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

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

#61

Post by rcxdude »

linuxftw wrote: post #49
setquk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The regulatory agencies don't start with litigation. If you are unintentionally out of line they will contact you to fix it first, and if you do so in good faith that will be the end of it.

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

#62

Post by saltyshake »

kowdermeister wrote: post #59
AlwaysRock wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed my computer now restarts, reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in. If I didnt get signed out of Steam and my VPN wasnt open I wouldnt even notice half the time. I want to be able to decide if my computer updates... It's not even that big of an ask.

> reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in That's a really great feature. I'd love to see even better window management in 10.

Its super annoying with YouTube.

Even a full Shutdown/Restart, I open the machine and boom, Chrome opens and the speakers are blasting whatever I had playing on YouTube the day before.

Shutdowns should be respected. What if I had something inappropriate open before doing the shutdown ?

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

#63

Post by linuxftw »

rcxdude wrote: post #61
linuxftw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The regulatory agencies don't start with litigation. If you are unintentionally out of line they will contact you to fix it first, and if you do so in good faith that will be the end of it.

How do they find your are in compliance or not, through what methods? Anonymous complaint? Random audit? What if you decide you are in compliance and what they deem unallowable is critical to your business?

I know what bigcorp's strategy is! Outsource data collection to a 'marketing analytics' firm that specializes in 'GDPR compliance'. Sounds like a new boutique consulting industry.

Similar situations exist for small businesses in the US already, we call them the "IRS" While you might argue that if you don't cheat on your taxes you have nothing to fear, the IRS might decide you took some deductions you shouldn't have, pay up or litigate. If you successfully defend? Oopsies, we might audit you again for the same thing next year (happened to a friend of mine)!

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

#64

Post by AnthonyMouse »

DanBC wrote: post #13
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR really should only apply to companies beyond a certain size. Or at least, the requirements for small companies should be less stringent.

The requirements for small companies are less stringent.

> The requirements for small companies are less stringent.

Conditioning various minor requirements on entity size is no help if they don't actually reduce the complexity. Otherwise the cost of determining what they have to comply with is as expensive as the cost of determining what they have to do to comply.

What smaller entities need is an entirely separate framework with fewer, simpler, narrower rules that don't have to be as robust against a huge team of lawyers finding loopholes because smaller entities don't have a huge team of lawyers finding loopholes.

Then you can have an entirely different set of robust arbitrarily complex rules that all only apply to companies with more than 1000 employees because they can afford to handle the complexity.

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

#65

Post by pavel_lishin »

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…

> If you're concerned about privacy, why would you login to your OS using a Microsoft Live account?

Why would I expect there to be a difference in my level of privacy between the two? This is frankly a ludicrous thing to expect users to understand. I would certainly not expect this.

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

#66

Post by mAEStro-paNDa »

nickjj wrote: post #38
ep103 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. Install Latest Windows Updates 5. Find that these settings have been set back to enabled again. 6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 every Tuesday. 7. Discover MS is still sending data, regardless of your settings. ^^ The above is why.

Those are shady steps taken by MS but I don't experience them with Windows 10 Pro. Maybe it's only isolated to Windows 10 Home? I still double check all of my privacy settings after a major content patch, but so far so good. I keep nearly everything disabled too (basic diagnostics, limited access to my webcam / microphone, Cortana is disabled, no timeline, etc.).

I think you're missing the point here. It should not be a constant opt-out routine. If anything it should be opt-in only.

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

#67

Post by gknoy »

saltyshake wrote: post #62
kowdermeister wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in That's a really great feature. I'd love to see even better window management in 10.

Its super annoying with YouTube. Even a full Shutdown/Restart, I open the machine and boom, Chrome opens and the speakers are blasting whatever I had playing on YouTube the day before. Shutdowns should be respected. What if I had something inappropriate open before doing the shutdown ?

Incognito mode should prevent one aspect of that - Chrome won't remember what it had open as soon as the tab is closed (useful for bank account info, etc).

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

#68

Post by nickjj »

tor_user wrote: post #58
nickjj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links. You could also try installing O&O ShutUp10. I've been running it since I installed Windows 10. You can download it (it's a free app) at https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 . It nulls out a bunch of telemetry related addresses in your /etc/hosts file, and allows you to configure over a 100 different privacy settings from 1 place.

Microsoft have a long history of overriding and ignoring hosts configurations to their own addresses so I am skeptical on the utility of this. I think you might be a little too trusting. I do not have time to repeat the efforts outlined by government contractors in the above links with this add on applied, I doubt you do either. Better for me to avoid the OS altogether.

I don't think it's a matter of being too trusting. I know what I'm getting into by using Windows.

I don't sweat it because I know I did everything I could on my end to minimize being spied on without it really affecting me in a negative way. Like you said, I don't have time to match the efforts of full time govt employees.

I spent a grand total of 30 minutes researching and tinkering with privacy related settings since I started using Windows 10, and I'm ok with that.

I use the tool I linked not only for modifying my hosts file, but it's a 1 stop menu to access all of Microsoft's scattered privacy settings.

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

#69

Post by pavel_lishin »

nickjj wrote: post #55
tor_user wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 net…

Thanks for the links. You could also try installing O&O ShutUp10. I've been running it since I installed Windows 10. You can download it (it's a free app) at https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 . It nulls out a bunch of telemetry related addresses in your /etc/hosts file, and allows you to configure over a 100 different privacy settings from 1 place.

You conveniently left this out of your original comment, where you called people silly for not having things configured correctly.

This is a bit like saying that you've never had a problem with your car guzzling gas, or falsifying emissions, and then later casually mentioning that you actually own an electric motorcycle.

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

#70

Post by sls »

linuxftw wrote: post #46
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…

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