So Windows 10 is actually spyware.

[Vagrant0]

https://edri.org/microsofts-new-small-print-how-your-personal-data-abused/

http://i.imgur.com/NnF0sy8.jpg

 

I get the part where they want to record behaviors to improve input responsive things like dictation... But the fact that you cannot disable many things, or automatically opt-in to sharing a broad range of personal details, including having your email scanned for potential illegal activity, comes up as big, flashing, waving red flags.

 

Apparently they didn't learn anything from the public outcry with XBone spying on people, and now want to make it standard practice everywhere there is a computer running Windows.

 

*edit* New links

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/31/windows-10-microsoft-faces-criticism-over-privacy-default-settings

[LadyMilla]

Plus it's not straightforward to disable automatic driver installation. I was able to shut down and disable Windows Update on my test copy, but allegedly shutting down Windows Update will eventually put you on a blacklist and your copy will not get any more updates even if you turn it on again. I understand if they want to ensure that security updates are not delayed. But anything beyond that should be my decision on my own computer.

[Deleted82156User]

https://edri.org/microsofts-new-small-print-how-your-personal-data-abused/

http://i.imgur.com/NnF0sy8.jpg

 

I get the part where they want to record behaviors to improve input responsive things like dictation... But the fact that you cannot disable many things, or automatically opt-in to sharing a broad range of personal details, including having your email scanned for potential illegal activity, comes up as big, flashing, waving red flags.

 

Apparently they didn't learn anything from the public outcry with XBone spying on people, and now want to make it standard practice everywhere there is a computer running Windows.

I couldn't agree more. All this and the visual identification for log in, that is scary. Just sit down in front of your computer and it will 'identify' you.

 

Users who chose to enable Microsoft’s personal assistant software “Cortana” have to live with the following invasion to their privacy: “To enable Cortana to provide personalized experiences and relevant suggestions, Microsoft collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device. Cortana also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browse and Bing search history, and more.” But this is not all, as this piece of software also analyses undefined “speech data”: “we collect your voice input, as well your name and nickname, your recent calendar events and the names of the people in your appointments, and information about your contacts including names and nicknames.”

“We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to”, for example, “protect their customers” or “enforce the terms governing the use of the services”.

 

 

Your 'voice input', your voice. This is disgusting. Nothing you do on your computer will be private. The end to private conversations. I have no doubt it is monitoring Skype conversations too.

[obobski]

This sounds fairly similar to how Siri/Apple Dictation work in their default mode, using a "Cloud Service" to improve reliability and consistency. Of course, both Siri and Apple Dictation can have this feature 100% disabled (its a single setting) for full local execution; iirc Siri does not require an additional download, but if you do this for the first time on an OS X machine Apple Dictation will download some additional library files.

 

AFAIK the vast majority of this data never touches human hands/eyes on the receiving end - it's all used for heuristics, and they've backlogged many features to the cloud in order to improve performance (especially for lower-power devices). That said, it is still a lot of data that's potentially going back and forth and explained under very vague terms (which is problematical imho).

 

I don't understand the big to-do about permanently suspending real-time protection from Windows Defender though. I would assume that if you have a third-party AV Windows Defender will turn itself off permanently (actually, the DoJ and EU regulators will basically have assured this to be the case), so if you don't like their service, don't use it. I can't think of any scenario in which you'd want to suspend all real-time protection though - temporarily makes complete sense, and having it turn back on (it'd be nice if it specified exactly what "a while" was) is a convenience safeguard imho.

 

The thing on "reading your emails to prevent you from breaking the law" is not Microsoft. That's all ISPs and email providers; at least in the US (may be different elsewhere). This has been true of email and ISPs for over twenty years now - law enforcement with a valid court order can access your email account and many other online services (and this isn't limited to Microsoft, but if I recall this was first (legally) tested with a Hotmail account in the early 1990s). That's "clause #1" of their disclosure policy. "Clause #4" is basically saying if you use Microsoft's products to circumvent their EULA/rights they won't be complicit/helpful towards you, and may use the evidence (if their products gather/collected it) towards prosecution. Again, this is fairly standard, this is not just Microsoft, and it has been around for many years.

