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German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

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Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#101

Post by mschuster91 »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #68
AtomicOrbital wrote: post #13

to be fair every OS can and does do telemetry, say nothing about each software application calling back home in a similar way - such feedback helps speed up improvements however linux OS makes explicit notice of this and its simple to disable

There is 0 opt-out telemetry in most (all?) major flavors of Linux. But there's an even more important issue here. Even if there were some form of telemetry in Linux you'd be able to see exactly what it's collecting and where it's sending it since the OS itself is open source. I do not think many people are mostly okayish with purely diagnostic telemetry, but it's not clear exactly what Microsoft is collecting and th…

> Even if there were some form of telemetry in Linux

At least for Debian, at install time it does ask you if you want to participate in the "popularity contest" apt telemetry. But, on the other hand, it's opt-in with the "no" option preselected.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#103

Post by thepp1983 »

mario0b1 wrote: post #95
iwiririwo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's other issues with Linux on the desktop that doesn't let anybody except developers use it productively. You always have to weight your priorities, and getting stuff done is often number one priority.

The Problem (atleast in my opinion) is that there will "never" be any change in this if people are not willing to sacrifice just a little bit of usability. Why should companys write software for an OS that does not get used? Sure, getting stuff done is a high priority, but has it to be number one? Can't we put ethics (or call it whatever you want) above it? We definitely need a lot more competition

None of the parties that are involved in Linux actually care one iota about the desktop. At best it is a side project. It is phones, servers and embedded,

Only a very small percentage of what is a shrinking market uses it uses it on the desktop.

It will never happen. The only company that has really invested into anything close to Desktop Linux is Google and it is Chrome books which are pretty much a walled garden.

While it was better than it was 15 years ago, there are still dumb problems like "Why doesn't by usb headset work?" or "Oh X shat itself again with my GPU". Whereas with Windows I can reinstall the GPU drivers while playing a youtube video. The only thing I haven't had work is some cheapo chinese Serial PCI card from fleabay.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#104

Post by Dylan16807 »

metildaa wrote: post #20
tjoff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...through official means. I don't for a second doubt you can turn it off completely. But unofficial solutions come with tons of potential issues.

Could just block all communication with Microsoft by the OS. Or, move to non-Windows OSes like the retail giants already have. Kroger and Walmart run Suse Enterprise Linux (relevant Uptime Funk reference) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYRlTISvjww

> Could just block all communication with Microsoft by the OS.

Easier said than done when there's a minefield of firewall-bypasses for it.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#105

Post by bildung »

johnduhart wrote: post #78
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>let me know when [...] I can reliably install it on any hardware and expect it to work without issue. Consider yourself told, then. Linux works OOTB on pretty much all hardware, often better than Windows since it ships with all of the necessary drivers. >to claim it can replace Win10 for the average user is a stretch The average user can handle KDE Plasma just fine.

> Consider yourself told, then. Oh, please enlighten me, Drew. > Linux works OOTB on pretty much all hardware, often better than Windows Are device manufacturers supporting Linux? > since it ships with all of the necessary drivers. No it doesn't, last time I checked to even get the recommended usb wifi module to work on Arch required downloading additional packages and compiling a kernel module. > The average user ca…

>> since it ships with all of the necessary drivers.

> No it doesn't, last time I checked to even get the recommended usb wifi module to work on Arch required downloading additional packages and compiling a kernel module.

Compiling things yourself is the entire point of Arch. If you don't want to mess with things like these just use Ubuntu.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#106

Post by einr »

kakarot wrote: post #87
Zarath wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if there is a tool to safely remove telemetry executables from Win10? Is it possible to remove these?

Not sure, I tried doing it myself once and it was a rabbit hole of scripts and changing obscure settings in the command line. After somewhere between 12-18 hours of solid work there was still so much left open, and I came to realize it's simply impossible to have a copy of Windows 10 that doesn't spy on you in some way. For example, hardware profiling. Attach a printer to Windows 10, Microsoft will receive the hardwa…

With support for Windows 7 Professional ending in 2020, I'm not sure where to go from here.

