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Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

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Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#331

Post by mixmastamyk »

Springtime wrote: post #276
mixmastamyk wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s in their TOS and stated as a feature. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509159 There’s an expression, paraphrased as “when someone tells you who they are, believe them.”

I mean, it's fine if one is personally satisfied with not explicitly having evidence of the specific alleged data collection here, but speaking from experience when the time comes and people inevitably prod further for sources and only hand-wavy arguments can be produced I've found it's not the strongest/most compelling result for motivating a potential change of behavior. Anyone here could believe this is occurring…

Agreed, yet it’s not the first time but the hundredth.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#332

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

user3939382 wrote: post #64

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…

Why not just disable the network interface and see what stops working.

Why not set the Windows computer's gateway to a computer that the user can properly control, i.e., do not give the Windows computer direct access to the internet.

Windows is an OS that was created before the public had access to the internet.

It worked just fine "offline", i.e., connected to a LAN but not an internet.

Same for the Mac.

To be honest, I cannot think of many PowerPoints that needed internet access, at least not in the fields I have worked in.

Obviously, "tech" companies want personal computers to be online for every waking moment of their owner's day. Neverthless it is in fact possible to "block", i.e., not assent to, much of this outgoing transfer of personal data/metadata to "tech" companies at the user's expense. I have been doing it for over 20 years. With few exceptions, I inspect all HTTPS traffic that I allow over the networks I control. The "tech" companies gathering this data do not pay for the user's internet or cellular service. The user covers the cost of the data transfer.

Change begins with the people who know how to make it. For example, it is not difficult to stop PowerPoint from phoning home. Why go along with it. But when those with the requisite knowledge year after year make statements on HN how it is futile to thwart any personal data mining because it is not 100% "perfect" solution,^1 I have been seeing these comments on HN for many years, then it is arguable this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The "majority of people", "general public", etc., do not know they have a choice. They will use whatever is presented to them. What happens when those who do know there is a choice go along with what "tech" companies present to them. They are in no position to blame "the majority".

Certainly, those working at or investing in "tech" companies would welcome a lax attitude toward avoiding data collection. "Nothing is going to change because no one cares." Tell that to Zuckerberg after Apple prsented its customers with the means to "block" some of Facebook's data collection.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-priv...

1. All-or-nothing, black-and-white, binary style reasoning.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#333

Post by giaour »

zmmmmm wrote: post #329
jayknight wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any healthcare institution is going to have a Business Associate Agreement[1] with Microsoft. OneDrive is one of the allowed/suggested ways to transmit PHI where I work. [1] https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities...

exactly .... people here suggesting that putting any PHI into an office document is intrinsically a HIPAA violation are bonkers.

Isn't the "Design Ideas" request going to the same Sharepoint server that is storing your doctor's OneDrive?

I didn't capture and inspect the traffic myself, but https://support.office.com/client/53c77d7b-dc40-45c2-b684-81... makes the feature sound like it's built into M365 and not sending data to some centralized web service.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#334

Post by dougmwne »

retox wrote: post #321
dougmwne wrote: post #245

This seems blindingly obvious? They use a cloud powered feature, then complain that information is sent to the cloud? According to this help article using designer for the first time will request permissions. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-profession...

From the 'article' >Fire up PowerPoint. Turn off all the cloud options.

No, this is specifically a cloud feature and you are warned and asked for permissions when you access it for the first time.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#335

Post by Melatonic »

05 wrote: post #248
three_seagrass wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do packet inspection when they're all encrypted?

TLS MITM. But you better be 100% sure your middle box is not compromised.

This. Not so hard to do and lots of corporations already do it.

But yeah - whatever you are running on that box better be legit!

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#336

Post by barbariangrunge »

danuker wrote: post #81

LibreOffice FTW. https://libreoffice.org/ It may be glitchy in some areas, but I've been using it since graduating high school, and I can do whatever I want with it.

I used libre office for years, but I switched for 2 reasons.

1: the export to docx had problems, and most publications require your submissions to be in docx format;

2: it gets laggy with large documents. This lag becomes distracting when writing novels. Seems to start around page 20-50 and gets worse and worse as you go.

I wish I had better alternatives to suggest.

I wish that publishers would stop demanding we submit our files in docx format.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#337

Post by alkonaut »

vachina wrote: post #283
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you make the same differentiation when it comes to what Chinese companies may collect from the computers of American companies? Especially this part: > there's a difference between the data being nigh-impossible for internal employees to access (perhaps only used as input for other automated systems), and data with few controls.

This bias is very apparent in most of western media. A Chinese software vendor could do as much as sending your keystrokes for autocomplete you bet it will be front page news on Reddit and here with every comment reminding me about Xinjiang and 1989. But Microsoft could upload the entirety of your hard drive and we would find apologists like OP rationalizing away the behavior. I’m not convinced either governments are…

> A Chinese software vendor could do as much as sending your keystrokes for autocomplete you bet it will be front page news on Reddit

Yes? It’s not like it’s a double standard or remotely hypocritical to hold a US corporation or the US government to different standards than a Chinese counterpart.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#338

Post by pvaldes »

doubled112 wrote: post #304
egberts1 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind, OpenSnitch is Linux-based and none of Linux firewalls can filter incoming packets by process ID like macOS/FreeBSD (Lil'Snitch) can.

I think iptables was supposed to be able to do this, right? https://linux.die.net/man/8/iptables --pid-owner processid Matches if the packet was created by a process with the given process id. But was disappointed by the note: > NOTE: pid, sid and command matching are broken on SMP

Iptables is a little old. You may want the newer nftables instead.

The iptables rules can be converted directly to nft with iptables-translate and the syntax is more simple.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#339

Post by danuker »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #336
danuker wrote: post #81

LibreOffice FTW. https://libreoffice.org/ It may be glitchy in some areas, but I've been using it since graduating high school, and I can do whatever I want with it.

I used libre office for years, but I switched for 2 reasons. 1: the export to docx had problems, and most publications require your submissions to be in docx format; 2: it gets laggy with large documents. This lag becomes distracting when writing novels. Seems to start around page 20-50 and gets worse and worse as you go. I wish I had better alternatives to suggest. I wish that publishers would stop demanding we subm…

To be fair I haven't used Writer much. I've used Calc a lot.

LO Writer can export to PDF when you need to preserve formatting. But if it needs to also be editable, I guess ODT is the only way. Maybe in light of the recent events you can convince your publishers.

About performance, you might want to give AbiWord a try also.

Re: Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides

#340

Post by danuker »

acomjean wrote: post #211
danuker wrote: post #81

LibreOffice FTW. https://libreoffice.org/ It may be glitchy in some areas, but I've been using it since graduating high school, and I can do whatever I want with it.

If you deal with csv (or their tab separated cousins..) libre office sheets (spreadsheet) is really great. I'm on linux desktop now and this lets me read and write MS office files and works quite well.

TSV is my favorite also. Quote all you want, no need to unescape in whatever program you interop with.
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