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Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

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Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#301

Post by crazygringo »

jacobr1 wrote: post #273
crazygringo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it depends on the intent . If the intent is to prevent the transmission of ideas, then yes it's censorship. If the intent is to protect from harm -- totally unconnected to ideas -- then no it's not censorship. The reason Defender deletes keygens is that they're statistically associated with malware and viruses, as any Google search will terrifyingly immediately reveal. It clearly is falling under the "protect fro…

Isn't the stated intent of most censorship to protect from harm?

I think the distinction is pretty clear.

But if it needs to be clearer: in censorship the harm is in the ideas themselves, the perspectives they spread.

In prohibitions that are non-censorship, it doesn't have anything to do with ideas. You aren't locking your door to prevent the idea of burglars entering your house.

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#302

Post by ghastmaster »

sslayer wrote: post #23
moss2 wrote: post #17

Switching my home computer to Linux has had its problems since I'm an avid gamer, but the more news I read about Windows the less I regret that decision.

I ditched in the middle of Windows 7, with absolutely no regrets. Valve has made tremendous inroads in gaming with Proton, along with developers releasing for Linux, there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft.

I was so happy with Linux, I switched my 80+ yo grandmother's computer as well. My father now runs it on his laptop. For the average user who does not game, windows is not recommended by me. Linux has stopped me in my tracks a few times, but I fiddle with things. My grandmother and father haven't had any issues in the years they have had it installed.

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#303

Post by UnFleshedOne »

zabatuvajdka wrote: post #229
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re crash data: MS actually provides crash data to 3rd party providers who set things up correctly. So if you have a desktop app you don't need to roll your own crash collecting system if Winqual [0] is enough. Apps that roll their own (like chrome and 100s of other crashpad based apps) usually disable MS error reporting for their executables. Also MS does ship shims for popular 3rd party apps that don't fix themselve…

The problem is that if you’re using a 3rd party app that IS NOT registered, it still sends the crash info to Microsoft. They should create some better apps to manage/configure that stuff. All I see as a user is when any app crashes it gets sent to Microsoft.

Yeah, because MS sometimes fixes or shims those too, if they are too popular (or fixes bugs in their own API if those led to the crashes).

Of all the questionable telemetry this one is actually useful...

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#305

Post by srg0 »

tomc1985 wrote: post #219
crazygringo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. By that logic, what are firefighters doing but censoring homes? What are koalas but a form of eucalyptus censorship? What is locking your front door but a form of censoring burglars? No, just no. Censorship is preventing the transmission of ideas , nothing more, nothing less. Deleting a file has nothing to do with transmission, and it's being done in response to a perceived threat, not its commun…

I think you are holding far too strict a definition of the word related to "transmission". If I am prevented from reading data I want to read, because some entity has decided they don't want me to read it, how is that not censorship? Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway? Looking up nearly every form of the word 'censor' I can think of, nothing speaks specifically to the transmission of ideas. Rather…

Come on, whitelist the folder where you keep your keygens, and windows defender won't interfere.

"Censorship, the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good" (Britannica). Voluntarily enabling a program to filter incoming data for personal convenience and safety is the opposite of the censorship. Like following self-imposed rules and restrictions is not a lesser freedom.

For less tech savvy users wiping keygens might be a safer default approach. I am pretty sure that keygens are an attack vector.

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#306

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

kozak wrote: post #28

I recently unpacked an old archive from the time I was making some shareware few decades ago. Windows Defender instantly ate all keygen.exe files from it. Those keygens were my own keygens for my own software (I wrote them myself and used them to generate keys for my customers back in the day).

Gives a new meaning to “software is eating the world”

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#307

Post by phendrenad2 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #115
Subsentient wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but less likely frankly, because it's less likely the malware author would take the time to make a ransomware for Linux, though I know it's happened before. 1% of the market vs 80% of the market, which would you target? And of course, utilities being free on Linux negates the need almost entirely in any case.

Right, so the problem isn't really because "Windows is a bad OS, m'kay", it's because Windows is popular... why might that be, I wonder? Maybe people like using it more...

Yeah this type of argument always contradicts itself. "Use Linux because it doesn't have viruses". Why doesn't it have viruses? "It's not popular enough". So by suggesting Linux, thus making it more popular, you're increasing the risk of viruses?

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#308

Post by ampdepolymerase »

magicalhippo wrote: post #177
kozak wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I anticipated this question :) No, it was just a plain Windows form, built from scratch using a then-popular Windows IDE. I think it was mostly triggered by the file name, maybe in combination with some crypto code inside.

> using a then-popular Windows IDE If you're referring to Delphi, this has been a common issue for a long time. Delphi seems to have been very popular with malware writers, and so AV companies keep flagging stuff from the standard libraries as malware. Got so bad at one time that some tried to get a deal with the major AV players to provide a suite of very basic Delphi applications they could use for false-positive t…

What about pre-.NET VB?

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#309

Post by apostacy »

crazygringo wrote: post #230
tomc1985 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are holding far too strict a definition of the word related to "transmission". If I am prevented from reading data I want to read, because some entity has decided they don't want me to read it, how is that not censorship? Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway? Looking up nearly every form of the word 'censor' I can think of, nothing speaks specifically to the transmission of ideas. Rather…

> If I am prevented from reading data I want to read... how is that not censorship? Of course it's censorship, they're preventing it from being transmitted to you. That's what I said. > Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway? Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia article [1]: "Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information." Speech and communication are tra…

> And no -- anti-virus is not voluntary censorship because it's not censorship at all. It's protection from harm, not a shield from comunicative ideas. If anti-virus were "voluntary censorship" then locking your home from burglars would be too. And that twists the word beyond any recognizable or useful meaning.

And what exactly is harm? Microsoft is making subjective judgements, which can not help but be political. Microsoft has decided that historical and obsolete keygens and ansi art are harmful. It would not surprise me if they deemed software to circumvent obsolete abandonware encryption harmful as well, since it violates the DMCA.

A better analogy would be if you let a third party security company examine the items in your home and remove what they deemed to be "harmful" to you.

Re: Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent

#310

Post by alerighi »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #25

Just another way in which the cure (anti-malware software) is worse than the disease (the malware). Slows down every file access and program launch, high false positive rate, is itself a vector for exploitation... why did we ever think this was a good idea?

Anti malware software is worse than malware in itself.

By the way the reason we have malware in Windows is for how Windows works: unlike Linux distributions Windows doesn't have a package manager (yes, now there is the Windows store, but practically no one uses it, even Microsoft itself since you don't find Office on it!), and thus users need to download executables from the internet.

But users are stupid and will probably download the first link they find on Google that probably contain malware. In Linux that is not possible, not because Linux is more secure (it's not), but for the simple fact that downloading executables from the internet is not something you commonly do, you install software from trusted sources.

To run a file you downloaded you even need to add a permission that is not enabled by default. That is enough to avoid people executing by mistake with a double click a file they received by email named invoice.pdf.exe (where of course Windows hides the .exe extension by default...).

Microsoft is addressing a problem the wrong way around, instead of establishing a trusted source of software, they are still developing antivirus software that not only slows down the computer, but they don't even work so well with modern malwares, that are so sophisticated to bypass easily an antivirus protection.

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