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Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

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Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#71

Post by longcat »

cpach wrote: post #10

Anyone feeling tempted to play the Devil’s advocate here? :)

As someone who works within an operations team, the telemetry that is seen within MEM/365 is extremely useful for detecting issues and providing overall health of the environment.

While MS does not help itself with some of the more invasive tactics, some of the telemetry is super valuable in detecting issues with drivers, updates and many other things.

Even the episode of MS08-067 https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/57/ has some interest bits on early telemetry.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#72

Post by boondaburrah »

norman784 wrote: post #27

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

required to use windows for work (the software I produce must run on desktop windows machines), and only have my personal PC to do work with. I'd like to have money for a second machine but I don't.

The thing with the linux community, is that once linux covers 90% of the perceived use-cases for a desktop/laptop/workstation computer, it really feels like it should be enough to see a big switch. We can relax, right? But that 10% of use cases where windows is the /only/ option is the other 90%.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#73

Post by qwertox »

lelanthran wrote: post #42
norman784 wrote: post #27

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

> I personally prefer Linux, but what’s holding me are the streaming services (netflix, amazon, etc), I can only watch SD content if I’m on Linux, I hadn't noticed. Wife's 43" TV is connected to a linux box with firefox that is used for Amazon Prime, Netflix AND Disney+. I haven't noticed poor picture and assumed it ran at 1096x1080. I will certainly have to check this out.

I just checked on Ubuntu Desktop in Firefox and yes, Full HD is not an option.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#74

Post by decasteve »

mobilio wrote: post #2

I wish to see this also for macOS, iOS and Android.

Last time I used macOS, 2-3 years ago, it was in constant communication with Akamai servers. Blocking some of those hosts to prevent it from doing so would render the system unresponsive when trying to launch an application.

Note: this anecdote may no longer be current. I’m not sure what changes Apple might have made since I tested this.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#75

Post by wyager »

norman784 wrote: post #27

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

> I can only watch SD content if I’m on Linux

Sounds like you have a good reason to get content from third-party sources that don't saddle you with annoying BS.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#76

Post by squarefoot »

moonchrome wrote: post #43
norman784 wrote: post #27

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

I recently considered installing Linux on my desktop workstation. Then I decided I wanted to buy a wireless card for the machine - and any device I saw available locally had dubious issue/debugging threads online, people unable to get it to work, BT functionality missing, etc. I've used Linux desktop in the past and it looks like things haven't changed much. I don't like the idea of having to compile kernel modules j…

Pretty much every device is supported under Linux once one avoids the very latest product. I'm not talking about using Granma's 286, just don't buy the latest hardware or anything younger than say six months. Hardware manufacturers are encouraged (just to say) to support only Windows out of the box, therefore Linux support requires either personal unpaid work by members of the community or investment from FOSS companies, which for obvious reasons needs more time.

One extremely important aspect of Linux support is that once it happens, it stays there virtually forever: there's no such thing as declaring a product obsolete so that users are forced to migrate to the newer version. This applies to software too; WINE allows Linux users to run perfectly good Windows software that stopped working on native Windows ages ago forcing Windows users to shell out a lot of money.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#77

Post by BiteCode_dev »

grishka wrote: post #58
danieldevries wrote: post #35

Sending telemetry data at all without real consent (ie not some ultimatum) is scary. Windows is not a daily driver OS.

Software isn't immutable. The code that makes these requests has to physically exist somewhere. Which means you can find it and overwrite it with nop's.

For now. Modern chips will make it harder and harder, until one day we will have almost no control over the machine we are running. For our own good, of course. Plus nobody will care appart from us. And not all of us. Not the us that are working on this techs at least.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#78

Post by not1ofU »

luckylittle wrote: post #64

Why didn't they release it in a better format, like CSV? We could then easily turn it into a C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file.

yeah but windows defender will wipe it clean evertime it updates.

Plus if you have a massive (>3MB) hosts file it causes other issues during bootup, which requiers disabling another service (dont remember which one off the top of my head, as I am using Pi-Hole these days)

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#79

Post by scoutt »

norman784 wrote: post #27

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

I work with Linux for compiling Android images (with VSCode on Windows through SSH), and I also customize the kernel (drivers and DT, mostly). I also do some Qt porting to Linux, but I used Windows my entire life (apart from DOS).

And honestly, I won't boot my PC from Linux (at home or work) because I'm afraid it will break. I'll explain: I have some VMs with Ubuntu and, from time to time, I hit some problem that made the system unrecoverable. For instance, filesystem breaking or not mounting, I also remember Nvidia drivers updates that generated a black login screen (1), or strange error messages showing up before seeing the Ubuntu login screen (that I wonder myself what should I do with them?).

Not to mention the times my SSH connections to development servers don't work, and I have to physically go there and reset the PCs.

I don't want to be twiddling with my main PC, which puts food on my family table. The fear of coming to work (or from work at home) and turning on my PC just to find out that some partition isn't mounting, my printer is not working anymore or some other problem that would take me an hour to fix... is too much of a risk for me and my mental health.

On the functional side... there are some things that I can't understand... It's been years already and I cannot control the scroll speed of the mouse wheel in Ubuntu without hacking with the xinput system. What does that tell me?

And why asking my password every 5 minutes? I always said: if you want to remember a phrase, use it as your Ubuntu password. You'll be asked for it for every little thing and in a couple of hours you will remember the phrase forever.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1129516/black-screen-at-boot...

PS: I love-hate Ubuntu, and I am not saying that these things don't happen on Windows, but from personal experience, Windows is much more stable since like the past 10 years.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#80

Post by charcircuit »

notanote wrote: post #44
jiggawatts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DigiCert’s OCSP service A weakness of the OCSP protocol is that it gets sent the certificate hash as an input. This means that to a significant degree, an OCSP provider can track what software you are using, what sites you visit, etc... For the code signing certificates, they could also determine which year (or two) it came from. DigiCert could sell that to marketing companies, and spy agencies / state-sponsored ha…

OCSP is done over plain HTTP (for obvious reasons), so the OCSP provider doesn’t have exclusive access to this data. There is not much value there for DigiCert and others when every ISP can potentially sell the same data. OCSP stapling helps maintain privacy, so eg. ESNI isn’t completely pointless when stapling is used.

>OCSP is done over plain HTTP (for obvious reasons)

It's not obvious to me. Why can't it be done over HTTPS? From what I can tell nothing stops you from doing that.

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