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

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#481

Post by ionised » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 8:41 AM UTC

touristtam wrote: post #443

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I'm really hoping STeam OS becomes a viable desktop gaming OS (play most if not all PC games) at some point.

I would drop Windows in a heartbeat if that happened. There is no other reason keeping me using it other than games.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#482

Post by colordrops » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #377

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? Everyone who is switching over to cloud connected OSs on their tablets and smartphones. Why should I have to reinstall and resetup every new computer? My contacts have been following me around on my phone for 8 years now, why the heck shouldn't they be just as accessible from my PC? My favorites, they should always be there. Chrome does a great job of this, it is ni…

I agree that these features all make sense but there is no reason for the invididual's data to have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles through third party servers during a synchronization. It should be no harder than pairing two Bluetooth devices together and then the data will move directly between these devices, or at least encrypted through a third party router. The internet was designed to be decentralized but it's not working that way due to business interests.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#483

Post by ChristianBundy » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

omarforgotpwd wrote: post #185

Imagine if you discovered an exploit for TLS and just listened in on a public / hotel network to tons of Windows machines sending keystrokes, calendar, contacts, etc to Microsoft in the background... At least in the Windows 95 days you had to write the key logger yourself and get it installed somehow.

> an exploit for TLS

The world would end immediately.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#484

Post by ionised » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

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?

Like Microsoft haven't done illegal things before?

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#485

Post by iribe » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 8:56 AM UTC

dhruvrrp wrote: post #364

Zarel wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely false. For one thing, SRWare Iron is a scam: http://www.insanitybit.com/2012/06/23/srware-iron-browser-a-... For another thing, Chrome doesn't log every website you visit. The closest thing they do is suggest autocompletions for searches/URLs you type in the URL, which is a straightforwardly-explained checkbox in Chrome's privacy settings.

> Chrome doesn't log every website you visit But it does. If you get a new android phone and log in with a google account then it updates your browser history on chrome. Which could only be done if your non-incognito history is stored in google's servers.

Microsoft was caught with their pants down returning google search results to microsoft via internet explorer. They call it "a signal" for bing. The difference between google and microsoft is microsoft isn't as forthcoming regarding what information they retrieve. No dashboard to browse everything microsoft tracks... You just have to trust microsoft. Good luck with that.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#486

Post by codeisawesome » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:01 AM UTC

Filthy_casual wrote: post #473

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers, and society at large may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if they hadn't been making the suggestions to influence…

>No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers, and society at large may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if they hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you. In spite the fact that in the case of friends, family, coworkers I can be the one persuading them in a different direction and I also know a bit about them (you cannot suggest that in the case of person…

This discussion is such a deja vu. I had this exact back and forth with a colleague the other day (them on the give-away-all-data side). I have a reply based on this comment, thank you.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#487

Post by onli » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:07 AM UTC

graycat wrote: post #401

onli wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you seriously are still using Windows XP on an internet-connected device, it is not like your biggest worry is sending data to Microsoft.

Have anything specific except for Flash or macros for Word? There is the recent 15 or so year old problem, so far never seen in practice, having to do with fonts or some such. Otherwise, what's insecure about XP? Or more secure about 7, 8, 8.1, or 10? Sure, using XP means I'm not cool , but what about actual security? Or are the crucial parts of XP really much different than those of 7? I doubt it. Until the XP suppo…

> Otherwise, what's insecure about XP? Or more secure about 7, 8, 8.1, or 10?

Windows XP had no UAC and most users were surfing as admin, which was inherently more insecure. Also, XP does not have a bunch of security features the newer Windows had, see http://superuser.com/a/739204. And now without the updates, since security issues are not patched, the system should be open to all kinds of drive-by attacks and whatever was found in the last months. I do not have a list of them.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#488

Post by Too » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:09 AM UTC

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.

Modern cars have offline voice recognition that just works, without training.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#489

Post by userbinator » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:10 AM UTC

Someone I know who has been in the cracking/warez scene for over 20 years, and did a lot of analysis on the XP activation scheme when it first came out, had this to say about Windows 10 and the trend in general:

Remember Gates said, about piracy "we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade"? It is happening now. And lots of other software/service are becoming "free" or massive discount, since selling your data is much more profit. Crack was about using software without paying money. Maybe in future it will be without paying with personal data or privacy. We will find a way, always. :-)

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#490

Post by jeeva » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:18 AM 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.

I might well be remembering this incorrectly, but wasn't that a part of the Insider Only pre-release EULA?

I've not checked to see if it's in the more recent release EULA, but the assumption was that it was there for the beta diagnostics as opposed to the day-to-day use.