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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

#131

Post by jameshart »

iambitjelly wrote: post #51

I dont' know why so many people are surprised by the Cortana data vacuum. Doesn't Siri send everything you say to it to Apple or a "trusted partner"? Why would Cortana be any different? The keylogger and Start menu ads are just creepy though. I shouldn't have to opt-out of targeted ads INSIDE MY OS.

You've had targeted ads on your XBox homescreen for a long time; a core OS feature of the iPhone is the app store, which features targeted ads. When app discovery becomes a part of the OS, advertising seems to naturally follow.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#132

Post by rifung »

moron4hire wrote: post #46

This looks like all the same sort of stuff Google defaults you into on Android. I mean, not that it's any better because of that, but this is the state of things now. You're not going to find better unless you install FOSS. Unless you're ready to go full-in on one of the BSDs or a Linux-that-isn't-Ubuntu, navigating the waters of figuring out how to get a phone that has all the features you want with such an OS, figu…

Excuse me if I just don't fully comprehend your argument, but isn't FOSS an orthogonal issue to this? After all, even if software is open source, that doesn't stop it from mining your data. You just know that they are doing so. I suppose you can remove that feature, but it seems you're also able to disable the features here as well.

In any case, I'm all for FOSS but it doesn't seem to be a solution to this problem, which admittedly, is not even really a problem to everyone.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#133

Post by bargl »

ewzimm wrote: post #98
bargl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been waiting for this comment, I can see how the first set of customization options really seem like they'd help with the personal assistant. It would be interesting to get a full audit of where your data goes and what they can use it for (training your personal assistant, improving their algorithms, responding to Govt data requests, improving ads, etc). As for incognito, can you sign into windows as guest now?…

It's still possible to create a local guest account, but that means giving up a lot of settings that I might want to maintain on the regular account, and it's a hassle to have to log out and in again just because I don't want to record something. Maybe I want to plan a surprise trip for someone who also uses the computer or get information about a strange rash that might be nothing without making that part of my perm…

Good point an incognito button would make it a lot easier, but this could be a work around.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#134

Post by noxToken »

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'm getting sick of having to open incognito mode on Chrome unless I want Google Now to happily repeat whatever I was looking at later.

Isn't that what incognito mode is for? If don't want your searches in cards at all, you completely opt-out of the cards that are strictly based on your search history. Ctrl+Shift+N seems like a small, reasonable step to go off the record. What is the alternative?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#135

Post by JoshTriplett »

jda0 wrote: post #84
JoshTriplett wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm well aware of how phones handle speech recognition; there are reasons they do so via services that have little to do with the computational difficulty of speech recognition. It's not by any means necessary to upload raw voice data to a server and process it there, especially if we're talking about full computers rather than just phones.

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

I said "local", not "offline". Though in any case, you should likely have a locally synced cache of your calendar for efficiency and the ability to read it offline. Web apps are quite capable of working while offline.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#136

Post by lewisl9029 »

This was also recently brought to my attention:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973629

Windows 10 RTM has peer to peer updates over the internet as the default. I could swear it defaulted to local-only in the preview, so I didn't even check it until now after doing a clean install of RTM.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#137

Post by JoshTriplett »

mejari wrote: post #120
JoshTriplett wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most users, this protects them to a useful level. Most users don't think losing a password is a big deal and would be very upset to learn their data is lost because they forgot. That's an anti-feature. "Would you like to store a backup for your drive encryption password on Microsoft OneDrive? If you choose not to do so, and you forget your password, all of your data will be lost. [Yes/No]" And none of that warr…

>"Would you like to store a backup for your drive encryption password on Microsoft OneDrive? If you choose not to do so, and you forget your password, all of your data will be lost. [Yes/No]" You know when most people care about whether or not they can recover their data? It's not when someone asks them a Yes/No question, it's when they can't recover their data. And responding with "Well, remember 2 years ago when yo…

Which is a great reason why we should be seeking better authentication systems than memorizing random passwords. Or providing people with another means of backup; for instance, provide options to both "back up via print" and "back up to USB device", in both cases providing something you could then store in a secure location.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#138

Post by pdkl95 »

joosters wrote: post #79
moron4hire wrote: post #46

This looks like all the same sort of stuff Google defaults you into on Android. I mean, not that it's any better because of that, but this is the state of things now. You're not going to find better unless you install FOSS. Unless you're ready to go full-in on one of the BSDs or a Linux-that-isn't-Ubuntu, navigating the waters of figuring out how to get a phone that has all the features you want with such an OS, figu…

If there are reasonable opt-outs, then you can have your cake and eat it without jumping ship to Linux/FOSS. (And, to a lesser extent, you might face the same problems there, e.g. with Ubuntu) The problem is that with all platforms, the opt outs are hard to find and, even worse, hard to even know when the opt outs even exist.

Opting out still leaves all the non-technical people who don't know about or understand the opt-out to whatever abuse MS (et al) wants to put in the OS?

Worse, you are still financially supporting these decisions by either buying the OS or adding to the usage counts. By "opting out" while still using the OS, you're still asking for more of this crap in the future.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#139

Post by JoshTriplett »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #100
JoshTriplett wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's actually how it works. You give it permission to use your O365 account. You give it permission to use your location either at setup or in the config settings at a later date. A whole host of the Cortana functionality is local that interacts with online services via API's that you authorize. I don't think that really anything that I say is going to change your mind, but you could check out some of the video's o…

The claim that started this thread was that Cortana needed this data to be supplied to Microsoft, as controlled by the privacy settings mentioned in the linked article. If Cortana or similar services don't actually need this data, great; then they shouldn't ask for it or need to have privacy settings that allow it to be sent to Microsoft.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#140

Post by mynameisvlad »

moron4hire wrote: post #110
mynameisvlad wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no they didn't. The Universal app is still there and was updated a month ago. They've always had both Universal and Desktop apps available, especially since there are people on Win7 and below that wouldn't be able to run the Universal app. Edit: Apparently they deprecated it inside the app itself, not in the store. I've kept the message above.

All of my installations told me "we're discontinuing this app, here, download the desktop app."

Maybe that was the update? Granted, I haven't used the Universal app in a long time because it's not nearly comparable in featureset to the desktop one. It'd be nice if there were update logs more than "General fixes" but oh well.
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