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Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

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Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#101

Post by morganvachon »

mackal wrote: post #65
mucker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How, pray tell, does free change the problem except in fantasies? There is plenty of "free" software that contains the same problem.

Free as in freedom, not beer. You can look at the code of the free software, therefore tell if it's phoning home or not. More importantly, changing it.

Exactly. This is how the Google Chromium always-on voice recognition payload was discovered, for example. We may never have known about it if it wasn't an open source project, or at least we wouldn't have heard about it until long after it shipped.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#102

Post by ultramancool »

yrro wrote: post #92
ultramancool wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, heck, on Android and iOS around 40% of banking apps don't even check the certificate at all. Most people, even most developers seem to be pretty clueless with this stuff.

> on Android and iOS around 40% of banking apps don't even check the certificate at all. Please name and shame, this sounds pretty surprising!

Heard that on an old security now episode, https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-443-notes.pdf is the best I have unfortunately, there's mention of it near the bottom there.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#103

Post by RexRollman »

wl wrote: post #71
Paul_S wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could use free software.

Counterexample: Ubuntu sending local file system searches off to Amazon because apparently online shopping and file searching are things you want to do simultaneously.

Which is why being open source is not enough. It needs to be non-commercial.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#104

Post by HNSucksAss »

RexRollman wrote: post #98
chatmasta wrote: post #34

This also happens on iOS with spotlight. As far as I can tell there's no way to turn it off. Source: MITM your iOS traffic. Sidenote -- a possibly unforeseen side effect of end to end encryption everywhere is that it makes it far more difficult to man in the middle your traffic and hold companies accountable for their privacy policies.

iOS does tell you have to turn it off but the user has to notice a small notice on the Spotlight control panel. Same with OS X. I believe this kind is unethical as Apple knows that most people won't change the default settings.

Of course, Spotlight is a piece of shit that doesn't show you WHERE it found things. So it fails at its primary purpose anyway.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#105

Post by acchan »

pwnna wrote: post #18
CSDude wrote: post #12

Ubuntu does the same by default if you do not disable it via Privacy. Not suprised that MS does this, however the sad part is for a simple search, there are literally thosaunds of bytes exchanged

Didn't they disable this?

Weird, I thought the same.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#106

Post by HNSucksAss »

If Microsoft hadn't ruined the Start menu functionality, you wouldn't have to search it in the first place. Once upon a time, you could organize your applications into groups, which would open as cascading menus. MS broke that in Vista and never fixed it.

The Start menu itself is a regression from Program Manager groups anyway. Even Apple has managed to come up with something better, in the form of Launchpad.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#107

Post by RexRollman »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #76

Here's a list of servers Windows 10 contacts on startup. There are probably more, but these are the ones that showed up. BN1WNS2011508.wns.windows.com OneSettings-bn2.metron.live.com.nsatc.net a978.i6g1.akamai.net americas2.notify.windows.com.akadns.net any.edge.bing.com bingads.microsoft.com bl3302.storage.live.com bl3302geo.storage.dkyprod.akadns.net client.wns.windows.com corp.sts.microsoft.com diagnostics.support…

That's fucking crazy. But I would love to see examples of how OS X, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS compares.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#108

Post by morganvachon »

justThis1Post wrote: post #36

As time goes by, computer software begins to feel more and more hostile to the user. When I installed Windows 10, all the privacy settings made me feel like I was wrangling a beast rather than setting up something that would help me. I don't know if there's any solution or if privacy is just a remnant of the past. Is Linux any better? And is there any way to own a smartphone which is built not to leak my information,…

For a desktop OS, try OpenBSD, Slackware Linux, Debian, or Arch Linux, or if those are too obtuse (they can be difficult for the uninitiated to get into) try Ubuntu or Linux Mint. If you go with Ubuntu you'll want to go to the Security & Privacy tab and disable online search results and tracking.

For a smartphone, you have to dig back into the past and find a Nokia N900 or an old-school BlackBerry; anything based on Android, iOS, or Windows Phone is going to snoop on you even if you tell it not to. Even FirefoxOS has glaring security issues, and Ubuntu Touch isn't ready for prime time.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#109

Post by unluckier »

yrro wrote: post #92
ultramancool wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, heck, on Android and iOS around 40% of banking apps don't even check the certificate at all. Most people, even most developers seem to be pretty clueless with this stuff.

> on Android and iOS around 40% of banking apps don't even check the certificate at all. Please name and shame, this sounds pretty surprising!

At least for Android: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t5GXwjw82SyunALVJb2w...

There are several banking-related apps listed here.

Re: Windows 10 phones home when you search your start menu, even with Bing disabled

#110

Post by thejosh »

wl wrote: post #71
Paul_S wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could use free software.

Counterexample: Ubuntu sending local file system searches off to Amazon because apparently online shopping and file searching are things you want to do simultaneously.

Which you can fix by either using another distro/uninstalling it/disabling it/using another window manager.
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