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

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#451

Post by e12e » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:07 AM UTC

adwf wrote: post #204

icebraining wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole much? You can still simply not log in to Chrome and/or Google Search. But if you want to be logged in by default, then you'll have to tell the browser when you occasionally don't, no?

Most people don't intend to log in to Google Search, as far as they're concerned they're logged in to their email account. This is why Google got in so much trouble in France and the EU over the past couple of years.

This. I don't use gmail, but I use youtube. And when you've logged into youtube, you've logged into your "Google Account". So you can't have youtube open in one tab, and not have your history from other (non-incognito) tabs logged (modulus some tweaking of various preferences that aren't obvious or intuitive).

There's no reason why they couldn't to the same thing Mozilla does: a) have a pretty clear account thing for "sync", b) have a pretty clear page for opt/in out on what to sync, c) Have working self-host sync solution, d) have an open source sync solution so you can easily see what's going on, and how things are encoded/stored.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#452

Post by touristtam » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:08 AM UTC

urda wrote: post #214

djloche wrote: post #156

Wi-Fi Sense is a huge security hole, and even if you don't have windows 10, if anyone you trust with access to your network upgrades to windows 10, that person becomes a security problem for you. Obvious solution is to use a strong generated string for your password (so even if they get your password, they're not getting the password to anything else), and then configure your router to require each device connecting…

You're just wasting your energy if you setup MAC Whitelisting and think that's going to help at all with security.

Please explain? I am genuinely curious of knowing how that would not help security wise (apart from the very obvious MAC spoofing).

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#453

Post by proveanegative » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

9872 wrote: post #408

userbinator wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Philosophical question: is it really your life, if your software may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if it hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you? There is no doubt it will make things easier for you if all you do is effectiv…

How's that different from listening to any other human you interact with? Is it somehow worse because it's a computer rather than a human? That's the kind of bigotry that gets you robot uprisings.

I'll bite.

Your mind is wired by evolution to assess, evaluate and react to human behavior. It is equipped to defend you another humans' attempts to influence your behavior for their own ends when you interact with them in person. Software that you run daily should be able to bypass those built-in protections in a more subtle and personalized manner than traditional advertising or propaganda could ever dream of. In an untrained mind it won't meet resistance but the mind can be trained; the "bigotry against 'robots'" (really, human organizations acting at a distance) on the part of humans who read enough stories like this one emerges as a result and is completely justified.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#454

Post by nindalf » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:11 AM UTC

noxToken wrote: post #134

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Here's the thing - I want my history to be available and searchable to me, because I often want to go to a page I visited previously. However, I'd prefer if others couldn't read it and I wasn't showed ads based on that. At the moment, Firefox provides a good browser that doesn't profile me or share my history with "trusted third parties".

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#455

Post by touristtam » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:13 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #10

task_queue wrote: post #6

The idea of an operating system integrating with services like that still bothers me even though it is done in Mac OS X and Ubuntu.

I use a local account on Windows 8 (which is pretty much configured to run like Windows 7) but that completely keeps me from being able to use the Windows Store and therefore any of those universal apps. I'm sure if I choose the same option in Windows 10 a large part of the OS will be completely closed off.

I wouldn't hold my breath over MSFT software market place. They are notorious at dropping support for this as soon as they feel it doesn't enable them to capture more market share.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#456

Post by pdkl95 » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:14 AM UTC

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #361

bhauer wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Is it easy to "firewall" Cortana so that it does local voice processing and connects only to external services you authorize?

You can actually customize a large part of it and turn all of it off. You can't firewall it off, but you can learn how it actually works and just turn it off.

> turn it off

For now. This crap is going to get a lot harder to avoid when the Intel SGX instructions are widely deployed and it becomes possible to extend the lockdown from SecureBoot to the kernel and kernel-authorized apps.

I suggest fighting it now, while it is still just an annoyance.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#457

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:16 AM UTC

Too much conspiracy, but how we all wish it was just theories.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#458

Post by touristtam » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #196

coldpie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the games really worth it? There's a lot of games out there. You can live with missing a few Windows-exclusive titles.

A FEW? Games that run on OSX and Linux are the exception. Granted, there are now very high quality offers unheard of in the past (Kerbal Space Program, to mention one). If you are on OSX, you have access to a bigger selection of games (Elite: Dangerous, for instance, or EVE Online - both using Wine). On Linux, good luck. Steam improved things a little, but it's still an oasis in the wasteland. AAA games are still mos…

"Just" need to convince devs to port their code to yet another platform ..... sic. Let's see how long MSFT and Valve can pretend they cannot get along.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#459

Post by touristtam » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:25 AM UTC

dimino wrote: post #234

jblow wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether they don't right this second doesn't matter. Their terms of service say they can . If they decided it was unthinkable that they would ever do this, they could have written their TOS to be less overreaching. But they didn't do that. Therefore they think it's a possibility (if in fact they are not already doing it. Are you so sure? How do you know?)

They also didn't specifically preclude the possibility of commandeering my computer by pushing an update that'll force me to mine bitcoin for them, but I can be pretty damn sure that's not going to happen. But let me rephrase anyway: I'll bet everything in my pocket that Windows 10 does not, nor will they ever , keylog every stroke and send it back to Microsoft servers for storage. I can be sure of this the same way…

Windows 10's Term & Condition is wide enough to encompass what ever MSFT might come up in the future to track and catalog you as a good, willing, consumer. MSFT has stated that Windows 10 should be the last version of the OS in the current retail format, and therefore, technically, any update/upgrade will still be considered as Windows 10.

MSFT might not want to log everything you write on their OS, but who knows what they will deemed acceptable tomorrow under the same EULA?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#460

Post by chinpokomon » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 5:32 AM UTC

x5n1 wrote: post #343

nivla wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Majority of people don't care about having any of these privacy issues on their cell phones which infact is far more capable and something you always keep next to you. Heck I have even seen hackers here recommend ChromeOS, an operating system where everything lives on the cloud. Even though I am cautious about my privacy, I have come to learn that most are not and there is nothing wrong with it. It is just not…

Some is fine, all is mentally deficient. Chrome OS is mentally deficient. In the current environment being okay with sharing every single detail of your computing with a big marketing company is not a smart thing to do.

It's a fine line for sure. I recently recommended ChromeOS for my mother. Her problem is that she runs programs that compromise her OS. The malware I've removed from my parent's computer is hugely invasive and it is usually tied to her account. Given the choice of Google having some of her privacy details or some unknown crackers, I'd much rather have her expose that information to some cooperation that has public scrutiny over how they handle that data.