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Microsoft Makes Windows 10 Automatic Spying Worse
- mark_l_watson 11y agoYes, simply renaming this service and resetting user preferences was not a good thing to do. I think I understand Microsoft's motivations though. They want everyone up to date, control third party applications that might lead to instabilities, and basically make Windows 10 as solid as possible. There is a lot of similarity in what Apple does. I trust, more or less, both companies.
- rdsnsca 11y agoVery little similarity to what Apple does IMO. The user has complete control over software and system updates, the App Store preference pane lets you completely turn off updates, if you want.
- mark_l_watson 11y agoVery true. Thanks for the correction.
- rustynails 11y agoI am being nagged continually about IOS updates. It's even suggesting that it can do it overnight. It's not forced, but it's getting pushy.
- rdsnsca 11y agoWe are mostly referring to the desktop OSes based on the OP but... try Settings (app) / Notifications / App Store / Allow Notification I rarely give any app notification privileges.
- frik 11y agoWith Android, iOS, OSX, Win <=8 the users decides when/if he updates. With Win10, the update is forced on the user. I overheard old people in public transport that discussed how to install Ubuntu Linux and how bad Win10 was.
- ionised 11y agoThey stand to make a very large amount of money from having everyone using Microsoft apps and services and with all their usage data and email/contacts contents being sent back to the mothership. I think that's why they did it, and why they've done similarly laccidental' things over the last couple of months. All other reasons are secondary.
- brudgers 11y agoIn my opinion, 'Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service’ is a lot more clear than 'DiagTrack'. In fact, it is so much more clear that I find the author's claim it is vague and misleading utterly disingenuous. There is a legitimate criticism if Microsoft re-enabled the service after the renaming for users who had turned it off under the old name. But that doesn't fit the narrative arc of Microsoft malfeasance. Tech journalism shouldn't be a debate team exercise. When it is, there are no winners and everybody walks away dumber.
- acqq 11y agoDeleting the programs seems strange: "it resets many user preferences (including basics like your preferred web browser) if they weren’t Microsoft product/services as well as silently deleting third party system monitoring apps like: CPU-Z, speccy, 8gadgetpack, SpyBot, HWMonitor and more."
- ionised 11y agoIt did that to me. It took me an hour of messing with seeings and Powershell to get everything back to how I had it before the update.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- brudgers 11y agoIn my opinion, 'Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service’ is a lot more clear than 'DiagTrack'. In fact, it is so much more clear that I find the author's claim it is vague and misleading utterly disingenuous. There is a legitimate criticism if Microsoft re-enabled the service after the renaming for users who had turned it off under the old name. But that doesn't fit the narrative arc of Microsoft malfeasance. Tech journalism shouldn't be a debate team exercise. When it is, there are no winners and everybody walks away dumber.
- scorpioxy 11y agoThis won't matter much to their target user. Anybody who wants more control won't be running Windows 10 or probably running an alternative OS. The target user is not one that knows what this stuff means or at least doesn't care even if they do. "I want to be able to create this month's budget on Excel". Everything else is gibberish. Nor should they. I upgraded my parents to use Android phones. Trying to explain what the permission system is was really challenging. "Write to External Storage" is not a statement that you can explain without mentioning the words SD card and internal storage and difference between them. So I have come to the conclusion that current software paradigms are too difficult to understand for anybody who doesn't do this for a living. I wish there was a platform that is midway between Apple's the user is dumb and Android's everybody is a tech-wizard approach.
- rustynails 11y ago>Anybody who wants more control won't be running Windows 10 or probably running an alternative OS. Please don't confuse more control with privacy. My last foray into Ubuntu and Mint (for more control) was a miserable failure on several levels, so I went back to Microsoft Windows. There are many people that would like an alternative, but Mac OS and Linux aren't suitable (walled garden and stability issues). Having to hack around security concerns is still my preferred alternative at this time.
- arpa 11y agoStability issues? On Linux? Well I'm yet to see a windows box with uptime of two years and everything up-to-date.
- Mithaldu 11y ago> I wish there was a platform that is midway between Apple's the user is dumb and Android's everybody is a tech-wizard approach. The Amiga was a great example of that: https://stiggyblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/workbench-v3_000.png https://stiggyblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/workbench-v3_... The desktop consisted of shortcuts you could put there, but also whatever media were currently inserted in the system. If you removed one, the icon vanished. If you inserted one, the icon disappeared. Thus right from the start the user was trained to see this correlation. Meanwhile on linux and all related OSes the connection is completely invisible unless you go looking, and insertable media are "however your flavor of OS does it", and windows systems hide them in "My Computer" and even in there show drive icons, not icons for the inserted storages.
- throwawayaway 11y agoBackported to windows 7 and 8 now too, but people don't seem to mind. Have a root around for diagtrack.dll if you don't believe me. If you don't have it I'll wager you have automatic updates off.
- jnellis 11y agoI have windows7 ultimate. I can't find it. I have automatic updates turned on. I also have never received the windows10 update notification while everyone I know with Home version has.
- throwawayaway 11y agohttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2952664 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2952664 Have a look for this one, I'm going to look for it on my work machine on Monday.
- jnellis 11y agoI don't have this update either.
- naveen99 11y agoIf you don't want spying, put the machine behind a http proxy with a strict white lists in and out firewall. I guess than you have to worry about the firewall machine. chain a couple of them, and they won't know which machine is the final firewall. If any of the others send unexpected chatter, you at least know you are failing. This way you can still use windows at least until they require an always on chatty encrypted connection to microsoft to function.
- vatotemking 11y agoFunny, I just read another entry here in HN titled: Things the media does to manufacture outrage.