…

Which is all nice, but doesn’t make it better that the site is almost unusable. A better solution would be decrypting the image and then loading the image into an image tag with a data: uri in base64 encoding. I could zoom normally with the browsers own zoom tools, I could right-click save normally, etc.

> that the site is almost unusable.

The site is perfectly usable. More than usable, even, because I get RES-style zooming for free, amongst other things.

You can right-click save normally already - just right-click and save. If you want the browser zoom tools, hit the "View in Browser" button or right-click and open in new tab

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

#176

Post by grecy »

datainplace wrote: post #146

Stupid question, but my Mom lives in a really rural area. Pays quite a bit for internet and is charged by the MB. Can we ask Microsoft to pay for their bandwidth usage? Since upgrading to Windows 10 she's been hit with $200 in overages.

I worked at an ISP that charges as much as $25/GB for usage, and has tiny monthly usage caps (as low at 10GB/mo) and there is no other choice for our customers.

Every time a large iOS, MacOS or Windows update goes live, we can literally see the difference in the overages people pay. It's a big problem that lots of people don't understand.

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

#177

Post by dragonwriter »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #162

I was downvoted and criticised a few days ago for defending Microsoft on Windows 10. I am starting to change my opinion after looking into the issue more. I watched a recent Richard Stallman talk on youtube and went through the process of making the tightest privacy settings I could on my iPad, Windows 10 laptop, and Android phone. (I left my Mac and Linux laptops as is since I just use those for development.) I thin…

> I think that Microsoft looked at the Google Now user experience on Android phones and decided to emulate that type of AI assistent in Windows.

I don't mind that (Cortana).

I do mind that when Cortana and its supporting options are explicitly disabled, Win 10 apparently still won't stop chattering back with HQ constantly. Not only for privacy reasons either; it seems (though I'm not certain of the relationship) to have a substantial, though intermittent rather than constant, impact on performance.

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

#178

Post by blackbeard »

api wrote: post #152
blackbeard wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You mean this will chase MS out of enterprise? Awesome! It means we don't have to support them anymore! (Supporting Windows is 10X more work than all other platforms combined due to stupid "can't reproduce here" problems on rotted and unpatched Windows machines and general Windows driver API hell. I am including Android and less-commonly-used OSS operating systems like FreeBSD and OpenBSD.)

I feel your pain. This is my life.

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

#179

Post by RaleyField »

wfo wrote: post #108
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With such an argumentation, you could just trash any terms. As long as they are not against any law, they are valid, as long as they do not contain something that is totally unexpected (for example that you must pay Microsoft additional fees above the normal price). I also think, that Microsoft should be held accountable -- but it starts with those terms! I think, many people just rushed into Windows 10, because it w…

Terms and conditions as a requirement to use a product you've already purchased shouldn't ever count for anything. So I think you should trash any terms. And I'd hope in a civilized country if a company tries to use mandatory-accept 300 page terms and conditions to abuse their customers a judge would step in and say "no." And this is absolutely unexpected. That's why there's a very popular post on ars technica and ha…

> in a civilized country if a company tries to use mandatory-accept 300 page terms and conditions

If you don't like 300 pages of ToS then don't buy Windows. It's your free choice. Software should be protected speech. I don't like Windows 10, but then I also think that Microsoft should have the right to write Windows however they like as long as they don't factually lie in their privacy statement and other documents.

> to use a product you've already purchased

The person who sold you Windows should've informed you of the license.

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

#180

Post by dragonwriter »

yellowapple wrote: post #154

It's hard to know without inspecting the exact data involved, but I feel like this is dangerously close to a HIPAA or HITECH breach, and I know of several hospitals who are strongly on the Microsoft bandwagon and are considering Windows 10. The "send search data to an internet endpoint even if it's patently obvious that the search is for local resources" reeks strongly of Ubuntu's Amazon Shopping Lens. Did Mark Shutt…

> It's hard to know without inspecting the exact data involved, but I feel like this is dangerously close to a HIPAA or HITECH breach

Perhaps pedantic, but that's redundant; HITECH doesn't define breaches separately from HIPAA, it establishes standards for when HIPAA data is "unsecured" and reporting requirements, etc., related to HIPAA breaches.

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