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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

#441

Post by touristtam »

FireBeyond wrote: post #389
batou wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. That's no different to an IP address or a DNS record or something that you'd put on an envelope. That is public information. The content of our communications is the matter under consideration i.e the content of the envelope.

And yet your original post was in response to this: "If you tell me your name, I'm free to repeat that to whoever I want. If you aren't ok with public information being re-broadcasted, don't go outside." to which you said: "Actually in the UK it is covered by the Data Protection Act. Interesting times ahead. If you knowingly or unknowningly give personal information away without my consent this is illegal." What you'…

He wasn't broadcasting his name in the first place; only you had the information (in the limited knowledge of the context). In case you are using this for anything damaging to him or for profit, that is what the Data Protection Act covers. That suddenly his name becomes public knowledge has little to do with this law.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#442

Post by touristtam »

lysium wrote: post #437
pmelendez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My colleague wrote his diploma thesis with a voice recognition software (the market leader) because he sucks at typing. Desktop voice recognition can't be that bad.

I have second hand commercial support with a leader software in the market (that is I had coworkers doing the commercial support) and the amount of bugs and trickery some users had to go through with it makes you wonder how they can sell any copy at all.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#443

Post by touristtam »

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #182
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.

If you don't have any Windows-only applications keeping your younger-than-double-digit children on Windows, well then now is your chance to put them on anything-other-than-Windows. My own children are still using computers with Windows 7. They play Spore (Windows only), Sims 3 (Windows only) Minecraft (Java, so playable anywhere), Osu! (no idea, really), and a couple of other games. I have no intention of upgrading W…

MSFT has done this by buying itself into the graphic API market long ago. Since then the last two main graphic hardware vendor have been poorly receptive to develop drivers for any other platform.

Hopefully, Valve OS's initiative might bend this and allow the Linux world to be at least on par with MSFT when it comes to graphic drivers. Considering that from the three main console out there, both the Playstation and the Nintendo are using a flavor or another of OpenGL, there is some hope for the future of alternative to MSFT outside the office and MSFT centric software development.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#444

Post by BuckRogers »

I have a 2nd partition with Windows 7 on my desktop, but I run UbuntuMATE (in Redmond panel mode) 99% of the time. I don't think I'm going to update from 7 to 10 anymore, just don't see the point with this and the hardware lock-in. I like my real license that I already have.

If I make any changes to my system I'll probably delete UbuntuMATE and Win7 and just run Mint. Seems really slick and mostly respects the user. Just despise those notification catchers in most distros like Mint. UM in Redmond mode is the only one that just flashes the taskbar icon upon notifications, which makes perfect sense to me. Less to manage/check on.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#445

Post by sillygeese »

> I am pretty surprised by the far-reaching data collection that Microsoft seems to want. But, I am even more surprised by the fact that the settings all default to incredibly intrusive.

I can't see why anyone would be surprised anymore. This has been going on for years now.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#446

Post by touristtam »

ewzimm wrote: post #278
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.

Skepticism of heavy tracking is absolutely justified, so I want to address that first. I've read Richard Stallman's blog for the last 15 years, and he has had a lot of good thoughts about it. I think everyone should have access to privacy, but I don't think everything should be private. Games are a good example. Nobody would expect a baseball player to object to tracking statistics. That's a big part of what makes th…

You hit the nail on the head: ADVERTISEMENT.

If you do go through the installation/setup screen you will see that you have now a "advertizing ID". This made me feel edgy and I cannot shake the memory of the tattoo on the victim's forearm from the Nazi solution of its undesirable population, powered by no less than state of the art technical solution, provided by a top technical solution provider at the time.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#447

Post by e12e »

Jare wrote: post #333
bpodgursky wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not your consent to give. If you tell me your name, I'm free to repeat that to whoever I want. If you aren't ok with public information being re-broadcasted, don't go outside.

Can you cite a source that describes that freedom?

Traditionally, the (legal) argument begins with Warren and Brandeis, "The Right To Privacy", December 15, 1890:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priva...

That's been considered the foundation of privacy laws in the US. Europe generally has stricter laws -- for instance in Norway, until recently, it was technically illegal to keep an electronic[1] list of names and phone numbers of parents in a school class, or an electronic membership list for a club (esp: minor members).

That's now changed, and the requirement for being granted a "data license" are less stringent -- most electronic record keeping is legal -- everyone being granted a pre-emptive licence of sorts. However, that license is subject to things like a) being responsive in giving out/responding to requests to correct data, to show what data you have on an individual to that individual, and b) making a reasonable effort to keep the data safe.

Breach of those can lead to fines, and the revocation of the implicit license -- meaning you're not allowed to keep such electronic records any more.

Understandably Germany have a stronger emphasis on privacy, being a) a fascist dictatorship under Hitler recently, and b) half of Germany being under the Stasi also recently.

Why people in the US aren't more afraid of personal data ending up in privately held data banks where they are subject to National Security Letters, hackers, anti-union organizations working with big business, anti-native American rights activists and whatever else -- I don't know.

Maybe most people think that the next group to be frozen out of the job market won't be communist but Muslims -- and, hey, I don't know any Muslims -- so why should I be worried?

[1] Note the electronic bit. This is due to how trivial it is to link digital data, and how trivial it is to copy/get hold of a copy without the original missing etc.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#448

Post by e12e »

x5n1 wrote: post #231
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…

Now if can only do the same with Google and Android, we'd be all set. Why does Google get a get out of jail for free card in this? Android is like the spying on everything you do operating system. Your location, your voice, your pictures, your passwords, I mean fuck... There is nothing Android doesn't know about you that it doesn't share with Google and on request the US government.

It's a little better if your device can run Cyanogen. Not great, but a little better.

I'm hopeful that Firefox OS and perhaps Ubuntu/Full GNU/Linux on phones will help. Canonical hasn't got a perfect record when it comes to privacy or openness -- but if they manage to invest the resource to develop a truly open stack that works on real hardware, I expect people to make other distributions that do pretty much whatever one wants.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#449

Post by teaneedz »

freehunter wrote: post #193
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…

>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…

There's a danger of looking at things from within the tech bubble. Perspective is everything and I'm not convinced mainstream will be so accepting when the privacy concerns gain greater visibility. The same drive that is making ad blockers a concern will probably come into play. It'll take one successful hack for reality to set in for many. I personally don't want that type of personalization or targeting.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#450

Post by touristtam »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #320
QUFB wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

My experience: A while back I put together a Linode server for a small project. Because I was lazy I made a private page of web links for the site logs and made the URL something long and obscure with plenty of backslashes that couldn't be spidered or guessed. The main site had no Google analytics and barely any traffic. When I checked the logs a couple of days later my private log page had been accessed externally.…

Have you tried Chromium? Just curious because this is my go to browser instead of Chrome and I am under the impression that it should not do this. Although I could be mislead. easy download through the following: http://chromium.woolyss.com/
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