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Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

zdnet.com

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Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#41

Post by amatecha »

guelo wrote: post #37

As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal.…

Yeah, I just helped someone set up a new Win 10 laptop and I felt so bad for them with how unintuitive and instrusive of a process it was. It pushes you towards making/using an online Microsoft account, and making a non-internet account on the computer is a tiny text button (no outline, just text) which NO computer novice is going to know. Can only guess how many users have their online identity now permanently linked with their home computer usage because they thought they have to. Just seems so predatory and manipulative.

I mean, at the bare minimum, software companies (especially the most prominent and prevalent ones) should be adopting the "principle of least astonishment"[0] and not enabling sketchy crap by default. Also simply starting up a new computer and getting going shouldn't require paging through 5+ pages of inexplicable configuration steps that cannot possibly be effectively summarized by a one-line 12pt-font description.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#42

Post by amatecha »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #28

The recent MS behavior is baffling, like one suffering multiple personality disorder. Policies both customer-friendly and actively hostile at the same time. Leadership really needs to get everyone "on the same page" (groan) and decide if they want to stick with being evil or not.

Yeah the adoption of open source and getting involved in that community is great, but then all the user-hostile product decisions have me like "make up your mind!"

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#43

Post by setquk »

anvandare wrote: post #22
blub wrote: post #8

Another nail in the coffin of MS telemetry apologists. Really, MS is freaking evil when it comes to this stuff. Wonder which asshole greenlighted this huge telemetry push. Must have been sanctioned from the very top.

But think about all the cool contributions they're making to open source! They've really changed their ways! Microsoft is indeed, Evil. Not evil as in mustache-twirling damsel-on-track-laying villain, but evil as in how cancer or ebola is evil. Those who place their trust in that (or any other) company deserve what they will (inevitably) get. It's not that have malicious intent. I don't think about the countless numb…

The first point is a worrying one despite the sarcasm. They are attaching themselves to a lot of major open source platforms and projects. I don’t think this is the old embrace, extend, extinguish approach but something new and unknown.

They’re doing too well and doing bad things too often for me to feel sorry for them.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#44

Post by setquk »

miaklesp wrote: post #21
blub wrote: post #8

Another nail in the coffin of MS telemetry apologists. Really, MS is freaking evil when it comes to this stuff. Wonder which asshole greenlighted this huge telemetry push. Must have been sanctioned from the very top.

If you don't like, just don't use.

I just did this. My options were:

1. Buy a new Lenovo laptop.

2. Buy a new Apple laptop.

I went for 2 and paid for Little Snitch and it is literally dead and works flawlessly.

Once my family’s windows 10 laptops are off (even if they’re doing nothing but charging them with lid open), my home network is silent.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#45

Post by Spivak »

amatecha wrote: post #42
mixmastamyk wrote: post #28

The recent MS behavior is baffling, like one suffering multiple personality disorder. Policies both customer-friendly and actively hostile at the same time. Leadership really needs to get everyone "on the same page" (groan) and decide if they want to stick with being evil or not.

Yeah the adoption of open source and getting involved in that community is great, but then all the user-hostile product decisions have me like "make up your mind!"

Developer friendly, consumer hostile is a pretty solid stance if they can make devs feel like they're on the same side and insulated from business.

I mean how many devs here can say they have any more control over the analytics used on the things they make.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#46

Post by linuxftw »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #28

The recent MS behavior is baffling, like one suffering multiple personality disorder. Policies both customer-friendly and actively hostile at the same time. Leadership really needs to get everyone "on the same page" (groan) and decide if they want to stick with being evil or not.

Agile software development practices. Nobody created a user story for 'respect user's settings during upgrades'. If I had to guess, the settings were renamed/refactored and default values were enabled by default. Or perhaps the 'system upgrade service' doesn't talk to the 'system user setting services' and has no way to discover those settings.

There's so many innovative ways to write terrible software, Microsoft is truly a pioneer in this area.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#47

Post by tor_user »

nickjj wrote: post #30

I don't get it. This article and Reddit post is very misguided. Why are people upset that you're sending data to Microsoft if you enable the settings in Windows that specifically allow Microsoft to collect this data? Maybe I'm biased since I run Windows 10 Pro but you can simply turn off activity history and set your diagnostic settings to basic. Now your non-anonymous data won't be sent to MS (unless they are secret…

You may want to have a look at the number of possible events sent to America compared between 'basic' and 'full' (93|112), (410|422).

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/23/german-federal-office-bsi-...

Office then has approximately 50 times that number again:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/16/microsoft_gdpr/

People are upset because there is no way to set this to zero aside from unplugging the machine from the network.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#48

Post by blitmap »

guelo wrote: post #37

As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal.…

The only user-hostile behavior I mostly agree with his forced, frequent updates.

It would be better if:

1) Microsoft didn't beta-test with actual customers.

2) Microsoft figured out how to update things without restarting so commonly (as I understand, this is due to how files are locked and how dependent services are updated).

3) Microsoft didn't push out unnecessary crap as "critical" or essential/important updates.

4) Microsoft didn't force updates on shutdown.

I mean Apple has made their phones the preferred secure devices of several organizations because of how well they keep them updated. It's a pain for me in IT when an app wants to require a recently-released version of iOS, but I do see the benefit to forced, frequent updates.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#49

Post by linuxftw »

setquk wrote: post #19
fusl wrote: post #2

As far as everything on the internet tells me, GDPR was made for exactly this reason, to prevent this kind of data collecting without the users consent. But what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement while large companies can get away with collecting everything and anything, leaking personal user data all o…

So it's ok for small companies to leak personal data? Doctors' surgeries are small companies here in the UK. The issue here is that literally every company across the world doesn't give a crap past the end of their nose and has abysmal data protection policies in place because it affects the bottom line. They introduced local legislation to help this and a few large fish got fined and that was it. Ultimately it wasn'…

Major operational risk is not linear. Joe's Coffee shop doesn't have an army of lawyers to defend their collection and us practices that would possibly be lawful, while BigCorp has an army of lawyers to successfully defend their unlawful practices.

Even if the fines scale (I don't know what the punitive measures are) the cost to litigate won't.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#50

Post by amatecha »

Spivak wrote: post #45
amatecha wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the adoption of open source and getting involved in that community is great, but then all the user-hostile product decisions have me like "make up your mind!"

Developer friendly, consumer hostile is a pretty solid stance if they can make devs feel like they're on the same side and insulated from business. I mean how many devs here can say they have any more control over the analytics used on the things they make.

Huh, that's a pretty good point -- maybe nothing has actually changed, eh?
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