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Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

extremetech.com

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Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#101

Post by FussyZeus »

794CD01 wrote: post #91
FussyZeus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This. It's not THAT there is telemetry and "phoning home," it's the fact that Microsoft flat out REFUSES to be up front about what it's sending home, how they're anonymizing it, and why these things can't be 100% disabled. If you say nothing then your users will (and should) assume the worst.

Where have they refused to be up front about any of this? As far as I'm aware, they have detailed all of those things except how exactly they anonymize the data, which I haven't seen anyone specifically ask them about.

There's no way to turn it off. It says it's turned off, and it's still sending shit to Redmond. That's unacceptable and deceptive. I do not use software that lies to me, period, paragraph.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#102

Post by anowlcalledjosh »

SixSigma wrote: post #50
theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

The idea of "let's put a popup on everyone's computer telling them they can download the next version of Windows for free" simply reeks of malware shit. Even worse is when they decided to force it on everyone else who doesn't automatically click "OK" on every dialog box they see.

In 32 days it won't be free any more (July 29)

Thank God for that. I'll finally be able to boot my Windows partition again without worrying if it's going to nuke my Linux install.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#103

Post by turnip1979 »

snuxoll wrote: post #67
creshal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Windows 7 is supposed to keep getting security updates until 2020. Computer illiterate users are the last group you should upgrade to a new system in an automated manner, because they are the most helpless if drivers/applications break from it.

This is why the Windows 10 installer does a compatibility check before performing the upgrade. My friend was trying to upgrade to Windows 10 last week but it kept denying him saying his "display is not compatible". I logged into his machine and saw he had an old GoToMyPC monitor driver installed that was causing him grief, uninstalled it and away the upgrade went. It's not perfect by any means, and "compatibility" ch…

See my post above. Windows thought my father's touchscreen laptop was a tablet, and put him in tablet-only mode by default.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#104

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

SixSigma wrote: post #46
themartorana wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

I wouldn't be upset if Windows 10 hadn't turned into a telemetry botnet for Microsoft. Edit: I see in other posts accusations of paranoia. But how can I not be paranoid when I cannot determine what is being transmitted.

I take it that you don't use a smartphone, either, since you have no way of knowing what is transmitted either, either by the primary OS or the secondary radio OS. http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_syste...

Or macOS (nee OS X), since Apple gathers telemetry as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11907060

Moreover, security researchers looking to make a name for themselves are crawling all over Windows. If they haven't found anything in the telemetry that makes headlines yet, most likely there's nothing to find.

Paranoid or not, telemetry is already everywhere without you knowing what's being sent and it's here to stay. Singling out Windows is ridiculous.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#105

Post by cm2187 »

overgard wrote: post #86

This is probably a dangerous position as a software developer, but I think we should stop calling these things upgrades . What's being shipped are changes . Whether they're improvements or not is completely subjective. It seems like splitting hairs, but terminology matters. It sounds harmless when you say "Microsoft reserves the right to update your machine" but things are clearer when you say "Microsoft reserves the…

Yeah, it's like my bank "upgrading" me to a Gold account where I will be charged more fees and receive more calls from my bank trying to sell me products...

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#106

Post by mraleman »

themartorana wrote: post #42
Guest98123 wrote: post #19

A few days ago I was visiting family, and my Mom was online Skyping relatives on her Windows 7 PC. She comes running into the other room and says her PC just restarted while she was talking, and now it says something about configuring Windows 10, even though she was always careful to opt-out of the constant requests to upgrade. So, we had to wait for it to install the OS, then decline the terms of service, then wait…

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

I bet the vast majority of the devs complaining in here hate supporting old versions. Or are web devs.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#107

Post by Pxtl »

15charlimit wrote: post #68
Someone1234 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic both ways on this one. I think Microsoft went "too far" but I also agree that we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7. Effectively having 20%+ of the market on a super old OS holding back the industry and less secure. Microsoft claim they're planning to avoid this in the future by no longer releasing named new OS's, and instead just update Windows 10 for "free" forever. Basically the same…

> we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7 If Microsoft had really wanted to avoid that, they'd have made Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user. Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants, and treat the installbase as a testbed for forced updates that could easily (and have) render machines ino…

Oh come on, "spyware" is the same cloud-enabled search stuff that every OS is doing.

To me the big problem with Windows 10 is that it's simply very buggy.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#108

Post by cm2187 »

no_flags wrote: post #5
lumberjack wrote: post #4

Microsoft are trying to following Apple's approach in dealing with users. But I think there is a bit of a difference here. Apple users opted in. They knew how Apple operates before they bought Apple products. The same cannot be said for long time Microsoft customers.

What do you mean by "Apple's approach"? I've never been forced to upgrade the OS on my iPhone or Macbook pro.

You are not "forced" to upgrade the OS on an iphone, you will just have a pop up window every day asking you if you want to upgrade now or tonight. You have a choice!

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#110

Post by snuxoll »

turnip1979 wrote: post #103
snuxoll wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the Windows 10 installer does a compatibility check before performing the upgrade. My friend was trying to upgrade to Windows 10 last week but it kept denying him saying his "display is not compatible". I logged into his machine and saw he had an old GoToMyPC monitor driver installed that was causing him grief, uninstalled it and away the upgrade went. It's not perfect by any means, and "compatibility" ch…

See my post above. Windows thought my father's touchscreen laptop was a tablet, and put him in tablet-only mode by default.

And? I said the Windows 10 installer makes efforts to avoid breaking working systems and does a decent job at it, Windows 10's confusing tablet-mode switching is a different issue entirely (my wife turned it on by accident on her Surface Pro just the other day and couldn't figure out what she did).
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