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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

#181

Post by dragonwriter »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #48
Silhouette wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't surprise me. Moves in this direction were likely as soon as Nadella was chosen to be the new CEO and all but certain as soon as they announced the free upgrade push for Windows 10. It does disappoint me, though. Microsoft was one of the few major players in IT that could realistically have offered an antidote to the always-online, spy-on-everything, everything-is-a-service, subscribe-not-buy, force-updates…

>> Microsoft was one of the few major players in IT that could realistically have offered an antidote to the always-online, spy-on-everything, everything-is-a-service, subscribe-not-buy, force-updates-you-don't-want madness of recent years. I felt the same way after they came out and said they really believe in protecting data and people's privacy. This is the exact opposite of all the big talk over the past few year…

> I felt the same way after they came out and said they really believe in protecting data and people's privacy. This is the exact opposite of all the big talk over the past few years. Disappointing for sure.

But, that's pretty much a well-established pattern (Microsoft has done it with lots of things before, but so has Apple and lots of other companies, its not particular to Microsoft) -- if someone realizes an opportunity you didn't, you attack them for it and try to get the market to see the product as unnecessary or even abusive, right up until you are ready to push something that exploits the same opportunity.

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

#182

Post by hebdo »

grecy wrote: post #176
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.

Now you will also see the uplink usage go up, potentially much higher, since Windows 10 is torrenting updates from client machines without asking the user.

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

#183

Post by RaleyField »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #73
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the point. People are tricked into this and most of them did not read the terms or just ignored them. But Microsoft is on the secure side, because you confirmed the terms -- and not many judges in the world will blame Microsoft in this situation, even when you argue, that you haven't read the terms. When you sign an other contract, you also can not argue, you haven't read the terms (even when they are in very…

Uninformed consent is not consent. This needs to be applied to the business world and all other legal contracts.

> Uninformed consent is not consent.

Better way of arguing for your point would be to say that you cannot consent if you are uninformed, but if you were presented with the privacy statement then whose fault is it that you are uninformed and still went ahead agreeing to something you don't understand. Do you also take candies from strangers? I don't think what Microsoft is doing is ethical, but then I think it would be much more unethical for us to take Microsoft's right to free speech. I think you are arguing for nanny state.

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

#184

Post by EugeneOZ »

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 imagine how awesome Win10 will be on mobile devices with paid internet...

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

#185

Post by Lawtonfogle »

RaleyField wrote: post #183
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninformed consent is not consent. This needs to be applied to the business world and all other legal contracts.

> Uninformed consent is not consent. Better way of arguing for your point would be to say that you cannot consent if you are uninformed, but if you were presented with the privacy statement then whose fault is it that you are uninformed and still went ahead agreeing to something you don't understand. Do you also take candies from strangers? I don't think what Microsoft is doing is ethical, but then I think it would b…

>whose fault is it that you are uninformed and still went ahead agreeing to something you don't understand.

There is no practical way for the average person to have a significant enough understanding of privacy policies due to the wordings and the 'as provided by law' type clauses that require understanding of even more complex documents (and possible even court cases). That people agree to it anyways is because it cuts one out of so much to not agree to privacy policies. Even going to the doctor involves a policy that includes 'as allowed by law' that makes it very difficult for anyone other than a specialized lawyer to understand.

Microsoft knows that people aren't understanding this and using it to their advantage. A ban on taking advantage of this is no more a nanny state than already existing bans on many cons and scams (those that don't rely on lying but on confusion and misleading others). For example, I can't hand out checks for $100 that include really nasty terms of repayment ($200 due in one month, else I get to seize any items I wish from your possession). This isn't a ban on any freedom of my own except my freedom to take advantage of others.

To relate it to your example of taking candies form strangers, if I'm handing out bad candies and someone else is eating them, who is at fault? Even if they should know better (which with these being complex legal candies that means most people shouldn't know better) I'm still at fault for handing out bad candies.

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

#186

Post by datainplace »

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 finally saw the bill. From the moment she started downloading Windows 10 to the moment I told her to shut the internet off, she used 20 gigs. That's ridiculous. And there is only one computer in the house. No other devices use internet.

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

#187

Post by kuschku »

k3d3 wrote: post #175
kuschku wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Both of which do not work. I can not right-click "view in new tab" or right-click "save as".

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

#188

Post by ultramancool »

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.

Which browser are you using that you can't use right click-> save on a blob URL'd image? It's using the standard HTML image and appears to be working in Chrome, Firefox and Edge.

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

#189

Post by blackbeard »

tedunangst wrote: post #168
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…

What shouldn't we forget about _NSA?

Yes we should forget it.

They worked out it's easier to get at our data out and on home territory (cloud, telemetry) than actually have to break into your kit.

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

#190

Post by imglorp »

Kenji wrote: post #29
blackbeard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on Windows 10 for a couple of days now. VPN traffic doesn't leak if the default route is the VPN interface. I tried it and my firewall went silent apart from the tunnel. I have absolutely no fucking idea what it is sending out though. It's always talking to something. I've turned everything off that is documented and use a local account and remove-appxpackage'd everything. Sorry but this release is a write…

Can't you just redirect all that stuff it sends to 127.0.0.1 by editing your hosts file?

What do you do about getting updates? You have to connect to hq sometime, and when you do, it will upload its intel.
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