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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

#241

Post by QUFB »

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…

> Secondly, Chrome send every website you visit to their servers to be logged. Again, this is not explained in some easy opt-out screen and in fact the only way to get around this is to use SRWare Iron, where they removed that code.

Citation?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#242

Post by matthewmacleod »

quadrangle wrote: post #236
freehunter wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops? I did. Linux and OSX are still available for whoever wants them. You can stick with Windows 7 if you want, that's just fine. I like Cortana. I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for. I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the…

I do not consent to you and others giving Microsoft (or Google or Facebook etc…) all the personal information this necessarily reveals about me when you accept their terms and have any electronic interactions with me.

I appreciate what you're trying to say, but ultimately... Sucks to be you. If you don't want others to share that data, you'll have to stop interacting with them.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#243

Post by oneJob »

some copy from Microsofts "The Future Starts Now" campaign: "

Learning and growing with you - The more personal experience of Windows 10 includes Cortana, your truly personal assistant. Cortana works across all of your Windows 10 devices to learn your preferences, offer suggestions, set reminders, play your music, answer questions and more. Welcome to a future with Windows 10. It can recognize you, respond to you and even learn with you. So you can create and share in ways you never thought possible. Now is the time to do great things. #Windows10

"[1]

It's not like it's hidden in their terms and conditions. And, bluntly, I'm assuming many people reading this are working on similar technology for smaller companies. But, to paraphrase Nick Naylor in 'Thank You For Smoking', you just need to pay the mortgage, right?

Additionally, the conversation on this page seems to betray that most of us didn't read the memo that the concept of privacy has changed and now no longer includes concepts like, "You only get to know things about me that I disclose to you." That has now transformed into what might be captured in the sentiment, "You may not use what you know about me in any way explicitly disallowed by the terms & conditions". I can't find it now, but back in the day, wayyyy back, Brin and Page made the argument that one day people would trust their personal information to companies the same way that they trust their money with banks. This is that vision realized.

[1] http://blog.pcm.com/2015/07/29/windows-10-the-future-starts-...

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#244

Post by drjesusphd »

KeytarHero wrote: post #186
codeshaman wrote: post #150

I've never understood how people can truly believe that by checking (or unchecking) a checkbox their privacy will be fully protected. Especially since we're talking about a closed-source OS. I mean I cannot possibly verify what exactly goes on in the annals of the operating system and what happens to my data, where it is logged and where it is stored and how it is sent. So regardless of the settings, I always assume…

> I've never understood how people can truly believe that by checking (or unchecking) a checkbox their privacy is fully protected. You mean besides the fact that collecting personal data without your consent is illegal?

How quaint.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#245

Post by quadrangle »

emerongi wrote: post #210
codeshaman wrote: post #150

I've never understood how people can truly believe that by checking (or unchecking) a checkbox their privacy will be fully protected. Especially since we're talking about a closed-source OS. I mean I cannot possibly verify what exactly goes on in the annals of the operating system and what happens to my data, where it is logged and where it is stored and how it is sent. So regardless of the settings, I always assume…

An OS which doesn't have any checkboxes at all could do this too. Do you trust an OS without any checkboxes?

The OP was clearly saying that you should never trust any proprietary OS. Period.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#246

Post by TeMPOraL »

snoman wrote: post #211
api wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had speech recognition back in the 1990s on computers less powerful than a Raspberry Pi V1. We're talking 200-400mhz 32-bit Intel boxes. So yes, the cloud dependency is very dubious. If leveraging a lot of data allows for better speech recognition, why can't your computer access a remote speech recognition data set that stores and shares the results of its machine learning algorithms rather than uploading actual a…

Not sure if you're being facetious or not but if you were right then we would just do it on our existing phones now. In the 90s we had slow voice recognition that took a long time to train, that would only ever work for a single user, in a silent room... If it worked at all... Which wasn't very common.

> Not sure if you're being facetious or not but if you were right then we would just do it on our existing phones now.

The point is, some of us don't believe that this was an engineering choice.

> In the 90s we had slow voice recognition that took a long time to train, that would only ever work for a single user, in a silent room... If it worked at all... Which wasn't very common.

And in the 2000s we had fast voice recognition that took a little bit of time to train and that would work over a crappy microphone with loud music playing in the room, all of that running along other software on a $500 PC. I know because in 2007 I made my own Star Trek-like (with proper computer sound and voice feedback) voice recognition system I used to control music that was played on Hi-Fi speakers. It took me like 20 minutes to train it and it worked pretty much flawlessly from anywhere in the room. The voice was captured by a crappy mic I soldered myself from parts and placed on a wardrobe.

And the single-user-only mode? That's actually a feature, not a bug.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#247

Post by nivla »

api wrote: post #195
vlunkr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The advanced features just couldn't work without it." I don't know much about Windows 10, so I'm curious what features you are referring to that require heavy tracking like this.

We had speech recognition back in the 1990s on computers less powerful than a Raspberry Pi V1. We're talking 200-400mhz 32-bit Intel boxes. So yes, the cloud dependency is very dubious. If leveraging a lot of data allows for better speech recognition, why can't your computer access a remote speech recognition data set that stores and shares the results of its machine learning algorithms rather than uploading actual a…

>We had speech recognition back in the 1990s on computers less powerful than a Raspberry Pi V1. We're talking 200-400mhz 32-bit Intel boxes. So yes, the cloud dependency is very dubious.

And did you ever use it? Forget sentences, it used to even struggle on a handful of keywords. Even now offline recognition are way far behind the online ones. I have pocket sphinx installed on my raspberry pi and even in a quiet room it has false positives with just a list of 10 keywords. Ohh what I would do to have an offline recognition system that is on par with Cortana/Siri/Google Now.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#248

Post by niyogi »

It's too bad that microsoft continues to be villainized when companies like Facebook and Google have social networks and browsers respectively that have similar practices that users are even more unaware of when they use them.

Computers these days have become thin clients for browsers (especially for the typical consumer). Except for the occasional open of Word or Excel, you're in your web browser browsing the web and have a tab open for Facebook. With new features like "sign into your browser" or ad retargeting across the sites you visit today, consumers are already being subjected to practices that Microsoft at least gives you the ability to turn off piecemeal if you so wish. They're just doing so at the operating system layer instead of the browser.

Think doing so at the operating system is more criminal than at the web browser or website level? Consider that Google Chrome is moving to become "Chromebooks" and that Android integrates Google Search. It's already happening and we take Google's "don't be evil" mantra for face value while continuing to poke Microsoft out of sheer habit.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#249

Post by api »

thwest wrote: post #217
api wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had speech recognition back in the 1990s on computers less powerful than a Raspberry Pi V1. We're talking 200-400mhz 32-bit Intel boxes. So yes, the cloud dependency is very dubious. If leveraging a lot of data allows for better speech recognition, why can't your computer access a remote speech recognition data set that stores and shares the results of its machine learning algorithms rather than uploading actual a…

Do you remember how much training time you had to spend on Dragon Naturally Speaking?

... on a Pentium I, using 1990s machine learning algorithms, sure.

Nobody's answered my question as to why The Cloud is the magic pixie dust that solves this problem, and why it could not be solved locally with modern compute power and modern ML techniques.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#250

Post by TeMPOraL »

pmelendez wrote: post #173
joosters wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. The experience is not quite the same. We have voice recognition since at least late 90's but you have to spend long hours training (> 20 hrs) in order to have a decent result (not even comparable). The…

I had better results in late 2000s with less than an hour of training MS Speech API than I have with Google Now today. Either off-line speech recognition isn't that bad or my English really sucks.
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