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I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

jonathan.porta.codes

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Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#81

Post by ethanbond »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #48
talmand wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a similar suggestion in a somewhat related topic concerning browsers and was told this is bad UX so it shouldn't be done. Informing people of what's going on and giving them power over their choices is bad UX. Somehow.

UX people can't seem to agree on much of anything. On environments where permissions must be explicitly granted (like iOS), I've seen articles saying to go both ways: "ask for everything right at the start", and "ask immediately before use".

> UX people can't seem to agree on much of anything.

It's almost as if "UX people" isn't referring to "UX person." Go to Stack Overflow and the vast majority of questions have multiple answers, as if "programmer people" can't agree on much of anything.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#82

Post by the8472 »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #64
the8472 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about encryption keys. I'm talking about the data itself. Sitting on my harddrive, as it is. As I understand it microsoft is saying that they could siphon data from my computer if they deemed it necessary. Maybe that's an adversarial reading of their privacy statement[1]. But it clearly speaks of accessing files in private folders. [1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.asp...

I believe that you are mistaken. Could they turn over your BitLocker recovery key to the authorities that would then use it to decrypt your HDD that they have already taken from you? Yes. Are they going to reach out over the internet and take your data? No. They are not going to do that. I follow this stuff really closely. I promise I haven't seen or heard of a capability where they can remotely take data from your m…

The point is that they're granting themselves the permission to do so if anyone ever deemed it necessary and that the user has to agree to their terms to use windows.

So you're basically signing away your rights to privacy. Not based on due process but on "good faith belief".

Someone at microsoft thought there is a need to do that to cover their legal asses. They would only think that in case they anticipated needing it in the future.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#83

Post by [deleted] »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #35
JoshTriplett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like Cortana could have been built to work locally, using your own resources. But it wasn't. This was an opportunity to say "we're not like Siri and Google Now, we respect your privacy", but instead they built something just like them.

But the entire point of the service was to use data mining techniques so that you could use natural language directives to say "add a reminder to my team's calendar to update some presentation in O365, etc"... Maybe you don't find it that useful, but I think that a lot of people would. It will, in a future release, be genuinely useful. It's getting there.

[deleted]

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#84

Post by jda0 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #62
sudioStudio64 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the entire point of the service was to use data mining techniques so that you could use natural language directives to say "add a reminder to my team's calendar to update some presentation in O365, etc"... Maybe you don't find it that useful, but I think that a lot of people would. It will, in a future release, be genuinely useful. It's getting there.

All of which could be done locally. There's certainly no shortage of processing power available to do so. All of those services have APIs.

Josh, maybe you don't get how difficult Speech Recognition is now that it comes as standard in your smartphone, but they use Google/Apple (delete as appropriate) servers for a reason. There's a reason people were amazed at the response time of Cortana - local speech recognition that doesn't hog the processor is a big deal.

And connecting to O365 calendars offline? Is that not a stupid concept?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#85

Post by joosters »

ewzimm wrote: post #20

Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant, so I expected to see all these things as defaults. The advanced features just couldn't work without it. I'm glad there's at least an opt-out, but I do think that Windows needs an OS-wide incognito mode, just a simple switch to record or not record data. I generally use that on my browser for whe…

It's possible to do all this personalization without giving away your data to advertisers. Unfortunately Microsoft chose not to.

Why do people seem to gloss over the fact that we can implement these technologies without losing privacy? e.g. voice recognition has been possible on home computers for decades now. You don't need the cloud for it.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#86

Post by the8472 »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #49
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/07/29/wind-nos/ ; "Windows 10 automatically encrypts the drive its installed on and generates a BitLocker recovery key. That’s backed up to your OneDrive account." Together with the ToS: "We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good…

OK. What I'm trying to say is that backing up to OneDrive is optional. You get the choice. You can protect the key with a TPM or a smart card...It's not an all or nothing thing. You have options there, if you are interested. The other thing is that it sounds like a lot of privacy minded people can't trust BitLocker despite any number of assurances from MS or code reviews by third parties. AND THAT'S OK. Use something…

> This privacy statement explains what personal data we collect from you and how we use it.

> It applies to Bing, Cortana, MSN, Office, OneDrive, Outlook.com, Skype, Windows, Xbox and other Microsoft services that display this statement.

> References to Microsoft services in this statement include Microsoft websites, apps, software and devices.

Seems to cover the Windows OS too.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#87

Post by georgerobinson »

task_queue wrote: post #6

The idea of an operating system integrating with services like that still bothers me even though it is done in Mac OS X and Ubuntu.

I could not agree more. I run Fedora on my desktop, and iOS and OS X on my iPhone and MacBook respectively. When I read posts like this, I can't help but think "How long will it be until I'm unable to do any compute without being tied to an online account?". Most people (including myself) have no idea what is going on in their smartphone, tablet or desktop PC. I can trust Fedora somewhat more, but as an exercise, leave tcpdump running on your OS X device and the amount of non-local network chatter is unbelievable.

Furthmore, why is it when you delete a photo from your iPhone it can persist on iCloud for up to 30 days?

Likewise, why is it when I restore my iPhone and set it up from scratch it starts to download 100MB + of data over WiFi? [1]

[1]. When I setup my iPhone from scratch (Apple ID, iCloud disabled), it hammered my WiFi at the full RX rate of my DSL line for approx. 10 minutes. That's 4Mbps * 60 * 10 = 2400Mbits = 300MB. I made sure that my iPhone was the only device connected to my WiFi. What could be in that 300MB of data? I should proxy all traffic from my WiFi to my DSL modem via another PC and do tcpdump on that!

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#88

Post by ewzimm »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70
MichaelGG wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there should definitely be a "Hey Cortana, off the record,..." query mode. I'm a bit conflicted now. My girls are 7 & 9 and they've been using Microsoft Accounts. With the final Win10 build having all this (none of these settings worked a few months ago), it looks like I've got a lot of reading and explaining to do for them.

This is a great suggestion. I'm getting sick of having to open incongito mode on Chrome unless I want Google Now to happily repeat whatever I was looking at later. Uh, I don't need reminders for sales on hemorrhoid medicine or news alerts about the side effects of MDMA. I don't need that popping up where others can see it. Some kind of "off the record" mode would be invaluable for voice interfaces. Hell, it would be…

I agree completely. The split between public and private life is so natural that we sometimes forget how important it is. Sometimes people need to be able to experiment and access information privately so they can think it over without being judged. It leads more genuine expressions in public life, even in simple ways. Maybe I want to experiment with listening to all the worst pop music to see if there's something in there I like without my music player thinking I love all of it.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#89

Post by andy_ppp »

joosters wrote: post #85
ewzimm wrote: post #20

Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant, so I expected to see all these things as defaults. The advanced features just couldn't work without it. I'm glad there's at least an opt-out, but I do think that Windows needs an OS-wide incognito mode, just a simple switch to record or not record data. I generally use that on my browser for whe…

It's possible to do all this personalization without giving away your data to advertisers. Unfortunately Microsoft chose not to. Why do people seem to gloss over the fact that we can implement these technologies without losing privacy? e.g. voice recognition has been possible on home computers for decades now. You don't need the cloud for it.

1. Know everything about a person store it and mine it at scale.

2. ???

3. Profit.

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