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Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

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Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#71

Post by CogitoCogito »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Happened to me about a week ago. When I opened the browser, a notification popped up telling me "Your bookmarks are now being synced". There was an option to turn this off, which I did, but I have to assume that the bookmarks were already sent off to Microsoft. There's nothing remarkable in my bookmarks. I've never really found it to be a useful tool beyond a way of marking things I want to check out again soon. I do…

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whit...

> All synced data is encrypted in transit over HTTPS when transferred between the browser and Microsoft servers. The synced data is also stored in an encrypted state in Microsoft servers. Sensitive data types such as addresses and passwords are further encrypted on the device before being synced.

That's pretty flowery language for "basically all your data is readable by us". It's pretty ridiculous they would do this without an explicit opt-in.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#72

Post by squarefoot »

nikanj wrote: post #25
cyberge99 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only common thing in all of those is Microsoft. I think the solution to the problem is obvious.

There's another common thing in all of those: Computers. For many people, "Just stop using Microsoft" is about as useful as "Just stop using computers"

> For many people, "Just stop using Microsoft" is about as useful as "Just stop using computers"

Absolutely true, but the SaaS/cloud tendency is to turn all computers into terminals (Chromebook/box anyone?), so that one day they'll be a lot cheaper, but sadly all software will have to come off a server on which the user logged in, and all user data will be stored on that or another server as well. Microsoft aims at this, as do Google and others, so for many people sticking with Microsoft and other SaaS pushing companies might really mean one day to stop using real computers anyway.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#73

Post by paulryanrogers »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #70
paulryanrogers wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question.

> I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question. A quick search online makes it seem like Mozilla still has no ability to read what you sync. E.g. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Sync you see: > It keeps user data on Mozilla servers, but according to Mozilla the data is encrypted in such a way that no third party, not…

In hindsight looks like I misunderstood the reason behind this new derived key system [0]. Looks like it was more about not losing access than sharing.

[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2014/02/07/a-better-firefo...

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#74

Post by donmcronald »

_trampeltier wrote: post #45
mobilemidget wrote: post #24

I believe they scrape all links pasted in Skype conversations too

Everybody scrape all links. Mostly for the preview function. Just s3nd a unique url with some messengers or mail and look at the serverlogs. Thats also a reason to use even a simple login.

Yep. My email client has message tracking built in and I forgot to disable it after a re-install once. A lot of messages are "read" immediately. I've always been curious how promotional mailers handle that.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#75

Post by MonaroVXR »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #71
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Happened to me about a week ago. When I opened the browser, a notification popped up telling me "Your bookmarks are now being synced". There was an option to turn this off, which I did, but I have to assume that the bookmarks were already sent off to Microsoft. There's nothing remarkable in my bookmarks. I've never really found it to be a useful tool beyond a way of marking things I want to check out again soon. I do…

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whit... > All synced data is encrypted in transit over HTTPS when transferred between the browser and Microsoft servers. The synced data is also stored in an encrypted state in Microsoft servers. Sensitive data types such as addresses and passwords are further encrypted on the device before being synced. That's pretty flowery language for "basically all your dat…

But everything is encrypted on your device itself, so I could imagine they could grab those bookmarks if they don't encrypt.

Google and Firedox do it for their passwords, I'm not sure about bookmarks.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#76

Post by CogitoCogito »

MonaroVXR wrote: post #75
CogitoCogito wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whit... > All synced data is encrypted in transit over HTTPS when transferred between the browser and Microsoft servers. The synced data is also stored in an encrypted state in Microsoft servers. Sensitive data types such as addresses and passwords are further encrypted on the device before being synced. That's pretty flowery language for "basically all your dat…

But everything is encrypted on your device itself, so I could imagine they could grab those bookmarks if they don't encrypt. Google and Firedox do it for their passwords, I'm not sure about bookmarks.

Yeah as far as I know Firefox sync encrypts everything with your own private key on your device. So Mozilla wouldn't have any access to your bookmarks or other stuff that you sync. I don't know anything about how Chrome's syncing works.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#77

Post by 3np »

Borrible wrote: post #32

Of course they don't steal anything from you. They just preserve your precious little soul. To your best interest. Which may coincidentially be in their best interest. A friendly customer service, because you happen to honour them using their products. And, if you're lucky, even in the best interest of people that do protect you against evil forces out there in the dark. From time to time they may look into your prec…

You have won the victory over yourself.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#78

Post by Borrible »

3np wrote: post #77
Borrible wrote: post #32

Of course they don't steal anything from you. They just preserve your precious little soul. To your best interest. Which may coincidentially be in their best interest. A friendly customer service, because you happen to honour them using their products. And, if you're lucky, even in the best interest of people that do protect you against evil forces out there in the dark. From time to time they may look into your prec…

You have won the victory over yourself.

Well, Winston, the party would love to know how many out there don't realize that it's satire. That's fine for the party, because the others don't realize it's not.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#80

Post by silverpepsi »

seized wrote: post #54
silverpepsi wrote: post #9

Seems a bit late to make hoopla about a much more minor infraction. With Onedrive I'm facing the nightmare that you are not allowed to configure it until syncing is in progress. If you pause syncing immediately on install, you're not allowed to change settings to prevent said syncing from happening. I have a mix of personal and business data on there. This has been the case for a few years now but recently got worse.…

This isn't really a product issue. Separate your data properly, uninstall or disable the OneDrive client and use the web version if you need something, use a different product.... Not everything has to bend to your "unique" needs. And it's hard to take your complaint or needs seriously when it starts out with mixing personal and business data.

But here's the thing, they literally provide checkboxes for individual directories you want to sync. They've literally designed it to my needs (actually I was trying to simplify, the reality is I don't mix business but personal grades of porn to varying grades of legality, so do you seriously expect me to have multiple personal Office256 accounts for categories of porn????)

It's just their default settings went from years of causing data corruption as soon as you try to change the default of everything checked to this new cluster of ghost syncing.

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