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Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#51

Post by cm2187 »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #7

Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower. What's more concerning about these data aren't these specific numbers, but what other data that implies that they have, what they can do with it, and what they can infer about you from it. Privacy and anonymity aren't (reasonably) possible on a Windows 10 operating system. Any entity knowing that I…

What I would like to know if how much of this tracking is not blocked by installing something like Spybot's Anti-Beacon (https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/) and using a Local Account. If all it takes is to install a similar tool when I buy a new machine, it's not a big deal. There are many other tools I need to install anyway (winrar, etc).

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#52

Post by akerro »

chinathrow wrote: post #9
jlgaddis wrote: post #4

Wow, makes me glad that I don't use operating systems that track every little thing I do!

Which would be what OS?

Hardened Gentoo? *BSD? ArchLinux?

They still come with some kind of tracking, like Chromium downloads binary blob that manages your microphone, or Firefox that includes telemetry and crash reporting, but at least you can easily recompile Fx without pocket, WebRTC etc. which you can't do in Win10.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#54

Post by JohnTHaller »

tajen wrote: post #46
holografix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Microsoft doesn't have the monopoly it once did with the proliferation of tablets and such. Anti-competitive behavior is fine as long as it isn't monopolistic. Every browser on iOS is a UI on top of the mobile Safari engine - the equivalent of Windows only allowing IE and browser skins - but that type of anti-competitive behavior is OK because Apple only controls 30% of the mobile devices and its users choose to buy into said anti-competitive environments.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#55

Post by akerro »

skrowl wrote: post #29
MikeNomad wrote: post #13

Not having read the EULA / Terms of Service (I don't run Windows 10), Would running a script to turn off / block the tracking and data collection violate the agreements?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection add a new 32 dword "AllowTelemetry" and set the value to 0. Then, open Services and stop & change startup to disabled on "Connected User Experiences and Telemetry" and "dmwappushservice". There are bunches of tools and scripts around to do it, but those 2 things are really all that you need to do. Microsoft doesn't stop you from "opting out" of Tel…

Get TronScript https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#57

Post by dimman »

From the MS blog mentioned I find this section, or how it's formulated, rather interesting and disturbing:

"3. Advertising Data We Don’t Collect

Unlike some other platforms, no matter what privacy options you choose, neither Windows 10 nor any other Microsoft software scans the content of your email or other communications, or your files, in order to deliver targeted advertising to you."

Most people would read that as "MS doesn't scan your files, communication or email period" when it in fact just mentions one case in which they dont...

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#58

Post by cm2187 »

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?

I did notice that Windows 10 often messes with my firewall rules. I had a custom firewall rule to keep a port open. Windows deleted the rule when upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and deleted it again during a recent Windows update. So not sure your firewall rule would survive very long the "new Microsoft"...

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#60

Post by dantillberg »

I spent my holiday break shifting my alignment 2 or 3 points towards Stallmanism. The existence/collection of statistics like this increase my confidence in that choice.

Between Windows privacy craziness and Apple's continuing lockdown of OSX (I think that System Integrity Protection augurs an iOS-like walled-garden future for OSX), I recently switched all of my OSX/Windows/Ubuntu systems to Arch Linux; it takes some tweaking and setup and a bit of command line hacking, but it's really awesome to have all my machines doing my bidding -- I tell them what to run, when/what to update, and I'm in control of synchronizing settings/files between them.

With Windows/OSX (and Ubuntu to a lesser degree, which I'd used previously), you can only kind of hope that it does what you want, and when it doesn't work, you kind of bang on it a bit to try and get it to change its behavior. All the while, the computer is doing a large number of things you don't really want it to do (what are all these processes? why is it connecting to x.y.domain.net? what data is it sending? why does it insist on trying to get me to log in to XXCloudY? I don't want to use that), but which you're kind of powerless to stop (aside from e.g. blocking connections with another physical network device), even if you knew what was happening. But you don't.

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