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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?

#101

Post by fx1994 »

ep103 wrote: post #31
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…

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.

After spending two days to setup my Win10 Procame some glorious update and MS decided to reset settings on their own. That was the first and last time. Next day I downgraded to Win 8.1 Pro. Win 7 Pro memory and disk usage can't be compared to Win8 or Win10, but I'm happy.

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

#102

Post by tor_user »

theclaw wrote: post #94
tor_user wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do ignore the hosts file, it’s true - but they don’t ignore windows built-in firewall. I used it to blacklist a bunch of hosts when I had wireshark open to diagnose an unrelated problem and noticed all my keystrokes in the start menu search box were being sent to MS, as well as details about every application I launched. The search box keystrokes were going to onedrive - presumably to show me files matching from…

Very interesting info, but they own the OS and in some cases the compiler: https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/06/visual-cpp-telemetry

Given that, I don't care to engage in whack a mole with them. They have the upper hand.

Safe for visual studio and visual studio code users to assume that the IDEs are sending telemetry too.

In my case the best thing is to avoid the OS. And github and whatever else their malign influence could eventually own.

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

#103

Post by grawprog »

jstimpfle wrote: post #91
shawnz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a standard expectation on mobile that all apps should work that way, and consumers seem to like that pattern better. So is it really anti-consumer to try and push app developers in that direction?

Dude, this is not mobile. I'm using my Desktop PC for real work. Desktop applications are more complex and have more complex interaction patterns than mobile apps. I might be able to restore my session manually (lose an undo buffer here or a private browsing session there) but its still an annoyance.

My KDE desktop will restore about 95% of my previous session in its previous state on restart even after a crash or power loss. It doesn't restore private browser sessions or running games in their current state or anything like that. But it restores most of my desktop software to exactly what i had open with undo buffers, terminal states and just about everything exactly the way it was.

I'm not trying to excuse microsoft....if anything there's really no excuse for them not to have a proper session restore and non-forced updates that don't auto-restart your computer.

Just pointing out they really dropped the ball twice here.

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

#104

Post by mixmastamyk »

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…

Most folks aren’t experts, defaults matter.

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

#105

Post by kilburn »

jstimpfle wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason desktop apps can't by default use near-continuous saved state and assure completely persisted state on shutdown request. They usually don't, because of historical UI paradigms, but there is no reason they can't. It's universal on mobile because mobile rebuilt UI paradigms from the ground up, discarding desktop legacy nonsense in the process.

Mobile apps don't restore very well either, but it doesn't matter so much. There is usually not much to restore because they have less state. Let's say I have a private browsing session. Or a password manager session where I've been manipulating an unlocked database. I might have manually mounted a file system over the network and might have a bunch of programs running, editing the files over there. You cannot restor…

You are presenting situations that are hard but not impossible to deal with.

If you can keep the stuff in RAM, you can also serialize it to disk and then restore it from there. The only thing you cannot do is reply to external inputs during that time (so keepalive connections may be a problem if your updates take too long), but that can also be dealt with.

We are very far from getting there though.

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

#106

Post by zwaps »

They now say this is related to the diagnostic level set to full.

This is clearly not true. I have disabled ALL privacy related settings, set activity X to off and have the level set to basic since install.

Microsoft still displays search queries and apps I used on the activity dashboard.

Clearly someone "messed up". (Collect now, apologize later)

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

#107

Post by zwaps »

nickjj wrote: post #34
modzu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a bit disingenuous: the issue here is that even if you turn off activity tracking, activity is still tracked if you have error reporting enabled, a setting that is much less explicit about what it is collecting.

> A setting that is much less explicit about what it is collecting. It's pretty explicit on what it's collecting given the article's context. The linked article's tagline is: > Microsoft baffles Windows 10 users by apparently collecting data about recently opened websites and apps when users have opted against sharing that information. But if you look at the help text next to the radio button in the diagnostics setti…

I have it set to basic and it still shows the apps I used in the privacy dashboard website.

The basic/full story is bull

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

#108

Post by wink »

linuxftw wrote: post #78
131012 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What enrages me most is the fact that they ask us to f * pay for it! The implicit deal with Facebook, Google and other free services is that you pay them with their data. Fine. But paying for being spied on? This is scam pure and simple.

There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.

Please don't act as if Linux was a viable alternative for everything. It's not. I appreciate trying to prod people, but this came off very elitist.

-- someone who's been using Linux since 1998, Linux desktops for work stuff since ~2008 and has more machines with only Linux at home than ones with Windows, but still spends the majority of recreation time on a Win7 box because not all games run nicely with Wine, or at all.

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

#109

Post by nickjj »

tor_user wrote: post #74
nickjj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sin…

> I know what I'm getting into by using Windows. the problem is rather that you think you do - but you don't and can't.

No, I understand that I'm not in full control over what MS does with privacy related settings.

By using Windows, I'm accepting that, and in my case, instead of hunting through 15 different privacy settings screens in the control panel, I use that app to have them all in 1 place.

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

#110

Post by lostmsu »

totony wrote: post #96
gknoy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Except this is Windows re-opening the apps (probably from hibernated RAM), so incognito would likely not work

I don't think it's possible. Must be the apps themselves.
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