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Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

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261–270 of 391 posts

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#261

What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…

What you've described is none other than a Winston Privacy device (no longer available, alas).

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#263

What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…

What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, You cannot trust an OS you cannot build yourself. That's why I see Linux as the only option for professionals and privacy minded people.

Yeah, this is a strange take to me. Akin to catching the fox guarding your hen house eating the hens and reacting by having the fox install and monitor a security camera for the hen house. The problem is still the fox and he'll just turn the camera off when he wants the hens.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Linux there is OpenSnitch that does its job nicely, although I experienced some occasional desktop slowdowns even after training it to open everything for trusted programs. https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch I still recall the old days of Windows when I tried Kerio Personal Firewall and realized how much software already phoned home two decades ago. That was the last wake up call that pushed me into getting…

I second OpenSnitch, I haven't face any shutdowns due to it yet. For those coming from LittleSnitch on macOS might have to look into the finer details of the connection in the Allow/Deny dialog on OS to get the best results.

Slowdowns, not shutdowns, luckily:) The desktop (XFCE under Debian if that helps) just hung for a while like it was waiting for me to allow some rules, but didn't show the requester to do so, also the timings were random, could have been from 2 seconds to 5 or more.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#265
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you can't. The issue is the "easy monitor outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL" part. It is not impossible but it is far from easy. If the application uses statically linked SSL client (as it should if it is commercially distributed) then you have to modify the application (for example in memory) to get a copy of everything that gets written to the SSL stream.

You know how you can do Ctrl+Shift+K in Firefox to open up the browser console and inspect all the bits of the page, see the code (and fuck with it), see all the network traffic, and so on? I dream of being able to do that for arbitrary applications. Imagine having a Super+Ctrl+Shift+K that opened an OS-level GUI showing all the pertinent details of the running program.

You know that this only pertains to webapps and there is still a lot of software running on your machine that you have no idea what it does?

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#266
post #229

I don't have PowerPoint on my computer so I don't know if it works without Internet connection. Can someone tell me what happens if there is no network access?

This post is speculation at best. Likely written by a teenager learning about windows and task manager features recently.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#267
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Windows, check out simplewall, it does (almost) exactly that. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall

It uses the windows firewall. Do I trust Windows firewall to block itself? NO!

From the README:

> Keep in mind, simplewall is not a control UI over Windows Firewall, and does not interact in any level with Windows Firewall.

> It works over Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) which is a set of API and system services that provide a platform for creating network filtering applications. Windows Filtering Platform is a development technology and not a firewall itself, but simplewall is the tool that uses this technology.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#268

What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that). Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, an…

I was just thinking about this- pair that with a iPad that sits on refrigerator and shows your grocery list and family calendar. Then it blocks your smart tv from sending data out and allows family to keep organized. Does 3 things very well and that’s it

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#269
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Windows, check out simplewall, it does (almost) exactly that. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall

It uses the windows firewall. Do I trust Windows firewall to block itself? NO!

> It uses the windows firewall.

No:

"simplewall is not a control UI over Windows Firewall, and does not interact in any level with Windows Firewall"

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#270
post #234

There's a pervasive lack of precision in privacy discussions. There's a difference between a network request that does some computation on the server side, one that does the same but may log errors and increment counters, and one that actually stores the data temporarily or for a long time. And in the last case, there's a difference between the data being nigh-impossible for internal employees to access (perhaps only…

This is a useless feature.

Source: I have this blocked and I'm not missing anything.

If a feature needs to phone home, I don't need the feature.

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