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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.
If this “normal users are stupid” thing is supposed to be in favour of Linux then it’s a stale argument.
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Not saying that this is carrying anything malicious at all, but there's certainly a chance that a tool to clear out telemetry or something else critical in the bowels of the OS is sending info back to that group now or can be malicious. Just a friendly warning to be weary about these types of applications.
This would be easy to detect. It's a popular tool made by a German company. I think someone would've found out by now.
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To preserve their main domain from the filthiest blacklists? So they can move on to another shady domain for dirty tricks if this one goes under in reputation. Executive thinking..
but why wouldnt they use microsoft-telemetry.com instead?
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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.
I generally don't require any better than Markdown and for larger documents I just LaTeX.
However I am normally sent work documents with all sorts of macros from other companies (embedded forms) to fill out for things like payments, right to work etc. These require Microsoft Office. Originally when I started I thought I could get away with Libre Office. It worked at best 50% and these weren't complex macros (I inspected them myself).
None of these forms are outside the norm of what a HR department, University faculty office or most medium to large companies use.
I am surprised that they using server names like "alpha.telemetry.microsft.com". when I see something like "microsft" in an E-mail or link I immediately suspect that somebody is trying to fake being from Microsoft. Or are these spelling errors in the article? Edit: these domain names are in the report too. Very strange. I would get very nervous if I saw "microsft" in a firewall log.
It could be an attempt to bypass DNS blacklists. I have Microsoft domains blacklisted on my pi-hole because I find their telemetry practices so difficult to constrain otherwise. Not sure if I caught any micrsoft domains, but there were definitely some that seemed intentionally semi-obfuscated, with msft or something like that instead of the full company name.
I am surprised that they using server names like "alpha.telemetry.microsft.com". when I see something like "microsft" in an E-mail or link I immediately suspect that somebody is trying to fake being from Microsoft. Or are these spelling errors in the article? Edit: these domain names are in the report too. Very strange. I would get very nervous if I saw "microsft" in a firewall log.
https://www.ip-tracker.org/locator/ip-lookup.php?ip=Microsft... It does seem MS owns that domain, but to be actively using it --- especially for telemetry --- raises red flags for me too. Using misspellings of names is something malware often does.
It also randomly creates a new service matching the name of an old service + a random changing hexadecimal suffix, and I apparently have Skype running on my gaming rig. As is, I don't consider Windows a defensible platform.
I have the feeling that everyone just keeps slapping features, services and more telemetry onto Win 10 left and right with little coordination. Would be funny if some government agency just told Microsoft "now give us a complete list of all telemetry" - I would be surprised if MS could do it (with any reasonable confidence that the list is actually complete).
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023057/update-to-w... [2] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
Does anyone know if there is a tool to safely remove telemetry executables from Win10? Is it possible to remove these?
Even if you succeed, the next update will likely bring back some of the stuff you removed, two additional independent monitoring tools using separate C2 domains/IPs hidden somewhere in your system (not necessarily the Windows folder either), plus three "repair" tools that try to find modifications to Windows files like the ones you made and revert them.
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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.
The problem is not whether YOU use the advanced features. It is whether someone else does. I generally don't require any better than Markdown and for larger documents I just LaTeX. However I am normally sent work documents with all sorts of macros from other companies (embedded forms) to fill out for things like payments, right to work etc. These require Microsoft Office. Originally when I started I thought I could g…
The reason is mostly security: nobody wants to run random macros on their machines (where nobody means their IT departments, the users wouldn't care) and for the uses that you mention, for random forms, web-based forms are used and links to them are getting send.
At least in my corner of woods.
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Great let me know when Linux can run the apps I need for work and I can reliably install it on any hardware and expect it to work without issue. I like Linux as anyone else around here, but to claim it can replace Win10 for the average user is a stretch.
>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.
I've been using Linux/Unix for about 20 years now. There are still loads of things that just do not work and I really expect them to work.
I am not talking about specialist hardware. I am talking about things like a USB headset I have (works fine on Windows and MacOSX without having to install any additional drivers). Doesn't work on Linux.
I installed Slack using the deb package (on ubuntu). Won't start, no idea why. Just segfaults. So I have to use the browser version of slack.
X will still hang with certain applications. Sometimes I close the Lid and the laptop never wakes up.I still get screen tearing when moving windows around. This stuff was fixed years ago on Windows.
Now I could fix these things. However it hours of messing around when I could use a Linux VM on my Mac of WSL on Windows these days.
> The average user can handle KDE Plasma just fine.
No they can't. My friend (who can use Windows 7 just fine), when on my Linux PC and I have it setup pretty much like Windows and he couldn't work out how to open the web-browser. He isn't a dummy either. He has a masters in Aerospace Engineering and uses Matlab regularly. We are both 36 years of age.
(More) direct link to the publication: https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Cyber-Si... Page 31 of the report was of primary interest--hosts hard-coded in diagtrack.dll: geo.settings-win.data.microsoft.com.akadns.net db5-eap.settings-win.data.microsoft.com.akadns.net settings-win.data.microsoft.com db5.settings-win.data.microsoft.com.akadns.net asimov-win.settings.data.microsoft.com.akadns.net db5.vort…