 

Overall there's nothing really "stand out" here that I'm seeing - many of these things have existed in this form for decades, and the changes brought by Cortana are fairly similar to what OS X/iOS implement for Siri and Dictation to work properly. It would be nice if there was a "full local" option (Apple offers this primarily as an accessibility feature), for both technical and privacy reasons, but otherwise I'm not seeing the Enemy Of The State end of the world here, but perhaps I'm not reading it right. :geek:

 

 

LadyMilla: Do you have a citation/source for a permanent lockout of genuine Windows devices from Windows Update? I know that they will restrict devices that fail WGA from some components of Windows Update, but they've done that since the Windows XP days, and it only really affects pirates anyways.

[LadyMilla]

In April senior Microsoft product marketing manager Helen Harmetz said during a Windows 10 webinar for registered partners that users who did not install updates within allotted time periods “will not be able to see and consume the next security update”. Aka your security will be cut-off.

 

 

Quoted from this Article:

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/07/17/windows-10-forced-automatic-updates/2/

 

There is no official confirmation of this policy, that's why I added the word "allegedly".

[obobski]

I read that to mean that if you don't update to (hypothetically speaking) v1.1 they will lock v1.2 out until you make the previous updates. Basically that it will force you to come current in an all-or-nothing manner (and I'm guessing that "force" is only for required updates, not recommended updates). From another article on Forbes it looks like it may mean that they'll treat a non-updating machine as a non-supported machine, so if you refuse security updates it will refuse you other updates as a "stick" to update. However they seem to be incredibly vague on this, and the exact meaning of "life of the product" in their licencing for free upgrades. It'd be nice to have an official ruling on what exactly they mean or do not mean.

 

Overall I don't think having Windows Updates running like this is explicitly a bad thing, especially since various regulators will prevent Microsoft from forcing their own software on top of Windows (e.g. Internet Explorer), so all it should be doing is handing out updates for Windows itself. I think most people probably already rely on Automatic Updates for that. Removing the choice is an annoyance, but I can't think of a scenario where you'd want updates disabled for a web-connected machine (and if the system is fully offline who cares if it gets "blocked"?).

[Vagrant0]

Again, it's the fact that none of this spying can be turned off. Even if you manually disconnect microphone and camera (not possible on many laptops), it will still record things like keystrokes, web history, contact lists, user accounts, passwords, ect. and transmit that data in detail. You also agree to allow Microsoft to make full use of your wifi network, which can detect, identify, and access connected devices. All outside the user's control.

 

Although e-mail scanning has been a thing for awhile now, most of these are isolated to singular services, and as such are usually not a priority unless a particular account has been flagged. Smaller e-mail providers usually don't have the resources to invest in this sort of thing, but will still hand over details if requested by a government agency. Beyond that, most of the contents of the e-mail is usually encrypted. By means of the keylogging being done by Windows, this all gets handed to Microsoft, regardless of email provider. You agree to allow Microsoft to read, store, and access every account tied to you, even if the email service exists outside the US or is managed by a private party. Additionally it also connects with skype and similar services automatically, recording full details of every single person you make contact with.

 

The thing with Windows Defender is that even if you do have other programs protecting your computer, it will still automatically turn itself back on without allowing you to have any say in the matter. As Windows Defender also manages things like firewalls (poorly) and can potentially flag anything it wants as a "potentially unwanted software", this can be a bit of a problem. If you write a program for your own use that can alter the contents of another file (such as hex editors, patchers), Windows can decide to simply remove this program without letting you have any say in the matter just because it has functions similar to malware. If you have your firewall being managed by 3rd party software because you need the ability to adjust rules quickly or based on variables, or monitor traffic in a more detailed way, you're SoL. Windows Defender will just decide to enable itself randomly and ignore all that, despite the fact that Windows Firewall is a complete joke and often only serves to screw up your connection to intended services.

