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

111–120 of 272 posts

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#111

Post by serge2k »

jinst8gmi wrote: post #65
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…

> Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower. Just think of the targeted advertising opportunities based on toilet usage statistics!

Assumption being the data can be traced back to a user.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#112

Post by thomnottom »

AlexandrB wrote: post #95
rms_returns wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment to rival the best from five years ago. Open-source is pretty young on the desktop arena. Consider that Microsoft ruled the entire nineties and tried all tricks in the book to sabotage linux. Despite this, the fact that linux desktops are even available today is nothing short of a miracle! IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enoug…

> IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to handle 90% of users' needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also rapidly getting filled. This is not really true. For example, high-dpi is still a complete crapshoot, font rendering is often bad bordering on terrible. Unity itself is a usability disaster that hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) most of the time. Networ…

Interesting, because I find dealing with high DPI significantly better on Ubuntu than Windows.

And Unity works well for me, my wife, and daughter.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#113

Post by imtringued »

bitwize wrote: post #69
dimman wrote: post #57

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 a…

Sometimes "scanning the content of your email or your files" is a desirable feature, for example in an antivirus program.

And that's okay as long as the data doesn't leave your computer.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#114

Post by dantillberg »

serge2k wrote: post #108
dantillberg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is pretty good at catering to the desires of enterprises, so you're right, but in the linked article I see at [0] that with a typical consumer license of Windows, I can reduce the "telemetry" level, but only to "Basic" from the default level of "Enhanced" (side note: how is it "enhanced" if it's the default?). While the Enhanced level accounts for a lot of the usage-specific statistics detailed in TFA, Basi…

That list looks less like valuable user data and more like basic telemetry data that is mostly useful to anyone trying to provide a good OS experience.

I did intentionally write "valuable" instead of "intrusive," as you're right -- that is very useful data to aid Microsoft in developing Windows. But as a user, I ought to be able to at least opt out. But typical Windows users cannot, even if they might think that they are by downgrading from Enhanced to Basic.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#115

Post by personomas »

Personally, I love linux Mint. It beats every other operating system that I've every tried, but occasionally I've had to know some CS concepts in order to keep it running/ fix bugs. This is more a linux problem in general, but it's easily worth it as a CS student.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#116

Post by sageikosa »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #105
sageikosa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be garnered from purchase data, at least on a household level.

How is that data currently collected? Are you referring to store loyalty cards?

Just saying that it can be garnered, I have no idea on whether it is used, although store loyalty cards obviously play into targeted coupons you receive at the checkout.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#117

Post by cptskippy »

akerro wrote: post #8
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?

Aren't Bing searches included when you search for local files?

Yes, so that should give you an idea of how often people are searching from the task bar.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#118

Post by rpgmaker »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #64

I still can't imagine why Microsoft would think it's worth the bad publicity to not offer the option to disable telemetry, considering how few people tend to deviate from defaults in general, and how tiny a percentage of their users even care about privacy to begin with (evident from the commercial success of Windows 10). They've been getting so much goodwill for all the other great things they've been doing lately.…

From the headlines that have been popping up lately about Windows 10 usage I believe the news cycle is about to produce 'Windows 11 Beta is around the corner!' type of headlines any day now.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#119

Post by AlexandrB »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #104
AlexandrB wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to handle 90% of users' needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also rapidly getting filled. This is not really true. For example, high-dpi is still a complete crapshoot, font rendering is often bad bordering on terrible. Unity itself is a usability disaster that hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) most of the time. Networ…

> hides some of an applications most important elements (menu bar) I don't know Unity; are you referring to it using a global menu bar, as OSX does? Because the latter is a wonderful idea as far as I'm concerned - it save screen real estate, reduces unnecessary distractions, and has no negative effect on functionality.

By default in Ubuntu (and I know of no way to change this) the global menu bar in Unity is just an empty gray slate until you hover over it and "File", "Edit", "View", etc. appear. This means you have no idea where your mouse should be going until you've reached the top of the screen and have to move left/right until you get to the desired menu.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#120

Post by rpgmaker »

dantillberg wrote: post #60

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…

> I think that System Integrity Protection augurs an iOS-like walled-garden future for OSX

I believe they are going down that road too, eventually. They are also going to dump Intel at some point not too far off, which may not matter to many Mac users but it will be significant to the hackintosh crowd.

Post reply on HN