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I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

jonathan.porta.codes

111–120 of 596 posts

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#111
Microsoft's privacy policy reflects the fact that Microsoft has to comply with the most conservative interpretation of the most restrictive privacy regulations from the set of all privacy regulations found anywhere in the world. It amounts to "Microsoft does not guarantee privacy." The reason is that Microsoft cannot make such a guarantee because of the diversity and strength of privacy regulations.

I'm not saying that strong privacy regulations are a bad thing or that Microsoft's policy is a good thing. Just that Microsoft's policy reflects reality where competitors and activists and politicians are inclined to use privacy regulations for purposes orthogonal to any actual concern about privacy. The connected world is full of caches and Microsoft does not control them. Users can do stupid things that Microsoft cannot prevent.

Agree with the terms and use Windows. Don't use Windows if you disagree. The website hosting the blog runs google-analytics by default. It doesn't ask my permission. It runs Disqus by default. It doesn't ask my permission. The privacy badger ate too many cookies and died years ago. Microsoft is late to the wake.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#112

Of course you did. Large companies have no vested interest in building systems that do the "right thing" for you as defined by tech types like us who are arguably more sensitive on this subject than most people. They are building services that take your information and try to do something interesting enough with it to make it worthwhile...and why is it on by default? Because they want to make money off of the new fea…

Granted most individuals may not be concerned with these intrusions-by-design, but businesses dealing with sensitive information - or who simply have a vested interest in security - may see this as a reason to forgo the Microsoft Office suite altogether, which is one of Microsoft's few stable revenue streams after all these years.

Exactly. I work for defense attorneys, and they deal with a huge amount of private, protected, highly-confidential data. I honestly don't know how we can keep implementing Microsoft solutions... have been debating switching everything over to Mac.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#113
post #29
post #4

This is why i think Tim Cook is genius for marketing Apple as the anti "We sell all your data and spy on you" companies.

Well, to be fair, they spy on you but just don't sell the data. Yet.

Define spying? Most of Apple's services are opt-in as opposed to opt-out. iTunes and Siri are where most the data collection happens. In OS you also have device location services, map data collection but most points are easily controlled.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to do all this personalization without giving away your data to advertisers. Unfortunately Microsoft chose not to. 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.

I mean, you have to admit that desktop-based recognition is just not as good as cloud-based offerings. This is true across the board, having more data and power available will give better results.

Sure, but desktop-based recognition has been improving all the time and may well be good enough. It still doesn't mean we have to lose our privacy just because a slightly better technology might be out there.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#115
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like Cortana could have been built to work locally, using your own resources. But it wasn't. This was an opportunity to say "we're not like Siri and Google Now, we respect your privacy", but instead they built something just like them.

[deleted]

You misread their comment

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#116

Of course you did. Large companies have no vested interest in building systems that do the "right thing" for you as defined by tech types like us who are arguably more sensitive on this subject than most people. They are building services that take your information and try to do something interesting enough with it to make it worthwhile...and why is it on by default? Because they want to make money off of the new fea…

It's not wrong or evil or even criminally negligent to want programs that you write to work as intended. With new systems that have fancy machine learning based features developers face the difficulty that making an accurate training data set is impossible, especially at the scale at which Microsoft ships its software. Cortana's abilities to be smart assistant all involve polling the data mentioned in the post, sure…

I didn't mean to make it sound that way. I actually agree with you completely. I was trying to write for my audience there...my point was just that obviously they will want to gain something from the relationship as well.

You and I are in complete agreement on the subject...I just fell into hyperbole...

:)

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#118

I dont' know why so many people are surprised by the Cortana data vacuum. Doesn't Siri send everything you say to it to Apple or a "trusted partner"? Why would Cortana be any different? The keylogger and Start menu ads are just creepy though. I shouldn't have to opt-out of targeted ads INSIDE MY OS.

What do start menu ads look like?

The new XBox 1 update I installed yesterday has placed a "Featured" column on the main interface with ads. Think a start menu folder with links to sponsored web pages/apps.

Re: I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most users, this protects them to a useful level. Most users don't think losing a password is a big deal and would be very upset to learn their data is lost because they forgot. That's an anti-feature. The number of people that'll be protected from leaving their laptop in a taxi, or home burglary, or selling/trading-in a device, or just snoopy relatives or acquaintances, etc. is large and MS absolutely made the r…

> For most users, this protects them to a useful level. Most users don't think losing a password is a big deal and would be very upset to learn their data is lost because they forgot. That's an anti-feature. "Would you like to store a backup for your drive encryption password on Microsoft OneDrive? If you choose not to do so, and you forget your password, all of your data will be lost. [Yes/No]" And none of that warr…

>"Would you like to store a backup for your drive encryption password on Microsoft OneDrive? If you choose not to do so, and you forget your password, all of your data will be lost. [Yes/No]"

You know when most people care about whether or not they can recover their data? It's not when someone asks them a Yes/No question, it's when they can't recover their data. And responding with "Well, remember 2 years ago when you clicked 'No'?" Doesn't really help.

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