Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 272 posts

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#41

Post by skrebbel »

I fully agree with the complaints, but I never understood why this outrage doesn't happen about e.g. Gmail (or all of ChromeOS for that matter). Lots of people virtually live in Google Apps, which certainly does a lot more tracking than Windows 10 does.

The argument that "it's OK because it's on the web" just doesn't cut it anymore guys. An application is an application.

We should just be as angry about browsers that do tracking and web apps that do tracking as we are about OS'es that do tracking.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#42

Post by LesZedCB »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #22
crummy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Ubuntu?

Yup. What the hell are these people thinking? That an operating system is a shopping mall?... ... and they're probably right anyway. Computing went mainstream, people who need tools and not toys are niche now, and mass market doesn't cater to niches.

And worse is that the only reason I have windows in the first place is to play games. I don't need to do anything else on it, but I have to have it in my life because big game companies will not make games for linux. Hell, I'm so excited for Oculus Rift, but at this point they have even dropped Mac support (understandably, they don't have the graphics power), so if I want to experience VR currently, I'm completely limited to windows, not even playing indie and valve games on linux.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#46

Post by tajen »

holografix wrote: post #21
jinst8gmi wrote: post #5

"44.5 billion minutes spent by users in the Microsoft Edge browser across Windows 10 devices" I wonder how much of that was spent downloading Firefox or Chrome? "30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device versus previous versions of the OS" I can't imagine that this is due to anything other than the OS and browser defaults?

Have you tried changing the default search engine? It's SIGNIFICANTLY convoluted. It took me about ten minutes to figure it out and I am 100% confident my parent would be incapable of changing it. I've watched them try.

MS has received and paid about €561m monopoly infringement fines from EU Commission for "forgetting" again to provide the choice of browser in the first 14 months of Windows 7 [1], totalizing €2bn fines from EU. Times seem to have changed though, as no-one seems to be pursuing MS for Windows 10.

[1] Last lines of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#48

Post by AlexandrB »

skrebbel wrote: post #41

I fully agree with the complaints, but I never understood why this outrage doesn't happen about e.g. Gmail (or all of ChromeOS for that matter). Lots of people virtually live in Google Apps, which certainly does a lot more tracking than Windows 10 does. The argument that "it's OK because it's on the web" just doesn't cut it anymore guys. An application is an application. We should just be as angry about browsers that…

I'm not happy about Gmail tracking, but the information Gmail has access to is limited to what ends up in that email account. An OS's access is potentially everything on the computer.

To me, privacy is about control (deciding who gets to see what) and having an OS that phones home with who knows what information means I have no control once information touches my PC.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#49

Post by hellomc »

ausjke wrote: post #17

One reason that I did not use Win10 so far(Windows 7 for Tax and the rest is Linux), to be fair, Microsoft is not alone doing this in the big-data-mining era.

I wouldn't use Windows (especially 8+) for anything other than superficial activities like gaming. It's a shame as Windows is more polished, but I miss the days when an OS was an inert thing you didn't have to think about (damn you Internet!).

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#50

Post by xgbi »

delinka wrote: post #31
tomswartz07 wrote: post #6

Here's a 100% serious question: If you 'absolutely must' use Windows 10, would it be possible to firewall off every outbound port from this machine to prevent this sort of tracking? Or does it just use Port 80, piggybacking on the normal http traffic? Has anyone done a comprehensive analysis of exactly how this info is being sent?

"Piggybacking"? Presumably, they're hitting a REST API served up on an HTTP server on port 80 or 443 (hopefully 443...) And sure - stick it behind a NAT, learn the servers that the systems reports to, block those (or set up your own DNS); nothing that the average mainstream consumer is capable of doing.

The IPs are hardcoded in windows ethernet driver, no shit.. So yeah, spoffing it through DNS won't work. You have to have a physicall firewall between your PC and the internet and target these specific IPs to block efficiently.
Post reply on HN