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Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

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Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#241

I installed Windows 10 (not even 11!) recently on a random laptop and was appalled by the amount of BS in the initial setup process. Forced me to make a Microsoft online account seemingly with remote access to my PC, tried to sign me up for several different free trials, then tried multiple times to push me to Edge instead of Chrome. The UI has new crap like the Bing search on the taskbar and in the center of the des…

Pro tip: never give Windows internet access during setup. Windows 11 will not let you continue without an online account unless you use a tool like Ventoy which automatically bypasses it

Not fully true. There is a way to open command prompt and skip the account login and the entire setup

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#242
post #82

If I were the webmaster of a site which hosted non-public images, this news would be enough for me to either block Edge by its user agent (with an error page explaining the reasoning and alternatives), at least on the pages which contain the images, or omit the images (replacing them with an explanatory message) when the browser is Edge.

This is exactly what needs to happen to get Microsoft to stop doing things like this. How many sites not working properly does it take for someone to switch browsers? Maybe as little as 1, if the user really wants or needs to use that site.

That, and lawsuits (as others have mentioned, this easily could have resulted in violating HIPAA and other laws) could help stop behavior like this. But fines are the price of doing business for many companies, so outright blocking Edge may be even more effective.

I want competition in the browser space, but Microsoft simply has not offered that in over 15 years. IE obviously was worse than Chrome and Firefox in many ways, the original Edge still had worse W3C compliance and performance than Chrome and Firefox, and the new Edge is just a Chromium fork. They seem highly interested in getting your data, but not all that interested in actually creating an good product.

I'm not even sure why Microsoft is doing things like this at this time. If they wanted to increase the number of Edge users, this is not the way to do so. Are they content having less than 10% of users on desktop and just want to milk those users for all they can? As others have said [1], even if this was done locally (so that there'd be no privacy concern), this is is a terrible feature to have on by default due to the risk of inserting false details.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36295837

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#243
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately brave is forever cemented in my mind as being linked to the brave shitcoin.

The opt-in brave shitcoin?

An opt-in shitcoin ... that attempts to approach the advertising market in a new way, which I find genuinely interesting. And I'm an anti-advertising zealot.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that MS owns GitHub, LinkedIn, and Mojang.

>Mojang The real danger. (almost unironically though) I can switch OS, Office is almost obsolete with google + free stuff, their browser/software is terrible and never used, Github(yikes, well, git works..), LinkedIn(and nothing of value was lost). So we really are at the whim of M$ when it comes to Github and Minecraft. Scary. But hey, I used to be obsessed with Nintendo games, and now people have Zelda clones so I…

Minetest is surprisingly good it's a minecraft clone but also a sort of game engine like roblox but FOSS. It even has lots of mods, gamemodes, texturepacks, and servers to try out

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT's main product is software and services. Google's main product is YOU . Without your privacy, they would have nothing to sell to advertisers --- which accounts for about 80 percent of their revenue.

Windows is free. MSFT is literally siphoning data from your personal devices. You’re speaking on an agenda without accounting for reality

More than 80 percent of Google's revenue comes directly from selling your privacy to advertisers --- aka "personalized" ads.

More then 80 percent of MSFT's revenue comes directly from selling software and services.

Google earns about as much money from privacy invasion as MSFT does from software and data services. You can try to deny or ignore the reality of it --- but you have nothing to refute it other than personal bias.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#248
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave is not serious about privacy. Firefox.

Firefox has telemetry and "run studies" turned on by default.

Nothing’s perfect. Firefox is the least-bad of the available options, and it’s pretty good.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#249
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mojang The real danger. (almost unironically though) I can switch OS, Office is almost obsolete with google + free stuff, their browser/software is terrible and never used, Github(yikes, well, git works..), LinkedIn(and nothing of value was lost). So we really are at the whim of M$ when it comes to Github and Minecraft. Scary. But hey, I used to be obsessed with Nintendo games, and now people have Zelda clones so I…

Could you name some Zelda clones?

Genshin Impact is basically a better version of BotW

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#250

This is just bananas to me that a browser would perform "super resolution" at all, much less by default . Couldn't this wreak havoc on doing things like viewing medical images, inserting false detail that isn't there? As well as on text in images, e.g. inventing a cleanly readable but hallucinated license plate number on a car, or financial figure, where the original is blurry? Not only does this seem like a terribly…

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