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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

#221

Post by cptskippy »

arrrg wrote: post #74
cptskippy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just spies on you, they're vertically integrated so there's no need to sell the data.

What’s their motive? What’s their pay-off? Where is their benefit in that?

All of these companies capture the data to improve their recognition, heuristics, and machine learning algorithms. The pay off is that their services are vastly improved.

Ever wonder how Google was able to catch up and perhaps surpass Microsoft, IBM, and everyone else in the Voice Recognition field so quickly? It wasn't because they came up with some revolutionary algorithm overnight. It was because they very quickly amassed an archive of transcribed audio samples. How did they do that? Very cleverly with Google 411.

If you ever used Google 411 you might have noticed it worked slightly differently from regular 411. You spoke your query, the voice recognition software spoke back what it thought you said and asked if that was correct. If you said no, or it couldn't understand your reply, it connected you to an operator who first listened to what you'd said and then repeated the confirmation process with you again whilst inputting what you actually said into the system. This created a transcribed audio sample that Google could use as a test case for their voice recognition software. This allowed them to iterate much faster than other companies.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#222

Post by cptskippy »

urda wrote: post #218
cptskippy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're assuming they're doing something they're not. Microsoft is capturing text input and handwriting from touch input interfaces the same way Google's Android keyboard , Swype, or Swift Key do to improve predictive input, spelling correction/suggestions, personal dictionaries etc. Remember Windows 10 is touch enabled operating system like iOS or Android. I'm not as familiar with the Apple Keyboard but I wou…

I think you're reading way too much into all of that, attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill just to prove an imaginary point.

What imaginary point are you referring to?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#223

Post by TeMPOraL »

bhauer wrote: post #187
slg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the resource costs would be too high to really make that worthwhile. The choice is probably between bad privacy settings, a bad personal assistant, or bad battery life and disk usage. Microsoft chose the option that would likely upset the smallest group of people.

I don't buy it. My Windows 10 machines will be Ivy Bridge, Broadwell, and soon Skylake-powered desktop processors running with gobs of excess computing capacity. Voice recognition should be feasible with this hardware, as it has been in the past with Windows 7 and Windows 8's often-ignored voice transcription feature. Furthermore, even if the performance were slightly worse, I would gladly sacrifice some performance…

I agree with you with everything except the expectation of performance of your desktop - you're underestimating the ever-growing bloat. Faster hardware is just an excuse for businesses to include more useless shi^H^H^Hvalue-added features and a way to speed up their delivery by caring about performance even less.

WRT cloud, we've already reached the point of ridicule with the new generation of Internet-connected hardware. So many useless webapps (er, "value-added cloud analytics platforms") and so many devices sitting centimeters from each other but communicating all the way around the world. There is absolutely no engineering reason for it to look that way - it's all just attempts to milk users by making them depend on cloud services.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#224

Post by revanx_ »

natmaster wrote: post #198

I find it shocking how people readily accept Google's far worse policies, and yet are so concerned about an easy opt out. For instance, in Android, Google tracks with GPS accuracy your whereabouts constantly. This isn't just what IP your desktop is attached to. Furthermore, there is no prompt telling you this happens with a very easy way of undoing. In fact even if you knew about this it is very hard to find a way to…

phone tracking and triangulation always existed, even before Google. Honestly you can't compare Google to Microsoft.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#226

Post by simoncion »

MBCook wrote: post #201
simoncion wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, don't make it a [Yes/No] question, make it an [Okay] with a barely noticeable "Change Advanced Settings" link; much like the dialog that the TFA complains about.

Why show the non-prompt? The users who don't want it can turn it off later, as is the case now.

I want to encrypt my drive, but ensure that the encryption keys never leave systems that I physically control.

I sure as hell don't want to encrypt my drive a second time because the default setting (that I could only change later, when I'm actually using the computer) for the drive encryption software was to upload the drive crypto key to The Cloud.

Or am I misunderstanding your question?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#227

Post by vladsanchez »

natmaster wrote: post #198

I find it shocking how people readily accept Google's far worse policies, and yet are so concerned about an easy opt out. For instance, in Android, Google tracks with GPS accuracy your whereabouts constantly. This isn't just what IP your desktop is attached to. Furthermore, there is no prompt telling you this happens with a very easy way of undoing. In fact even if you knew about this it is very hard to find a way to…

Exactly! All what jonathan porta wanted was attention. I noticed the same he noticed, but I instead disabled them and moved on. He instead created a shitstorm for nothing.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#228

Post by TeMPOraL »

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?

Last time I checked, and it was few years ago, analyzing voice locally was much faster than what phones do today - because well, mobile networks have latency. The round-trip to cloud and back itself can easily take a second.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#229

Post by simoncion »

pjc50 wrote: post #155
sudioStudio64 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insecure by a standard that you are setting. If they can demonstrate an audit log of every admin who has escalated their permission to logon to the container of your data and access it, including the files they accessed, would that be good? (Because they do that.) Again privacy-violating by your, arguably, very narrow standard. I'm sorry friend, but you are stating these things as if there's no question as to wh…

If they can demonstrate an audit log of every admin who has escalated their permission to logon to the container of your data and access it, including the files they accessed, would that be good? (Because they do that.) They are legally prevented from showing you such an audit log if a National Security Letter is involved.

And -unless there have recently been great strides in the NSL gag order battle- they are legally prevented from indicating to you that you or your data has been targeted by an NSL.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#230

Post by urda »

cptskippy wrote: post #222
urda wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're reading way too much into all of that, attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill just to prove an imaginary point.

What imaginary point are you referring to?

> Their policy states they don't collect personal information or conversation history but that doesn't mean they aren't capturing corrections or things they deem to be non-personal but sound pretty personal to me

> Their policy states ... but that doesn't mean they aren't capturing corrections or things they deem to be non-personal but sound pretty personal to me

> sound pretty personal to me

It's pretty clear actually. What you may think about situation may have zero factual grounding. You'll need to provide some citations and references instead of just saying what you think or feel the situation may be.

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