Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#91

Post by jeeva » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:54 PM UTC

x5n1 wrote: post #67

KaterKarlo123 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.

Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…

> supposedly opt-in but they were so convenient that most people opted in anyway

How is making a feature (that is opt-in) good enough to get people to opt-in a bad thing here?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#92

Post by Amezarak » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:55 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #68

Amezarak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out the circumstances under which they will share your data. > comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; > protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; > operate and maintain the security of our services, includin…

> That seems perfectly reasonable No that's not , and what is shocking is that you find it "perfectly reasonable".

That's literally a bog-standard privacy policy clause.

You can find the essentially same four points on everything from Ubuntu to Wikimedia.

Can you be more specific about which part of it you find particularly unreasonable? Can you explain how the claims that the privacy policy allows MS to share data with the MPAA are founded?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#93

Post by soccerdave » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:55 PM UTC

thescrewdriver wrote: post #72

KaterKarlo123 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.

> Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. I think this says more about Android than it does about Windows 10. Windows 10 has crazy defaults, but so does android and many android apps want access to my info for no good reason (e.g. news apps wanting access to list my accounts, my phone number, my contacts, precise location etc.). Comparing privacy defaults of Windows to Android is not comparing it…

This is a main reason that I have avoided Android so far. The iOS permissions model is a far better model. At least with the next release of Android (Marshmallow) they are fixing some of this and hopefully you will be able to use apps without giving them access to so much info.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#94

Post by 7952 » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:56 PM UTC

jand wrote: post #61

analog31 wrote: post #56

Ask HN: Could Win10 data leaks be managed by some kind of firewall or parental-control software? I mean, if we know what sites are being accessed, just block those sites.

There are numerous sites (eg [1]) which claim to provide a list of FQDNs associated with Windows 10 telematics. These sites usually advise you to reroute those FQDN to localhost via the hosts file. To my point of view this is a endless game of cat-and-mice... finding the (changing?) telematics FQDNs and updating the hosts file. By design this cannot be a permanent solution. [1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/blocking…

There is a weird catch 22 in that the pervasive use of TLS makes it much more difficult to firewall things like this. I suppose you could setup a MITM that checks everything before it leaves your network but that just feels wrong.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#95

Post by zxcvcxz » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:56 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #77

x5n1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…

Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands --a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as…

Linux on the Desktop works stunningly for me.

Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395

As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare.

Windows has nothing to show for the billions of dollars put into it. Every installation of windows I've ever had was a piece of crap that got bugged out after a months use. It would be snappy at first and then it would start taking five minutes to boot, then when it did boot the whole OS would choke as soon as I opened the start menu. Then you have to give it a "cool down period" before you open any programs or it'll choke again.

Linux doesn't have this problem. It's a myth that Windows "just works" or that os x "just works". You have just as many buggy drivers and weird issues on those operating systems as you do Linux. For me, Linux with GNOME is just the easiest to use, most stable, prettiest, OS out there. I didn't have to use the command line or configure any text files. It just worked.

To install windows 10 I actually needed to use command line instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#96

Post by Amezarak » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:57 PM UTC

forgotmypassw wrote: post #83

KaterKarlo123 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.

The questionable part is that they're there in the first place and enabled by default. I'd be fine with that if the telemetry and what not was opt-in as opposed to a lot of toggle switches spread across multiple settings.

All the toggle switches are under the Privacy screen in the Settings window.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#97

Post by Amezarak » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:59 PM UTC

msravi wrote: post #37

Phoenix26 wrote: post #2

More info/Original story -> https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-trackers-ban-windows-10-ove...

The "password sharing" feature of Windows 10 is sufficient reason for me to never allow anyone with Windows 10 access to my network. Ever. That's the way I'll opt out. Not by changing my SSID.

Sharing your password via Wi-Fi Sense to your friend gives him access to the network, but no knowledge of your password and no ability to share it.

Sharing your password via word-of-mouth gives your friend your password and access to your network and the ability to share it further.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#98

Post by unluckier » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 12:59 PM UTC

datalist wrote: post #28

rbanffy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that, unlike Windows, you can turn it off.

Except for telemetry (and that you can turn off in the Enterprise edition as well) you can turn off all these features.

If you have a proven technique for making Windows 10 not phone home, post the details here.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#99

Post by hadrien01 » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:00 PM UTC

Gladdyu wrote: post #35

x5n1 wrote: post #13

Basically M$ adoption of this strategy is the death knell for any semblance of privacy on the PC. It's amazing how far we have come to accepting such draconian measures in order to further marketing. There is still time people, come on over to Linux, the privacy here is still fine and will continue to be fine. And if you come over, then all the desktop software makers will port their software to Linux and all the col…

"port their software to Linux". The main issue there is that there is not one single linux, the market is very fragmented. Getting the binary format right (which is the same across distros) is the trivial part, just set the proper compiler backend. The hard part would be getting all dependencies and especially IO sorted out. The wide range of display managers, audio drivers that needs to be supported to simply "port…

If you develop for Ubuntu and Fedora, many distributions will mostly work with your program : all Ubuntu flavours (Unity, GNOME, XFCE, KDE) and derivatives (Linux Mint, Elementary), maybe Debian, Fedora flavours (GNOME, KDE) and derivatives (Red Hat, CentOS), etc. You'll have to decide for a widget toolkit (Gtk+ or Qt), but a Qt program will run fine on GNOME (the design won't be perfect, but it's like a Qt program on Mac OS X or Windows). Dependencies isn't the big problem : you have a single sound server to look for and other drivers aren't important for a simple program.

Of course it's complicated, more complicated than Windows, depending on your type of program. But seeing how Valve made it work for games, I think it's going to be seen more and more.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#100

Post by kuschku » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #84

kuschku wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t we remove them from dnsapi.dll? Decompile dnsapi.dll, remove all hardcoded hosts, replace and protect to a nonexistent group so that windows can’t even override it during an upgrade.

Or just switch to a less hostile operating system. As more things move to the web, this is becoming a very reasonable proposition.

I am using Linux since about mid-2012 exclusively, I switched after wasting a month trying to get git in command line working properly on Windows.