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Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

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Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#191

Post by ultramancool »

kefka wrote: post #185
kstrauser wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, a couple of years ago I would have written that off as paranoid ranting.

No, I think it still is paranoid. It's just now provably true as well. I'm not entirely sure how much I believe the "MS sniffs your keyboard every half hour". However, with that kid-sniffer (search this page for imgur); that's built in. That terrifies me. And I'm thinking of LGBT, other religions, TOR, abortions and women's health, medical searches, domestic abuse searches, and more. And the allegations that the torr…

What's really surprised me here is that I haven't seen Microsoft comment on any of the privacy concerns here at all.

They haven't even said they're going to fix the stuff you can't disable ( see http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w... ).

I'm worried that they're just going to ignore problems like this and in a few years, there will be no choice but to run this if you want to be able to run the latest versions of other software.

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#192

Post by xrstf »

fsloth wrote: post #115

If we try to apply the principle of charity - could there be seen any advantages that this telemetry data would provide to the end user? I can't come up with any at least.

If you ever get acused of having illegal images on your PC, you can ask Microsoft to prove that you never had .jpg files in C:\Windows\Fonts.

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#193

Post by Thrymr »

amlgsmsn wrote: post #45
flurpitude wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The potential big difference here is that it affects people's work computers, where they do things for organizations that have a strong interest in keeping information from leaking out. Such companies probably were never happy with corporate data passing through Android smartphones, and might have forbidden it. Now they know they can't trust Windows workstations either.

And don't some of the same companies store all their company documents, email etc. on Google Apps? Or on Dropbox?

> And don't some of the same companies store all their company documents, email etc. on Google Apps? Or on Dropbox?

Storing company confidential information on services not controlled by the company is explicitly forbidden at many large corporations. They run their own email servers (not Google Apps), and often ban & block things like Dropbox outright.

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#194

Post by logfromblammo »

marcosdumay wrote: post #141
mtgx wrote: post #52

What an unbelievable lack of respect and a big FU to Microsoft's own customers. At least using Windows 10 is a choice (I think - do they force it on Windows 7 machines?), but to do this to all existing customers - wow, just wow. Behold everyone - this is the "new" Microsoft, worse than it ever was.

> I think - do they force it on Windows 7 machines? No, but they keep nagging you every time you turn your computer on.

You can turn off the nagging by uninstalling update kb3035583. Then hide the update so it doesn't helpfully install it again for you.

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#195

Post by duvet »

minthd wrote: post #177
ionised wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Steam OS becomes a viable desktop gaming OS that plays most, if not all games, I'll drop Windows in a heartbeat.

Will games that run on Steam OS be compatible with regular linux ?

Yes. If you look at the Steam search you'll see that Linux is paired with SteamOS.[1]

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#196

Post by acqq »

kstrauser wrote: post #88
0x0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of files modified (to add telemetry hooks?) in kb 3080149 is crazy. NTOSKrnl, NtDll, Lsass, winload.exe etc... Are they really adding spyware/telemetry hooks all the way down to the kernel? What happens next time there's a security patch for the kernel, do we get an ntoskrnl with all these "optional updates" included as well?

Pretty much, yes. As I mentioned elsewhere, they enable spying on kids by default if they're logged in through a Microsoft account. If they're going to spy on kids, adults get the same mechanisms installed.

kstrauser refers to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10111271

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#197

Post by alimbada »

There's been a number of revelations about the invasion of privacy prevalent in Windows 10 (and now according to this article/thread 7 and 8 too), but curiously Microsoft have been very silent on the matter which is only making things worse for them as users will naturally take that as a confirmation of the relevant findings.

It's also strange to see Microsoft making this move given that this invasion of privacy is probably illegal in many ways in countries that are forward thinking enough to have laws against this type of thing.

Maybe they see it as a short term ploy to try and collect as much data as they can before there is a big enough uproar against it and then decide to pull the "feature(s)". They may see it as worth the controversy if they can gather enough data for future products/improvements.

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#198

Post by [deleted] »

kstrauser wrote: post #152
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abusive parents are going to love this. (And that's terrifying.)

I know, right? A kid thinks they're safely researching things that are important to them, but that's not at all true. Statistically, it's almost certain that a kid somewhere has been beaten because of what their parents read in that report. When we're developing new features, we have to take into account ways they'll be twisted and abused. If anyone evaluated this before its development, and they were intellectually…

[deleted]

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#199

Post by gr3yh47 »

anonbanker wrote: post #129
merb wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's still slower mostly. Mostly since they don't have any specification at all.

Parent's post has so many qualifiers, it says nothing at all. I do not see a performance penalty at all with WINE. Most games that work play at speeds matching or better than windows. WoW is usually a big example of that, as are emulators.

WoW and emulators are both fairly trivial for a modern system to run well. There is definitely a significant performance hit if you are running something in WINE that nearly maxes your performance in windows

Re: Updates Make Windows 7 and 8 Spy on You Like Windows 10

#200

Post by endymi0n »

Hjugo wrote: post #167
rasz_pl wrote: post #161

Cant wait for new EU fine, lets hope its orders of magniture more significant this time. Cool 10 Billion Euro should be enough to stop MS from screwing people over.

Or that they finally fund a project that could replace windows

Given their dysmal track record of funding anything remotely successful and other than ivory tower projects, I wouldn't hope too much.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero Or look at Stratosphere/Apache Flink, basically they cloned Spark in much worse for millions of dollars.

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