51–60 of 63 posts
You have to hand it to Microsoft's PR machinery. While companies have been offering similar services, not many wouldn't have tried to link it to "broadening threats to democracy".
Fascinating. As of this moment, this page seems to have far more virulent anti-Microsoft sentiment than I can recall seeing in any HN posting recently. It's almost as if people are blaming the messenger for some reason.
Which is a little annoying as HN was one of the few places that hadn’t been infected by American politics. I’m Scandinavian, I don’t much care about the war between red and blue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Going to hold actions taken over 70 years ago against the US of today?
The research results quoted contain election interferences between 1945 and 2000. Since then it has only become far worse. So no, it's not been 70 years ago since the last election interference conducted by the US and yes I am holding this kind of action against the United States and so should you: https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-...
Do you really accept that as proof?
Because who better than Microsoft to save our democracy? I can't think of anyone ... oh wait ... I can! What about Apple and Google? Yes. Please. Apple, Microsoft and Google - together - save our democracies! You are the only ones who can. Thank you. -- the little people
This is great, but I'd like to know if it extends in the other direction; one of the great ironies of the Trump Administration has been the wrecking of the State Department, who along with the CIA have had a habit of getting involved in the elections of other countries. Up to and including replacing democratically-elected socialists with military dictatorships.
If you take everything you hear on TV and read in the newspaper as true I suppose.
Fascinating. As of this moment, this page seems to have far more virulent anti-Microsoft sentiment than I can recall seeing in any HN posting recently. It's almost as if people are blaming the messenger for some reason.
Microsoft has a Digital Crimes Unit? Is that like a police/vigilante enforcing function? Curious to learn more - seems unique, or is this common with big companies?
This is common.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your grandma comment is misguided. Your parent comment has a good point. If a system is sending out sensitive data, there is a way to figure it out by setting breakpoints and reverse engineering the payload that is getting encrypted. Once a researcher finds whether or not sensitive data is being sent, the researcher can publish the information so that your grandma can know about it and she can have the transparency a…
Or, you know, demand from the vendor to supply a system that doesn't need a researcher, who was able to secure a funding for such an endeavor. Meanwhile, the point still stands: windows phones home, sends out the data, which are encrypted in transport, obfuscated inside, and the user has zero control about it. Requiring the user to prove which data were send and which weren't is dishonest; it is the vendor who has th…
You always need independent researchers to verify vendor's claims.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, you know, demand from the vendor to supply a system that doesn't need a researcher, who was able to secure a funding for such an endeavor. Meanwhile, the point still stands: windows phones home, sends out the data, which are encrypted in transport, obfuscated inside, and the user has zero control about it. Requiring the user to prove which data were send and which weren't is dishonest; it is the vendor who has th…
If the vendor supplied such a system or provided the answer to your question, would you trust it? Why? You always need independent researchers to verify vendor's claims.
In most linux distribution, when you have a crash and the crash reporting is enabled, you can peek into what exactly is going to be sent. If you have smallest of the doubt, you can opt to not send anything. Or opt out of sending anything, ever.
Of course, seeing that the data you submit is used to solve your specific problem, and not disappearing into black hole just to feed some analytics, helps with the motivation to submit.
No need to debug the constantly changing code. Even if your researcher verifies, that a specific release sends only such and such data, the next months release can send something else. The verification would take longer than a month, and given the cadence of releases, would be permanently out of date.