I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#291

Post by batou » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:09 PM UTC

ManFromUranus wrote: post #279

batou wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely no one wanted it. No one asked for it. We were spun a load of marketing disguised as listening and attention. This turned out to be exactly what Microsoft wanted which was another aggressive move against customers both business and consumer. Despite all this the noise and confusion and dubious love for the products is shining out of the arses of every non technical news source. What did we expect? I've lef…

You were always free to not use new MS operating systems. Nobody forced you to make any MS accounts or use Window 8,10 or whatever, so if you installed Windows 8 and didn't like it, that doesn't make MS evil, just don't use it. Anyone who inclined to use CentOS as their daily driver probably was never going to like MS OS's anyway. You probably only ever installed it just to find out what you hate about it.

I'm actually not free to not use it. I have to test our product on these systems and therefore I will need at least a virtual machine instance of it. I have no option not to use a Microsoft account because the majority of the functionality has shifted to behind the privacy wall.

Actually I installed it to test our desktop windows product against it as well as our web application in Edge.

This was a decider for us: do we move it to Windows Runtime or move it to Qt/JavaFX, to the web or something else?

We're evaluating Qt and JavaFX going forwards.

As I said I've been using Windows since 1993 as my primary operating system. I've used Unix (Solaris, HPUX, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD) over the years but never in a desktop capacity.

Also one of our clients, a big financial company has rolled out RHEL6 as a desktop platform instead of windows 8/10. They are not trend-setters either.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#292

Post by ctdonath » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:11 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #268

ctdonath wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, that's what Apple is trying to do: they'll provide all kinds of cloud services, but in a way that they know as little as possible about the content beyond what's vital to providing the relevant service. Apple is trying to sell hardware, which a robust encrypted cloud experience tied to that hardware will do. Microsoft is trying to make money from the operating system; since they're giving it away for free, they…

Not actually true. Windows 10 is not free, and Microsoft is not giving away the operating system. What Microsoft is doing is giving consumers a free upgrade on Win7/8 PCs where the operating system has already been paid for. This is basically the strategy already used by Apple and Google (Android): once you have bought the OS (bundled with the hardware) then you get updates free.

Except that Apple makes its money off hardware sales, and Google makes money off data mining ... for both, the operating system is just a means to an end, a cost center required to support the separate profit centers. Microsoft is, however, has the OS as its primary product.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#293

Post by acqq » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

mappu wrote: post #213

Hijacking this thread - if anyone used the official media creation tool to get a x86_64 Professional ISO, can you please post MD5/SHA1 hashes? Mine don't match anything on google.

https://techjourney.net/download-official-windows-10-iso-via...

"Note that the file hashes (CRC32, SHA1, MDA and etc.) for Windows 10 ISO images created by Media Creation Tool are unique as time stamps and other factors are different for each computers."

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#294

Post by jstsch » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:22 PM UTC

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…

Hear hear. Of course the cloud is not necessary for good speech recognition. There is no magic there, it's just servers running against a corpus that gets updated often. No reason why this couldn't be done locally, and text queries sent out for non-local requests (such as, what's the weather gonna be).

But I gotta say, I have the feeling that the pendulum is gonna swing back pretty soon. I'm noticing more and more (regular) people being fed up and creeped out with the massive harvesting that Google, Facebook and Microsoft are doing. Opportunity awaits!

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#295

Post by vezzy-fnord » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

api wrote: post #179

pdkl95 wrote: post #124

https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... Of course MS wants to get in on surveillance-as-a-business-model. It keeps people tied to your Service as a Software Substitute, and as long long as most people are still ignorant about how technology works, they won't notice how the stalker-like nature of a lot of modern soft^H^H^H^Hmalware. As for the few nerds that notice, they can probably be shut up…

I'm increasingly believing that for privacy to live, a necessary (but not sufficient) condition is for free to die. By free I mean free as in beer, not free as in freedom. The problem is that if everything has to be free, there can never be any money in the actual maintenance and development of the product. User-centric and privacy-respecting business models are impossible if the product is free. It's necessary but n…

There's an even bigger elephant in the room: software is a non-scarce, non-rivalrous (possibly even anti-rivalrous in that utility increases with usage) good. Per-unit software sales and most standard proprietary software business models are deadweight losses that rely on unsustainably preserving artificial scarcity.

The technical community has mostly accepted that file sharing is a reality that requires rethinking business models, and that DRM is an act of desperation to put old strategies on life support by restricting playback device manufacturers.

But for proprietary versus free software, many remain outright hostile.

Business models for privacy-respecting user-centric free software are possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc...

