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Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#151

Post by api »

toyg wrote: post #81
thescrewdriver wrote: post #36

Until recently Microsoft had taken a far more reasonable approach to privacy than say Google. Anyone remember the MS "gmail man" ads mocking the way Google inspects your email when MS doesn't? It seems that MS under Nadella has taken a decidedly Google-like turn away from privacy with Windows 10. MS seems as hell-bent as Google and Facebook to collect as much data about you as possible, even if it is for seemingly in…

> Anyone remember the MS "gmail man" ads mocking the way Google inspects your email Yes, and they were widely mocked. Privacy fears don't really sell, especially when deployed 10 years too late by a company that is the definition of "establishment".

This is the difference between the HN audience and the general audience.

In general, the average user doesn't care about privacy or security at all.

I develop a network virtualization product, and I spent a ton of time on security aspects of it. Sometimes I feel like that time might have been wasted, because it has thousands and thousands of users and so far not one single person has inquired about anything related to its security. Not one. It blows me away.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#152

Post by api »

blackbeard wrote: post #18
jammycakes wrote: post #7

In all these discussions about Windows 10 phoning home, there are a couple of things that I haven't yet seen properly discussed. 1. Do the different versions of Windows (Home/Pro/Enterprise/Education) behave differently? If so, how? 2. Do the pro/enterprise versions behave differently when they're connected to a domain? I'd imagine that the answer to at least one of these questions would be "yes." This kind of behavi…

We have an enterprise edition VM in test and it appears to react the same as Pro at least. Haven't tried home. What is scary is the lack of GPOs to turn this stuff off which you'd expect in an enterprise product. Technically we can't apply policy to make this compliant with our data protection requirements. Their funeral to be honest.

You mean this will chase MS out of enterprise? Awesome! It means we don't have to support them anymore!

(Supporting Windows is 10X more work than all other platforms combined due to stupid "can't reproduce here" problems on rotted and unpatched Windows machines and general Windows driver API hell. I am including Android and less-commonly-used OSS operating systems like FreeBSD and OpenBSD.)

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#153

Post by hebdo »

datainplace wrote: post #146

Stupid question, but my Mom lives in a really rural area. Pays quite a bit for internet and is charged by the MB. Can we ask Microsoft to pay for their bandwidth usage? Since upgrading to Windows 10 she's been hit with $200 in overages.

This seems to be one of the real costs of upgrading to the latest version of Windows. In this case your mom has to pay the bills, but in general I'm curious how long will it take for ISPs to launch a solid campaign against Microsoft, like they did with Netflix.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#154

Post by yellowapple »

It's hard to know without inspecting the exact data involved, but I feel like this is dangerously close to a HIPAA or HITECH breach, and I know of several hospitals who are strongly on the Microsoft bandwagon and are considering Windows 10.

The "send search data to an internet endpoint even if it's patently obvious that the search is for local resources" reeks strongly of Ubuntu's Amazon Shopping Lens. Did Mark Shuttleworth switch gears from Canonical to Microsoft when I wasn't looking?

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#155

Post by technojunkie »

hebdo wrote: post #153
datainplace wrote: post #146

Stupid question, but my Mom lives in a really rural area. Pays quite a bit for internet and is charged by the MB. Can we ask Microsoft to pay for their bandwidth usage? Since upgrading to Windows 10 she's been hit with $200 in overages.

This seems to be one of the real costs of upgrading to the latest version of Windows. In this case your mom has to pay the bills, but in general I'm curious how long will it take for ISPs to launch a solid campaign against Microsoft, like they did with Netflix.

How is this a real cost, is there an estimate of how many bytes are sent and received and at what interval? If it was anywhere in the thousands of megabytes regularly, maybe that's the real cost but that's just an assumption.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#156

Post by Silhouette »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #145
Silhouette wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality it probably wouldn't be an individual customer against Microsoft anyway. It would be someone like the national data protection regulator or European authorities, acting on behalf of the population as a whole, and they would probably be looking at the actual behaviour of Microsoft and whether it violated data protection laws. If Microsoft attempted to argue that weasel words in their terms permitted their b…

It would be nice, if it would be that easy. See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10055866 Can you name examples, where big corporations got "Serious" penalties for privacy issues? I don't know any. I only know, that in Germany, we always say, how important the issue is, but at least under our current government, privacy issues and the officers are laughed at by the big politicians. They might say…

Can you name examples, where big corporations got "Serious" penalties for privacy issues?

Not yet, but I would argue that's because organisations like Google and Facebook have changed their behaviour when challenged to avoid things going that far.

However, Europe has imposed heavy fines in the past on the likes of Microsoft, and various nations in Europe have also formally investigated and taken legal action against major tech firms in relation to privacy concerns. For example, see http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/facebook-p..., which is about an ongoing investigation.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#157

Post by ikeboy »

datainplace wrote: post #146

Stupid question, but my Mom lives in a really rural area. Pays quite a bit for internet and is charged by the MB. Can we ask Microsoft to pay for their bandwidth usage? Since upgrading to Windows 10 she's been hit with $200 in overages.

Did she set the connection as "metered"? I know some things stop then.

The $200 is likely from the automatic updates, which were pretty big. How much extra in MB was it?

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#158

Post by kuschku »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #142
kuschku wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EULA, ToS, etc do not apply in Europe if they contain terms that the user can not reasonably expect. An OS sharing all your data even with snooping disabled falls under this regulation, and multiple EU data privacy officials are already investigating and preparing a case.

Could be, but also could not. Microsoft once already was under EU investigation and the whole thing was settled with minimal efforts for Microsoft (the only thing I remember was, that they had to provide a browser selection screen). When the OS sends encrypted data to their servers, who will prove, that their is an offense made? Even when the terms are troublesome in the EU, they will just make some cosmetic changes…

Look up Thilo Weichert, or, his replacement and long-years assistant Marit Hansen (Dipl.-Inf.)

They fought many battles, especially against Facebook, which led to court rulings in the manner of "Instant change of terms, instant destruction of data, or 6 months jail for the CEO".

Internationally, many might laugh about the ULD, but you do not risk a fight with them. And now, with them starting to look at Microsoft, I would not want to be in Microsofts place.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#159

Post by ikeboy »

antsar wrote: post #121
ultramancool wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up1 uses client-side crypto, so in this instance it is. No real point here though, but I use ShareX with it, and it's nice to be able to deliver screenshots and stuff like this privately.

What's the point of client-side crypto in a browser? Can't you be served backdoored JavaScript that no longer does proper encryption, and you'd be none the wiser?

The service provider isn't able to decode the info because the key is part of the URL that isn't sent to them. This decreases liability (and if nobody visits them, they can't be forced to decrypt it).
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