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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

#241

Post by yuhong »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #97
mizzao wrote: post #68

People who use their google accounts and Chrome ubiquitously already get spied on by GA at a much bigger scale through all the sites they visit in their browser. Why is it a big uproar when it happens at the OS level? Seems like it's pretty much the same thing. We always have the option of using Linux if we don't like it.

GA doesn't record all my keystrokes and voice like W10 (and now W7-8) have been accused of doing in this thread. And there was an uproar when iirc Chromium was doing something similar with voice a few months back, which was pulled later.

You can turn Cortana off in Win10 too.

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

#242

Post by yuhong »

kardos wrote: post #79
mizzao wrote: post #68

People who use their google accounts and Chrome ubiquitously already get spied on by GA at a much bigger scale through all the sites they visit in their browser. Why is it a big uproar when it happens at the OS level? Seems like it's pretty much the same thing. We always have the option of using Linux if we don't like it.

Chrome -- as far as we know -- doesn't transmit all of your keystrokes to Google, nor does it transmit the contents or indexes of your local filesystem(s) back to Google.

I don't think Win10 likely is doing so either.

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

#244

Post by yellowapple »

tacone wrote: post #172
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also think what impact it's gonna have on organization. Would they have access to everything an employee types? Any website they visit?

In reality, if you're using a machine that's owned by your employer, you should always assume that everything you do is being monitored at all times, regardless of what operating system said machine is running, because chances are in favor of that being the case. Expect at the absolute least some sort of web traffic monitoring (probably via a corporate proxy); in some cases, I've seen companies install keyloggers (and, in fact, this is the "legitimate" use case for keyloggers, remote administration tools, etc.).

You should also expect that any mobile device accessing company resources (including - and especially - email) is effectively giving your employer root access. This is almost certainly the case if you use a mobile device with Microsoft Exchange.

In other words, in the context of employee workstations, Microsoft's spying is effectively a non-factor for employee privacy.

Now of course, this is all describing intra-organizational surveillance. Microsoft's data collection is inter-organizational, which has rather significant implications for healthcare organizations (since now Microsoft is the single-point-of-failure for a HIPAA breach), financial institutions, law firms, the works. That's all a bit of a digression from the point of children being automatically spied on, however.

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

#245

Post by yellowapple »

kstrauser wrote: post #119
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's insane! And I'm glad you're an awesome parent. You should post a anonymised screenshot of that email sometime if you can, this is pretty ridiculous.

Ask and ye shall receive: http://imgur.com/eeBtcIw Bear in mind that it's nearly empty because we'd only just recently upgraded to Windows 10, but note that it has an entry for "Latest searches". Wouldn't that be one hell of a way for a kid to come out of the closet to his parents, or for someone to find out their daughter's pregnant? Consider that this data is linked to each kid's email address. When this database i…

Only played New Vegas for 8 minutes? Please. This is obviously a fake.

:)

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

#246

Post by tdkl »

ewzimm wrote: post #240
restalis wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "nice analysis" smells like apologist on duty to me: The only dubious behavior I observed was sending every keystroke in the Windows Start Menu to the servers, but I understand that combined Computer /Web search is being sold as a feature, and this is necessary for that feature. Calling it "feature" is insulting. It's a key-logger!

You can call it a key logger, and I understand why you would object, but sending search terms typed into a search box to a search engine is pretty much what people expect. Ubuntu does it. GNOME does it. Android does it. iOS does it. OS X does it. Windows is very nearly the last one to do it. Privacy is important, and I don't think either I or David Tomaschik would ever argue otherwise, and there should definitely be…

You didn't know that in Windows 10 until the news hit that disabling Cortana doesn't prevent that. Hell, I've never even seen Cortana since I'm in Dragon land (perhaps that's on the positive side for once) and I would've never thought the Start menu search isn't local only. Can I opt-out ? Nope. I can on Ubuntu, Android and iOS though.

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

#247

Post by yellowapple »

ewzimm wrote: post #240
restalis wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "nice analysis" smells like apologist on duty to me: The only dubious behavior I observed was sending every keystroke in the Windows Start Menu to the servers, but I understand that combined Computer /Web search is being sold as a feature, and this is necessary for that feature. Calling it "feature" is insulting. It's a key-logger!