They might not be amazingly profitable. However, the reality is, the programmer is heading the way of the musician and the artist.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#296

Post by pdkl95 » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

mikegioia wrote: post #162

pdkl95 wrote: post #124

https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... Of course MS wants to get in on surveillance-as-a-business-model. It keeps people tied to your Service as a Software Substitute, and as long long as most people are still ignorant about how technology works, they won't notice how the stalker-like nature of a lot of modern soft^H^H^H^Hmalware. As for the few nerds that notice, they can probably be shut up…

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about this very issue, and I must go back and forth weekly. My first reaction is to want to defend the ignorant, to try to educate them and work to protect them from being taken advantage of. But when you talk to people about it, _their_ apathy and indifference is what leads me to stop caring. I've tried for years to educate friends, family, and coworkers on digital priva…

While I understand this frustration (I've asked the same question myself many times), I feel that we who understand these topics have a duty to try to explain an assist those for whom the computer is still a "sufficiently-advanced" magic box. I'm sure most of the people in the medical profession are regularly frustrated having to explain for the Nth time why we should all eat better.

The scientist who discovers new laws of nature and the engineer that assembles simple pieces into complex and useful tools have only finished half of the process. The other half is explaining these news ideas to everybody else, so they can actually be utilized (and maybe inspire other discoveries and innovations). This was one of Feynman's greatest talents - taking the time to explain the important parts of a topic, in a way that was a lot more accessible.

I generally feel that if an audience is not understanding something (and assuming there were no trivial issues such as lack of time), the fault lies largely with the teacher. While have also met with limited success in explaining these issues, I keep trying in new ways. Pedagogy is a hard problem, but I personally have learned a bit by studying those that seem to have successful methods (such as Feynman, Sagan, Burke[1], Vi Hart[2]).

As for this specific problem of businesses collecting massive amounts of personal data (and the associated "free (as in beer)" culture), I suggest showing people the talk by Aral Balkan that I linked at the top of my previous post. He has given variations of the talk before, but this recent version is particularly good at explaining the entire picture, from simple gmail/facebook doublespeak, to the "free" culture that has taken over the tech industry, the internet.org style imperialism masquerading as "helping the poor", and more. This talk has been more successful than of the explanation, essays, cartoon, or videos that I've used in the past. YMMV, unfortunately.

[1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdg0b

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZ5rsAHMl4

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#297

Post by batou » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #260

Animats wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant." Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops? This is not going to fly with business customers. Microsoft has already bombed twice in the business space, with Windows Vista and Windows 8. This looks like another bomb. Windows 7 is still pretty good, and it will probably be the main Microso…

I would be very wary of using windows 10 as a company. If they are sending all key strokes that a user types , then any illusion of privileged information between company and customer goes out of the window. It makes me wonder how the legal team of companies would say if they caught the magnitude of data being leaked through default enabled services.

This is incidentally why I run a hefty firewall for outgoing traffic and most endpoints can't access the internet at all.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#298

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:27 PM UTC

urda wrote: post #230

cptskippy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actual…

You're wrong though about it having zero factual grounding. They collect data, like everyone else, this is a fact. They state that openly in their privacy policy, they even go so far as to define what they consider personal vs non-personal information. We also know that that Siri collects and transmits a bunch of this "non-personal" information to a 3rd party for analysis.

On their QuickType page they say "your conversation data is kept only on your device, so it’s always private." That's a lie because iMessage and your keyboard Dictionary are synced to iCloud which isn't your device. That doesn't mean that it's in Apples hands or they can access it but it's not a factually true statement either. They're also careful to say "conversation data" and not something more general like "anything you input into your keyboard".

I'm not suggesting Apple does anything more invasive than anyone, I'm just suggesting they don't do anything less based on what's observed.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#299

Post by thaumaturgy » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

mikegioia wrote: post #162

pdkl95 wrote: post #124

https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... Of course MS wants to get in on surveillance-as-a-business-model. It keeps people tied to your Service as a Software Substitute, and as long long as most people are still ignorant about how technology works, they won't notice how the stalker-like nature of a lot of modern soft^H^H^H^Hmalware. As for the few nerds that notice, they can probably be shut up…

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about this very issue, and I must go back and forth weekly. My first reaction is to want to defend the ignorant, to try to educate them and work to protect them from being taken advantage of. But when you talk to people about it, _their_ apathy and indifference is what leads me to stop caring. I've tried for years to educate friends, family, and coworkers on digital priva…

Hell, look at this very thread on HN. There are people further upthread essentially saying, "Whatever, I like it because it's convenient."

I have adopted a passive stance on privacy and security: I stay up-to-date on news in this area, I choose for myself products and systems that minimally increase my risk, and I will answer questions from clients or other people. But, I won't evangelize it. Most people really just don't care all that much.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#300

Post by Zarel » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

batou wrote: post #255

matthewmacleod wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've done that. They revert to traditional methods like phone calls when they want or need something. Every time. Sucks to be you if your relationships, be they business or personal, are as fragile as a volatile technology.

And let me guess, they don't have your phone number memorized; they probably save your phone number in their phone's contacts list alongside your name, which is automatically backed up in the cloud in either Google Contacts or iCloud depending on what phone they use.

Expecting your friends not to use cloud services seems a bit unreasonable and unenforceable. Are you really going to tell all your friends they should write down or memorize your phone number instead of storing it in their phone?