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Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

zdnet.com

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Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#81

Post by me_love_animes »

nickjj wrote: post #30

I don't get it. This article and Reddit post is very misguided. Why are people upset that you're sending data to Microsoft if you enable the settings in Windows that specifically allow Microsoft to collect this data? Maybe I'm biased since I run Windows 10 Pro but you can simply turn off activity history and set your diagnostic settings to basic. Now your non-anonymous data won't be sent to MS (unless they are secret…

Basic still sends application inventory and a whole host of other 'person' things

activity history is confusing to disable as well, as it' mixed in with their pile of new privacy settings

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#82

Post by pavel_lishin »

nickjj wrote: post #76
pavel_lishin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're concerned about privacy, why would you login to your OS using a Microsoft Live account? Why would I expect there to be a difference in my level of privacy between the two? This is frankly a ludicrous thing to expect users to understand. I would certainly not expect this.

> Why would I expect there to be a difference in my level of privacy between the two? This is frankly a ludicrous thing to expect users to understand. I would certainly not expect this. I don't know. Maybe I'm just old and paranoid. As soon as the Windows installation menu requested to link a MS Live account to my Windows login, I thought "wtf, when did MS require having an online account to install Windows?", then I…

I think of myself as fairly paranoid as well, but age and wisdom and paranoia shouldn't be a requirement for basic privacy.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#83

Post by linuxftw »

monetus wrote: post #79
linuxftw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.

How do you feel about critical mass for average users though? Debian updating its repositories every two years is kind of antithetical to the android and mac idea of software repositories. I've not tried elementaryOS, but I thought it was similar.

Plenty of software vendors provide packages that are compatible across releases such as google chrome and mariadb. Checkout Mariadb's releases for Ubuntu: http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/...

Just the system packages need to be stable (eg, distro's repos).

Also worth mentioning is snaps and flatpacks (though I'm not personally a fan, they do exist).

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#84

Post by Derek_MK »

shawnz wrote: post #53
jstimpfle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Win10 PC sometimes wakes up in the night to complete an update and reboot. My working sessions are lost as a consequence. And since my PC reboots to Linux it stays up until I wake up due to the humming. Quite annoying. This morning I researched a way to turn off these forced updates but Win10 wouldn't let me apply the option without entering some obscure credentials that I don't know.

But wouldn't it be better if your apps supported hot exit, so you could wake up the next morning with updates already installed AND all your work still there?

The solution shouldn't be "make all the apps work around Microsoft being anti-consumer". It should be "Make Microsoft stop being anti-consumer".

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#85

Post by pippy »

131012 wrote: post #52
guelo wrote: post #37

As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal.…

What enrages me most is the fact that they ask us to f * pay for it! The implicit deal with Facebook, Google and other free services is that you pay them with their data. Fine. But paying for being spied on? This is scam pure and simple.

Products that serve ads and sell your user data should be free, see Facebook or Google Search.

If I fork out money for a product, I expect to do what is says it does. To have Windows auto update and serve ads in the start bar or lock screen is just too much

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#86

Post by Derek_MK »

fusl wrote: post #2

As far as everything on the internet tells me, GDPR was made for exactly this reason, to prevent this kind of data collecting without the users consent. But what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement while large companies can get away with collecting everything and anything, leaking personal user data all o…

Now that I think about it, yeah, I think Microsoft is probably gonna land in some big trouble with GDPR because of this. There's not really a way out of it because of how little control they give the user. I think it's just going to take time, because there's so many high-profile GDPR cases going on right now.

Plus, it's not like the big companies can afford to get hit by GDPR in a way that small companies can't. GDPR fines are based off of the company's revenue, which works well for preventing Microsofts from making more money from doing it anyway and paying the fine.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#87

Post by shawnz »

Derek_MK wrote: post #84
shawnz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't it be better if your apps supported hot exit, so you could wake up the next morning with updates already installed AND all your work still there?

The solution shouldn't be "make all the apps work around Microsoft being anti-consumer". It should be "Make Microsoft stop being anti-consumer".

It's a standard expectation on mobile that all apps should work that way, and consumers seem to like that pattern better. So is it really anti-consumer to try and push app developers in that direction?

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#88

Post by zozbot123 »

monetus wrote: post #79
linuxftw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.

How do you feel about critical mass for average users though? Debian updating its repositories every two years is kind of antithetical to the android and mac idea of software repositories. I've not tried elementaryOS, but I thought it was similar.

Debian updates its stable release repositories every two years (aside from pure bugfixes and the like, of course) because this is what it takes to have a rock-solid software release-- with a truly negligible amount of issues for the computer-naïve "average user" to be bitten by-- given the resources they have at present and the overall state of upstream software. If people want more frequent updates, coupled with the same overall reliability that Debian has always been known for (far more than many other Linux distributions), they're welcome to contribute.

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#89

Post by saghm »

monetus wrote: post #79
linuxftw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.

How do you feel about critical mass for average users though? Debian updating its repositories every two years is kind of antithetical to the android and mac idea of software repositories. I've not tried elementaryOS, but I thought it was similar.

There are distros not based on Debian out there, many of which update their packages more often than every two years

Re: Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

#90

Post by sjellis »

fusl wrote: post #2

As far as everything on the internet tells me, GDPR was made for exactly this reason, to prevent this kind of data collecting without the users consent. But what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement while large companies can get away with collecting everything and anything, leaking personal user data all o…

> what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement

Nope. The GDPR is a European-style regulatory framework: it sets out principles and expects people to apply them in a reasonable and sensible way. The national regulating agencies are there to steer organisations into doing the right thing, rather than beating them up when they don't. I have literally telephoned the UK regulator and had a polite conversation when I needed a clarification of a particular point in their (most clearly written) online guidance.

The regulators do have strong powers so that large and well-funded companies can't just deploy lawyers to get away with things. Cambridge Analytica is one obvious case: they tried to play games with a GDPR regulator, and got a very hard smack-down.

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