You can call it a key logger, and I understand why you would object, but sending search terms typed into a search box to a search engine is pretty much what people expect. Ubuntu does it. GNOME does it. Android does it. iOS does it. OS X does it. Windows is very nearly the last one to do it. Privacy is important, and I don't think either I or David Tomaschik would ever argue otherwise, and there should definitely be…

> sending search terms typed into a search box to a search engine is pretty much what people expect. Ubuntu does it.

And Canonical has received a barrage of flak for it as a result. I outright stopped using Ubuntu as a result. Users expect the search box on their computer to search their own computer, not bombard them with ads.

> GNOME does it.

By default? Which distro? Last I checked, the GNOME search tool is limited to local objects. Maybe if you've explicitly integrated an online account, but I've yet to encounter that if that's the case.

> Android does it. iOS does it.

These systems aren't nearly as oriented around local file access, so the online-first approach for search (while I personally disagree with it) is not as jarring. Siri and Google Now are specifically marketed for online searches as well.

> OS X does it.

Again, by default? Because I've yet to actually see online results when searching for things in, say, Finder. Not that I wouldn't hold it above Apple to pull such shenanigans, of course; they love fucking over their users for the sake of a "more beautiful" (please) product.

> Windows is very nearly the last one to do it.

Hardly. None of the BSDs (that I know of) do it - even the desktop-oriented ones like PC-BSD. None of the KDE-based GNU/Linux distros (again, that I know of) do it - that category includes Kubuntu, openSUSE, and quite a few others. KDE itself certainly doesn't do it, nor do LXDE or Xfce, last I checked, and nor do the distros which use those particular DEs by default. I'm pretty sure none of the GNOME-based distros do it; in particular, I'd be very surprised if Debian stooped anywhere close to such a level of depravity.

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

#248

Post by yellowapple »

hirsin wrote: post #235
agscala wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's actually 0.8 Mb/s

Yes, per person. At 50 million users, you need a 35 Tbps pipe to take in all that data.

That can conceivably be split across multiple datacenters in multiple countries - something which Microsoft almost certainly has access to.

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

#249

Post by tacone »

rileyteige wrote: post #25

If I could figure out my wireless card/GPU drivers, I'd swap to Linux in a heartbeat. Plug-n-play drivers is the only reason I'm still on that closed-source OS. Just don't have the patience to hunt down third-party drivers.

Mainstream hardware is decently supported, if you don't have special claims. Ubuntu live cd/usb?

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

#250

Post by yellowapple »

Achshar wrote: post #102
inevitable2 wrote: post #90

Here is a more in-depth analysis of windows 10 and what is sent to MS http://aeronet.cz/news/analyza-windows-10-ve-svem-principu-j... For those who don't speak Czech: -It sends all text you type anywhere (not just into search) every 30 minutes to MS. If you type about a holiday to your blog, next day you'll see holiday ads. -Every 30 minutes it sends your geo-location and network information. -If you type a telephone…

Shit, that may just have changed my opinion on this. Is the first one really correct? Anything we type on a PC anywhere? So if I open up tor and load a site it's basically useless because any url I type in tor will go to ms anyways? WTF? Each and every one of those is completely unacceptable. Anyone know about any good unix distros that wont be too much of a culture shock to someone who has used windows his entire li…

> Anyone know about any good unix distros that wont be too much of a culture shock to someone who has used windows his entire life?

Try openSUSE:

* UI is designed to be very familiar to Windows users, with a Windows-looking taskbar complete with start menu and system tray (if you pick KDE, Xfce, or LXDE for your desktop environment; GNOME is a bit... well, out there).

* openSUSE ships with YaST, which provides rather extensive graphical system-wide configuration. It's arguably the closest thing to a proper and fully-featured Windows-style Control Panel you'll find in the GNU/Linux world. Thanks to YaST, it's pretty rare that you'll ever need to touch the command line for the vast majority of tasks.

* If you're running in an Active Directory environment, openSUSE's builtin support for joining AD domains is abso-fucking-lutely phenomenal; the YaST-based configuration blows even Windows out of the water, let alone other GNU/Linux distros.

* Pretty stable (openSUSE is the testbed for SUSE Enterprise) without being totally behind the times like Debian Stable tends to be.

I've set it up on the formerly-XP-running machines of multiple elderly, computer-illiterate people with effectively zero issues (other than one user complaining about the default desktop background; I showed him how to change it, and he since managed to figure out how to set up his own without further intervention on my part). If computer-illiterate old people can figure it out, I'm confident that someone who knows that Hacker News even exists can figure it out ;)

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