 

With the updates thing... When you have a computer which you WANT to have nearly 100% up time, having it randomly decide that it has to shut itself down because of a 14kb update to a help file. Well, it's annoying and unnecessary (In the span of a month having automatic updates turned on with Windows 7, this happened atleast 6 times, for very insignificant updates before I turned them off). Very rarely do any of the Microsoft Updates contain things which are critical to patching exploits or adding major compatibility improvements after the first month or so of release. Most updates are things related to either knowledge base (help files), or compatibility for unusual (and often obsolete) programs. What security updates they do release tend to be minor loopholes that anti-malware software is already monitoring, or which only apply to specific business related systems. But hey... Let's allow Microsoft to tell us whenever it wants to shut down our computer, no matter what we happen to be doing at that time. Having it where you completely opt out of all future updates should you ever refuse an update (because it's inconvenient) is just adding insult to injury.

 

Added with this is the issue where Windows will frequently suggest apps for you to use. Not only will they essentially monitor and control everything you do with your PC, they'll also advertise hot new apps to you based on what they've monitored. They have to pay for all this extra bandwidth they will be getting, so what better way to recoup the costs than forcing popups and adverts for software sold through the Microsoft store. Nevermind all the whole permissions crap that people seem to be reporting when they try to disable default (forced) apps like those related to Xbox. Or not being able to open up image files because UAC was turned off.

 

Frankly, all this is hostile and insulting to the consumer since so much is being done without explicit permission or the ability to disable it without essentially "bricking" their computer. Having all this supported by extremely vague terms makes it all worse since you don't even know what exactly you're agreeing to.

 

The fact that the image I linked suddenly, and mysteriously, is now "corrupt" also makes me wonder.

[obobski]

Imgur link (still) works fine for me, but Imgur does go down from time to time. To the rest I think we'll just have to agree to disagree as this seems to be drifting towards a philosophical/speculative discussion (which I want absolutely no part of). I will say that given how loud and widespread complaints about these features/components of Windows 10 seem to be, I would not be surprised if Microsoft makes changes in the near future in response.

[openthegate]

Instead of upgrading you could make a dualboot system. Just keep your Windows 7 for gaming + favorite applications and move everything else to Gnu/Linux. At bootup you can choose which system you would like to boot.

 

With each release Microsoft wants more control over the user. I'm a former user and gamer. I know what I'm talking about.

 

I understand, Windows-users don't like Gnu/Linux, because you are accustomed to Windows, but it offers everything good, what Windows can do. The only downside is the poor number of available games. Therefor it gives you what Windows never could: Freedom, Privacy, Security, Independence, Open Source.

 

Just use it alongside Windows and get familiar with it. More users means more games. Someday perhaps, you can drop Windows completely.

We don't want to rule the world, we just offer you a free alternative, to free yourself from proprietary software.

Edited August 3, 2015 by openthegate

[Hairballtea]

What you say is absolutely true, I am a conspiracy theory fan but this is not a conspiracy it is a fact.

Sadly though as gamers we are stuck to the upgrade path or will miss out on new feature's.

Still microsoft had cut themselves in the throat as this will mean that linux will catch up, so microsoft will undoubtedly release new direct X updates to try to stay ahead but given that 12 will now become the defining direct X this means that Wine and other emulators for linux will catch up anyway.

 

Yes I also do not like the interface and did like window's 7 fine but it was like flogging a dead horse as it will soon become obsolete and go the way of XP as microsoft are scheduled to stop updating it soon with window's 8 having about another year or two on top so 8 user's are better catered for but that too is just spyware, well what can we expect from a free upgrade in today's world of big brother surveilance and idiots classifying angry rant's as act's of terrorism on the web.

 

What they like to forget is all this monitoring is not security as it is against democratic free speech but rather it is control and oppression, give an idiot a gun and he will sooner or later shoot it, the same goes for the control of the net and those who take the power to do so.