Maybe you'll be able to do what some folks did with Windows XP and use a registry hack to trick Windows into receiving security patches for Windows Embedded POSready 7, which is the embedded Point-Of-Sale version of Win7. This is going to be supported until 10/12/2021. Of course, this is a very fragile and hacky solution that I would be unwilling to use on boxes running important stuff.

I'm in the same quandary and I think I'm going to just disconnect all my Windows 7 boxes from the Internet on the end date. Although a bit of a bother I will still be able to do my music production, games and graphics stuff without Internet access, and all the day-to-day Internet stuff I can migrate to Linux. Maybe use disposable Windows 7 VM's for random lightweight Windows-only stuff.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#107

Post by VvR-Ox »

jammygit wrote: post #6

I wish all governments did audits like this. Either the software would get less invasive, or we'd see Linux everywhere, wins all around. How bad is it that not even governments can use windows without the data vacuum being turned on? And they need to commission these investigations to even figure out what that means?

That is a nice wish but the german government is not as concerned with it's peoples privacy as you may think when you read stuff like this.

The opposite is true. Germany sells it's people to everyone (including foreign spies who get offices directly at the backbone of the internet).

We don't have much time left to educate people what computers are and how to keep your thoughts for yourself.

All this fear and suspicion against other nations like china but when they are "1984" germany is just the "a brave new world" version of the same coin.

The laws are changing since years and after german spies and police got more slack, organizations want to connect their data und use video surveillance with face detection. That is just the beginning of something that started with the new generation of kids using "the internet" and smartphones without knowing what a computer is or why it could be bad some day if a regime knows about everything you think.

They will win because the mainstream doesn't care anymore about privacy if things are convenient enough. If tools / services just want your data as payment at least 2/3 of the people in germany are ready to sell everything so they just don't have to pay money or use open source software with crappy UIs.

Also poverty is rising and education has some blind spots (like everything that is related to computers).

If I knew that earlier I'd have become a hacker instead of doing the shit jobs I do/did. Probably then retirement with 63 like in the "good old days" would've been possible :-D

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#108

Post by BurnGpuBurn »

MikusR wrote: post #62

Note that they analyzed only version 1607. Before Microsoft started publishing Telemetry documentation and before GDPR. Also akadns.net or microsft.com does not appear in a current (1809) diagtrack.dll.

I noted that yeah. It's a shame that it takes so much time and effort to get to the information that Microsoft should just be open about. I think, with the current short release cycle, audits on Windows will always lag behind the real world a year or two. So at best you know how Microsoft was spying on you two years ago.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#109

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

winrid wrote: post #90
emayljames wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LTS (Long Term Service) versions of Linux OS' are now breaking even, or even sometimes ahead, of Windows. Office is easily on par (actually better IMO). You can have the UI exactly as you want it to be. You have GIMP. The home of Apache/PHP, and many other improvements!.

Word is light-years ahead of any open source alternative. Gimp is not a photoshop replacement. These guys don't care about Apache on their desktops. :)

Lucky you can use Word in a browser these days, then.

I'm not sure which government departments are using Photoshop but the few that do could just as easily use Macs.

Re: German federal office publishes Windows 10 telemetry analysis

#110

Post by vetinari »

winrid wrote: post #90
emayljames wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LTS (Long Term Service) versions of Linux OS' are now breaking even, or even sometimes ahead, of Windows. Office is easily on par (actually better IMO). You can have the UI exactly as you want it to be. You have GIMP. The home of Apache/PHP, and many other improvements!.

Word is light-years ahead of any open source alternative. Gimp is not a photoshop replacement. These guys don't care about Apache on their desktops. :)

Most people do not use any advanced features, neither in Writer nor in Word. You can congratulate yourself, if your colleagues know what are styles, most just hard-code the formatting.
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