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Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#151

Post by reaperducer »

crumbshot wrote: post #121
zerohp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an interview last year with the Windows and Devices Group. On the day of the interview, I was told it would be with people that work on telemetry. One interviewer told me that keystrokes were being measured by conhost.exe. Not just for internal testing. He clarified that it was done on customer machines. It wasn't clear if they collected individual key presses because we were discussing something you could infe…

That is such an outrageous claim I had to check for myself. From looking at conhost.exe in IDA Pro, there are some references to telemetry in a function HandleKeyEvent: https://i.imgur.com/MwaBLcW.jpg But looking more closely it's just used to increase some counters when Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V are used: https://i.imgur.com/29e2qLD.png There is another one for Ctrl+A elsewhere in the function as well. Seems these are for wh…

it's just some boring old counters to measure clipboard usage.

Today. After the next (forced?) upgrade...?

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#152

Post by reaperducer »

bradleybuda wrote: post #37
turrini wrote: post #7

https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator#data--telemetry "This project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. Telemetry is disabled in development builds by default, and can be enabled with the SEND_TELEMETRY build flag." Even on a simple calculator.

Built-in applications are great opportunities to dogfood new platform features. I'm speculating, but calculator may have added telemetry as a way of testing the relevant SDKs, APIs, data visualization systems, etc, not necessarily because a PM a Microsoft somewhere actually cares what percentage of users press the "multiply" button.

It's not dogfooding if you unleash it on the public.

Surely Microsoft has an accountant or two on staff. Let them test it in-house.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#154

Post by basilgohar »

tux3 wrote: post #114
badrequest wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're expected to trust the party spying on us to reveal exactly the extent to which they spy on us via their proprietary, closed-source spying data viewer tool, then we deserve exactly whatever the fuck it is we end up getting.

If they cheated on the documentation matching the binary to try and sneak in more telemetry, the backlash would be phenomenal. I don't know if Twitter could handle that kind of load =] It's always good to trust but verify, although here the the safeguard is pretty strong.

It doesn't always have to be explicitly intentional as you described, but the simple fact is that they are incentivized to gather this data and they will not, in fact, suffer major repercussions commensurate with the amount of data that is collected/gathered. Look at all of the penalties that have been levied at all the other data breaches and how negatively affected those business were. [1]

[1] Very little to not at all.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#155

Post by elcritch »

turrini wrote: post #51
starik36 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So nothing really nefarious then.

Because it is a simple calculator. Now think about what they might be collecting from the rest of the system. All the concerning privacy issues with Facebook or any other company should be seen rigorously by its users. Telemetry at OS Level is one of the worst offending practices IMO.

‘’’In a brightly lit but still somehow nefarious meeting room two devs discuss their latest findings: Dev1: “These users searching for ‘transfer bank savings’ also have a 15% chance of pasting these long invalid numbers into the calculator. Look at all of them.” Dev2: “Odd those look like bank accounts numbers...” Dev3: “I think we may have an early retirement opportunity...” ‘’’

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#156

Post by dfox »

elcritch wrote: post #155
turrini wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a simple calculator. Now think about what they might be collecting from the rest of the system. All the concerning privacy issues with Facebook or any other company should be seen rigorously by its users. Telemetry at OS Level is one of the worst offending practices IMO.

‘’’In a brightly lit but still somehow nefarious meeting room two devs discuss their latest findings: Dev1: “These users searching for ‘transfer bank savings’ also have a 15% chance of pasting these long invalid numbers into the calculator. Look at all of them.” Dev2: “Odd those look like bank accounts numbers...” Dev3: “I think we may have an early retirement opportunity...” ‘’’

You raise valid issue, but that issue has nothing to do with the telemetry itself, but with the brokeness of US banking system. Essentially everywhere else the bank account number is simply an public address that you can use to send money there and nothing else.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#157

Post by DHowett »

jessaustin wrote: post #149
DHowett wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I suppose that the key sequences around copy/paste are technically user input. Those events get processed into telemetry as to whether they were done in processed or raw input mode, and whether Quick Edit was engaged at the time. Additional telemetry points include whether the "Find" dialog is being used (explicitly, whether "find next" has been clicked, and how long the search string is -- no other user-gene…

How about this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19323560

Sorry. This is a subthread on the Console and conhost.exe, and I don’t consider myself qualified to talk about Calculator’s telemetry points.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#159

Post by elken »

DHowett wrote: post #74
zerohp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an interview last year with the Windows and Devices Group. On the day of the interview, I was told it would be with people that work on telemetry. One interviewer told me that keystrokes were being measured by conhost.exe. Not just for internal testing. He clarified that it was done on customer machines. It wasn't clear if they collected individual key presses because we were discussing something you could infe…

Speaking as the engineering lead owning conhost.exe: I can't find anything in our code that would trace user input, or data effectively derived from user input, to even a local event stream. There are a couple instances where we trace API call timings, but only that of API calls initiated by an attached console application.

Open the code up then..

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#160

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

reaperducer wrote: post #152
bradleybuda wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Built-in applications are great opportunities to dogfood new platform features. I'm speculating, but calculator may have added telemetry as a way of testing the relevant SDKs, APIs, data visualization systems, etc, not necessarily because a PM a Microsoft somewhere actually cares what percentage of users press the "multiply" button.

It's not dogfooding if you unleash it on the public. Surely Microsoft has an accountant or two on staff. Let them test it in-house.

Well, not unless they consider their users to be dogs.
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